"Missing Operating System" message after using Acronis True Image 2010

What OS are you using and do you have the install CD/DVD for it?

A couple of things could cause this message.

1. The OS has been corrupted or wiped.

2. The OS booting files can't be found.

3. The boot sector information is all addled.

It is most likely that the MBR of your OS is up the spout especially if you are using XP.

First, check in your BIOS that the hard drive is actually listed - depending on your computer to enter the BIOS you need to press either the DEL, F2, F1 or if a new HP workstation F11 just after the PC starts up. If it isn't disabled then this info will flash up on the screen (quickly) just after you start the PC.

Assuming the drive is still listed in the BIOS, you will then need to either download the Acronis MBR reset program which is listed in Grovers links at the top of this forum, or insert your OS install media.

However we need to know which OS you have before giving you furhter instructions.

How TI has wiped your MBR is difficult to know, unless there was some sort of electrical noise that corrupted the drive, your drive or RAM is not as healthy as it could be or you accidently clicked on drive cleanser.

Hi,
The OS is Vista and it was already loaded when I bought the pc and I don't have the disk. I tried to start and press the DEL, F2 etc but none of these options did anything to start BIOS. When it happened there was no noise or anything and the screen was just blank. Not sure in my panick if I pressed any keys but I was just thought the computer hibernated at first, and was just moving the mouse around (didn't click it). Thanks for answering my call for help, if you have anything further I could try to salvage my c drive I would be so grateful.

Is this PC a brand name one?

Does the hard drive light come on?

There can be particular problems with Dell PC's which has been noted in other posts.

Most brand name PC's will these days have a hidden partition that contains the installation files. that, however isn't of much help to you at the moment.

Unless someone has other suggestions, my thoughts are as follows.

Find someone who can loan you a Vista install DVD so that you can perform a boot repair.

Download the Acronis MBR restorer burn it to a CD or USB stick.

If you've a brand name PC, see if anyone has made a recovery CD/DVD for that particular make and model. Might also be worth checking the manufacturers website to see if they have a rescue media available as a download.

You can make a Vista startup repair dvd from this file here:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/how-to-make-a-windows-vist…

It is only a startup repair dvd ... it does not have any Vista installation files.

Thankyou so much for the help offered. I went to the retailer where I got the pc (sony vaio) from. I was told I would have to pay for repair but someone took pity on me and showed me the hitting the F10 key on startup brought up the recovery centre - as bodgy suggested. I'm trying to see if I can recover the c drive now.

This may be too late, but you know if you do that Recovery that you will lose anything you've added to the system including any pics, music or other data files you've generated. That Recovery puts the system back to how it came to you from the store.

It's okay. That didn't work in the end anyway. The recovery tool couldn't locate the hard disk it kept saying. So, went onto the how to geek you mentioned and did the ImgBurn etc and followed the whole instructions (so far as a total dummy like me could interpret) O m g what an ordeal but I burnt the recovery disk from file downloaded off neo smart and I put the cd in and madly hit F8 (saw that somewhere) and the disk loaded and i was able to repair windows. Lo and behold the message came up "Acronis Image complete" and then windows went back to normal......nothing lost (all my precious photos there and all). What a lesson in backing up scary but probably necessary. Sorry to say though that I won't be going near any Acronis software - ever again. Thanks you have been so so so very helpful and I appreciate your input and generous time in trying to help. Off now to back up to a hard drive. Cheers.

Well, you did good ... congrats. What are you going to use for backup, if not Acronis? Acronis is good for backing up the entire hard drive - not for things like photos or other files. To backup those photos, use the *free* Karen's Replicator - very user friendly. Google will get you the link to download.

Hi I found this older thread while searching and there are some similarities to what I am experience "Missing Operating System", when I try to start my newly installed hardrive.

