[FIX][SOLVED] Hang/freeze on "Acronis Loading please wait" when booting into Linux
I never regretted upgrading a product more than the upgrade to Acronis 2015. The user interface must have been designed by someone who never used a backup product in their life and there are huge amounts of functionality which has been stripped out/dumbed down compared to the previous version. It's even more disappointing when you consider that I actually paid money to get the upgrade.
One thing which was working well in the old version was the linux-mode for operations such as clone disk, accessing the recovery console before windows starts and for the boot recovery media from USB. Unfortunately I found out the hard way when my disk crashed that the old version of the boot media can read 2015 backups - phew. Once the disk was recovered I vowed to "fix" the linux mode of 2015 which was not working and so paid £20 for a 24x7 support telephone call to someone who didn't seem to have any idea how to help me and instead sent a link to an article about "pending operations" in windows. What the hell does this have to do with Linux??? Anyway... I fixed it myself. Below is the fix for other people who may need it. Surprisingly I can not find a record of this on the forum already and it will save you building BartPE disks. Acronis - if you read this please refund my £20 and sack the 2015 Product Manager & User Experience Designer who ruined such a good piece of software.
Problem - You attempt to boot into Linux mode and get as far as a black screen with the Acronis logo and text message saying Loading, Please wait". You have one or more NVidia graphics cards. The black screen never moves on and no application loads. You can not access Acronis.
Affects: Rebooting from Windows into Linux eg for a Clone Disk Operation. Attempting to boot from Rescue USB.
Cause: The newest kernels have moved the video mode setting into the kernel. So all the programming of the hardware specific clock rates and registers on the video card happen in the kernel rather than in the subsequent driver when linux starts. This is true for nVidia cards when using the default "nouveau" drivers. (Which the Acronis linux build uses with Busybox – to see this remove the “quiet” option then at the command prompt type /bin/product).
Solution: Add the nomodeset option to the kernel startup parameters
Fix for windows files, clone disk, F11 access etc:
1. Find your version of this path on your machine: C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Acronis\TrueImageHome
2. Edit the following files using notepad or notepad++:
f11.cfg -> Update the kernel line to read "kernel kernel.dat quiet nomodeset" without quotes
f11-grub-> Update the kernel line to read "kernel kernel.dat quiet nomodeset media_for_linux" without quotes
Fix for Rescue Media Builder / Rescue USB:
1. In the \efi\boot directory on the USB disk edit the boot64.xml file to add the nomodeset argument to the kernel lines (there are two of them - do not cut and paste the text below, just an example):
Kernel Arguments="quiet nomodeset force_modules=usbhid" Path="/efi/boot/dat9.dat"
Kernel Arguments="product=system_report quiet nomodeset force_modules=usbhid" Path="/efi/boot/dat13.dat"
2. Edit the two kernel lines in \bootwiz.cfg
a. KERNEL dat3.dat nomodeset force_modules=usbhid quiet
b. KERNEL dat5.dat product=system_report force_modules=usbhid quiet nomodeset ide-detect=off
3. In the \Recovery Manager directory edit the f11.cfg and f11-grub.cfg files as per the windows files instructions above.
Now boot from USB or F11 option in Windows if you have activated it and all should be well.
Note: the following options have no effect for this problem so don’t use them unless you have to as there is a chance it could disable your fans and break your PC hardware by overheating:
acpi=off noapic
Credit to the webpage which had the solution hidden in a few lines of text:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1613132
Enjoy!
Xerxel