I will provide as much information, perhaps someone has experienced this.
System: 2006 Sony Vaio Laptop VGN FJ270. OS: XP Pro
Original Drive 100gb Samsung 5400
New Drive 500gb Travelstar 7200

Was going to do a clean install, but my wife (the owner) prefers a clone of her exact system and programs. So can you can guess what I am doing LOL.

I have cloned the drive twice, each time I used "auto" feature to simplify matters. Each occasion that I installed the new drive in the laptop, I still get the same results "Missing Operating System".

Besides reading every post I could get my hands on, I chatted with Acronis who response "That is too old of an Acronis TI for developers to support". Wow. It is TI 2009, and I never used it when I got it and in fact registered today, and I am sure that the cloning feature is pretty much the same current versions.

Here is what I have done.
-Used XP Pro disc, "Repair", the results "Missing Operating System"
-Started to use the Sony Recovery disk and the Acronis Rescue Media Bootable disk, but realized I was going to do a recovery or restore, and lose all the programs and stuff cloned in the new drive.
-Went to BIOS and it did showed the new Hitachi drive. Not knowing, I tried "enable" external and "enable" network, on the boot line. But I have now put everything back to the original Boot setting in BIOS. Same results each time.

I am a bit over my head at this point......the BIOS fooling around bothered me, so I need some suggestions or comments.

Also, I have repeatedly checked the new clone drive, while it was in the enclosure, via disk management the new drive shows as :
-Disk 2 Basic 30.03 GB NTSF Healthy (EISA Configuration)/ (D:) 435.73 GB NTSF Healthy (Active)

Here is how the partitions read.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Partition Basic NTFS Healthy (EISA Configuration) 6.01 GB
Partition Basic NTSF Healthy (EISA Configuration) 30.03 GB
(C:) Partition Basic NTSF Healthy (System) 87.15 GB
(D:) Partition Basic NTSF Healthy (Active) 435.73 GB
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Below that is the actual Bar Graph
_______________________________________________________________________________
Disc 0
Basic (C:)
93.16 GB 6.01 GB NTSF 87.15 GB NTSF
Online Healthy (System)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Disk 1
Removable
No Media
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Disk 2
Basic (D:)
465.76 GB 30.03 GB NTSF 435.73 GB NTSF
Online Healthy (Active)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CD-ROM 0
DVD (E:)
_______________________________________________________________________________

Seems to me that the one thing that is missing or different is that 6.01 GB Partition that is at the front of my normal and working original c drive. Maybe that the windows os, I wonder?

Confusing to me.

The cloned drive as you can tell is loaded with stuff, but how would I recognize what is windows os if it is actually not being cloned over (well the partition of 30.03 GB is definately something and I thought windows was in that part, perhaps it's just the original recovery system)

After looking at the original old drive capacity. I wonder if the 30.03GB is just empty space. Here are the old Sony drive capacity: The specs for the drive size is 100 GB but here is what the actual capacity shows under the my computer folder

-Capacity 87.1GB
-Used space 59.3GB
-Free space 27.8 GB

Anyone want to take a stab at this? If want to pass I understand and thanks for looking.

Try reverse cloning.

Put the new drive in the laptop, make the old drive the external one, boot from the rescue CD and clone.

Remove the external drive before rebooting the laptop.

Leave the drive size as it was - you can extend the partition later if you want to.

Thank you. Iwill give that go. Hopefully it's that simple of a solution. I will update with results. Thanks

Well that didn't work, but thanks for the suggestion.

This is frustrating. Ouch !

Looks to me like your bootable partition (C) is not active and the other partition (D) is. So it is trying to boot to D drive that has no OS. You need to use something like the Disk Director or some other partition program loaded from CD (or USB) and correct this problem.

Thanks for the information and suggestion.

I am responding from my mac right now (which are much more easy and straightforward to do this type of thing).

I am in the process of trying another option in case the issue is really a LBA supported problem. I made the primary partition this time under 137GB, which I will expand later if the the thing boots to Windows. I noticed when I was in the BIOS yesterday although it did indeed identify the Hitachi drive, the size on top of the BIOS heading said <137. So maybe that's the issue even though the Computer System Information panel in the Sony, says that it is 48 bit LBA supported.

If that doesn't work then I definitely will try your great suggestion.

I keep this updated. Maybe others are learning from my mistakes. LOL

Well that didn't work. I will try disc director and see if that helps.

That didn't work.

For something so simple, "of course when you use acronis", this has sure not worked out. But I don't think that it is just an Acronis problem. The problem is the "difficulties and hurdles" designed by Windows based computers and their software.

I got away from these types of problems when I left windows based pc's several years ago (this was like returning to those dark years of poor computer hardware and confusing windows based software that kept me up at night and wasted too many hours of my time, and took the fun out using a computer).

This is not meant to start a flame war, but this really was a wakeup call to just simply stay away from that operating system. Hopefully I can just convince the Mrs. to just get a Mac. Macs have their problems too, but nothing even remotely compared to Windows, I remember that everytime I started windows, I got the flood of updates to update the updates. And those awful redundant "error" messages that never seemed to end when you were just trying to close or end a program. Yikes !

I have cloned several drives using Mac, and it's pretty straightforward, drag this to that, wait a bit, done, and the cloned drives were bootable from any location or enclosure. No special voodoo or 3rd party software needed.

This isn't just a post of frustration but more of realization, so why wrestle with this issue any further and put the hd in an enclosure for the Macs.

I sincerely do appreciate all the input and suggestions. I really do.

Best Regards,

This is odd, as XP doesn't use the BCD for finding it's booting files just a script file (boot.ini) I'm not sure what has gone wrong.

Might be worth seeing what the contents of boot.ini contains.

Instead of cloning do you have an external drive where you can make an image rather than a clone and restore from that?

One of the problems especially with laptops is that there can be manufactures utilities or special booting info in the MBR, which do strange things when applied to drives or equipment not designated by the manufacturer.

When you say you chose the repair option in XP was this at the command line prompt or the install repair option that removes all the system folder files (Windows only files) and then replaces them with the initial installation versions?

doncarlos100,
Perhaps it would help if you would you post an actual picture of both your disk as shown in Windows Disk Management. I am assuming that your original source drive is still in its normal installation condition.

If you wanted to repeat your cloning operation, use the Manual and "As is" options. I do not like using the cloning operation for this reason:

Cloning Risks:
In theory, there should be no risk to the source drive during cloning as the disk is only read. In practice, however, there has been far too many postings of something going wrong during the process. Sometimes it is the operator choosing the wrong disk and cloning the blank onto the master; other times, the power fails during the process; at other times, the computer freezes and the the drive is lost. Simply stated, why take the risk of cloning when it takes on a few minutes longer to do the restore and the master disk is not even connected.

If you had a "disk" option backups (all partitions checked) which includes all partitions, you could do a "disk" option restore. Any left over unallocated space could be allocated by other methods.

Hey thank you both for taking the time to respond. I appreciate your suggestions and links provided.

But I have moved on, and the disk is now reformated and being used in an enclosure for mac.

Best regards

Hello, I have a similar problem. I installed Acronis True Image Home 2010 on a HP Laptop running W7. After installation, the computer would not boot. It said it could not find the operating system. From reading this forum, I downloaded a file named mbrautowrite_en.iso. I clicked on the file and created a CD. I inserted the CD into the laptop. It booted and said "Press any key to rewrite MBR." I pressed the Enter key, then it said: "Extended F Disk I ver 0.93 ... Written by Florian Painke ... - Write MBR Only ... No commands for booting OS. Press any key to reboot." After rebooting the computer still says "Windows failed to start ... File:\Boot\BCD ... An error occurred while attempting to read the boot configuration data."

Any suggestions would be most appreciated. Thanks.
Richard

@Richard

If you have made a Windows 7 repair CD, boot from that and select repair. You may have to do this a number of times as the CD only repairs one problem at a time.

I ran across the same issue I restored the drive of a Win NT 4.0 machine (yes we still run Win NT 4.0) we use it for a processing plant and don't feel like paying $100,000 for the new version which offer no advantage to the one we have.

Anyway here it the problem I have restored the back and when I look at the drive under Win 7 I can see the files on the drive so the drive seems to be intact. However when I try to boot up within the Windows NT machine it's coming up with Missing Operating System I'm currently running Acronis 11. Thanks in advance for your assistance

Alex, I did what it said in the post that was a reply to my post- I had to boot the computer from a Windows 7 disk and told it to repair. The files are on the disk, but the system does not know to boot from them. I think you will need to find a Win NT 4.0 boot disk. If your computer does not boot automatically from the disk, when it starts to boot up, hit the "F" keys (I believe it is F2 or F8 or F9) to go into the computer bios. From there you can tell it to boot from a CD. I am not an expert. I hope this helps. Good luck.

Alex,
Just a verifcation. You are using the old original Version 11 and not the version 2011?

When you did the restore, was the blank target disk in it boot position inside the NT machine and the restore was performed from the old version 11 CD?

Correct this is the original Acronis 11. I hooked up the drive to a Win 7 machine via USB and restored the image that way. This NT machine is so old it doesn't have USB and if my memory serves me I don't think win NT even supports USB. Yes the target drive was blank. Thank you both for your input

Good News I have managed to get the system to Boot by creating a Win NT boot disk at this point I'm extremely happy from yesterday. (It's amazing what 12 hours of rest can do for you and of course some good advice from people in the know )

Anyway so the system is booting beautifully. Can I overwrite the file on the a: disk to the root of my C: drive and then remove the floppy. And all should be good.

Or is there some step I'm missing.

one issue I did fix was to create a page file

Alex, I am glad you got it going. I know that is a relief. I am not sure it is quite as easy as you list above, though you can try it (I don't think you will hurt anything). It is not just a matter of having the file on the C: drive, somehow the system has to know to boot from that file. That is why I told you to try to run a repair of the C: drive. The repair process should make that file bootable. If that does not work, perhaps the A: boot disk will allow you to create a boot file on the C: drive. Sorry, but it has been so long ago that I worked with NT, I am a little fuzzy. If worse comes to worse, you can keep booting from the floppy. You should only need to do that when the computer is restarted.

yes I have tried copying from the files off the floppy but same results " Operating system Missing" One thing I did notice that when I plugged the Hard drive into my Win 7 machine it came just said healthy drive. However the original drive came up showing "Active" and I'm sure this is something rather important so this is my next phase. So far I thank everyone for there help. Normally I can get through the toughest of computer issues . But my brain has been mush lately and I think this isn't helping. Either way I'm half way home and hosed. Any additional advice from other would be welcome thanks again to Richard and GroverH .

You are on the right track. Yes, you must make that disk Active, which I think means that the operating system is located there, and it knows to boot from that disk. You might try searching for how to make a disk active.

That's where I'm at thanks again Richard :-)

There is and old DOS command that was designed to transfer the operating system. You would have to get to a DOS prompt (command prompt), go to the A: drive (CD A:\), then type SYS C:\ or SYS A:\ C:\ (one of those should work). That might work for you.

So in order to save time I tried to clone win 7 64 on a toshiba using the promo version that came with the Crucial ssd. Now I have this message and a few hours of trying to get it to work instead of just reloading windows 7 from scratch (and getting the your a pirate message from Microsoft in the process).
If you are reading this then I can tell you to hope for the best, expect the worst (X10).
So anyway what am I supposed to do? I read all the posts above and I still don't know what to do except put the laptop on the ground and dance around on it.

Recover, reinstall the old drive in the drive bay?
I write these things to help me think so don't take it personally

So in order to save time I tried to clone win 7 64 on a toshiba using the promo version that came with the Crucial ssd. Now I have this message. Set bios to boot to the old drive first. Done.