Network not seen when booting from rescue media when using true image 2010

I forgot to add, if it makes a difference, that my internal intranet between computers uses static IP's.  I needed to set up internal network this way for other reasons. I don't think that matters to this issue but I do note that whenever I am in the boot mode of acronis and I check on the ethernet settings it always seems to reset them to DHCP regardless of how I reset them to a static IP during previous boot mode sessions of acronis.

Jon Kleks wrote:

I forgot to add, if it makes a difference, that my internal intranet between computers uses static IP's.  I needed to set up internal network this way for other reasons. I don't think that matters to this issue but I do note that whenever I am in the boot mode of acronis and I check on the ethernet settings it always seems to reset them to DHCP regardless of how I reset them to a static IP during previous boot mode sessions of acronis.

Jon: The boot environment is read-only. When you start up into the boot environment it is loaded entirely into RAM. At this point you could remove the bootable CD or USB drive and the recovery program will continue to function; it is running from a RAMDisk. Any changes you make to settings are made in RAM, and will evaporate when you quit.

If you do not have a DHCP server on your network you will need to change the Ethernet settings each time that you start the bootable version of TI. You should only need to specify an IP address and a subnet mask that are consistent with the rest of your network. Even though you use static IPs on the rest of the network you may want to consider leaving DHCP enabled on your router for convenience.

Are you able to see any other PCs on the network besides the NAS box?

Hi Mark,

Thanks for your reply. It is really appreciated.  I now understand why the changes I made to the ethernet settings didn't stick.  Makes complete sense.

I'll look into leaving the DHCP settings enabled on the router for convenience in the future.  The thing that is worrisome is that I can not see any other computers on the network. I specify the IP address and subnet mask of the computer that acronis is loaded on every time but it doesn't seem to make a difference. I still can't see the NAS box or anything in the network. I can only see the local C: drive of my machine. I am starting to think its a NIC driver issue-- that the acronis rescue media I created may lack the driver I need.   Although I am still unsure what the problem is. It may be something very obvious that I am not doing but at this point I still don't know.

Jon:

That doesn't sound encouraging. Perhaps you could post the NIC info that is listed in the drop-down menu on the adapter settings page to see if someone else has been successful/unsuccessful with the same model.

One test that you could try is to boot to the recovery CD and configure the network parameters including assigning a static IP address. Then go to another PC on the network and try to ping that IP address to see if it responds. If it does, that means that the driver is supported and working. It would then be a Windows networking issue. Sometimes you need to wait several minutes for the network neighborhood to be populated, although I just tested my boot CD and it recognized the network almost immediately. 

I  read this forum article: http://forum.acronis.com/forum/3672.  I followed the suggestion in reply #2 from Alexander about literally typing in the path \\server\share and that seemed to solve the issue.  After I had typed it just one time when specifying the path then from that point on the browser in acronis (during boot mode) was able to find it on its own.  However, it seems to be pretty slow when it accesses the network to get to another computer. Once its in the other computer (my NAS box for example) it speeds up to something more normal. So for example, browsing starting from my local computer into the NAS box may take about 10 seconds just to get through the network. Then once inside the NAS box its more reasonable.  I really don't understand that behavior but maybe it has something to do with booting from a CD or maybe how quickly it can query the network when booting from CD? Although if this is indeed a ramdisk type of setup I would think it should not be anywhere near that slow.

One more piece of information during this process.  I recall that when I first explicitly typed the path to my NAS box it came up with the expected user authentication form asking for the login and pw to get into the NAS box which I supplied (and also asked if I wanted to test the network connection and I did and it was ok).  Its like once that was done just one time during one booting from cd into acronis it remembered the permissions from that point on. In other words, subsequent reboots to the acronis rescue media did not require me to enter the login and pw to get into the NAS box. Although I don't know that  if I truly powered down the entire network and then brought it up again if it then might ask me again for the login and pw. It seems like its remembering the login and pw when coming from the acronis boot loader but I don't understand how it can do that.

And I actually do not understand how typing it explicitly one time solves the problem (and it doesn't matter if I change the ethernet settings or not--it will still work although I need to retype the explicit NAS box network address path one time as above everytime I reboot to acronis rescue cd) and from that point on the browser can do it on its own? Any explanations as to what is going on and why it seems to access the network through the browser on its own after typing the path explicitly once?  And why does browsing through the network seem to be slow? 

I truly am a newbie with this so any help/info/insight greatly appreciated.

Mark,

Thanks again for the feedback.

Good idea about the ping. I did as you said and it does ping so the driver is supported and working.  And I decided to time and wait to see how long it would take the network neighborhood to be populated and you were right about that--45 seconds to browse into the workgroup for both backup and recovery! I didn't need to enter any UNC path to the NAS either, I just waited long enough. Perhaps entering the path explicitly speeds it up? I had no idea it could be this slow in a non-OS environment.  In windows its almost immediately but from the boot CD its really slow.  In fact,  some mouse clicks (depending on where you are and what you are doing in the acronis backup or recovery menu) while in the boot CD mode are very slow taking like 5 seconds or more to actually echo and do something.    I wonder why it is so slow from the boot CD as compared to the windows environment. Any thoughts? More importantly, is this expected/normal for the way this software works or is it more the way its interacting with my particular setup here?  Do you think that having a custom rescue ISO image from acronis might speed things up?

Also, any thoughts from acronis moderators about whether or not a custom rescue ISO image would help speed things up?

Jon:

I think that's the nature of Windows networking. When you have more than one PC on a network then one of them has to act as Master Browser and keep a list of PCs and their addresses on the network. The networking protocol allows for PCs to have an election to determine who gets to be the Master Browser. When you introduce a new PC onto the network an election may take place and a different PC can become the Master Browser. I've seen it take several minutes after this event takes place until the network neighborhood is populated correctly and you are able to browse the network.

Remember that the boot CD uses a minimal operating system that doesn't have all of the features of Windows. Philosophically, if the restore CD is only used occasionally then a 45-second delay may be something that you could learn to live with.

Mark,

Thanks for the explanation and I think you are right--the minimal OS used in the boot CD likely lacks features or exact compatibility with my system which can lead to longer times to populate the network neighborhood. I agree with you philosophically--45 seconds occasionally is not anything to complain about. Rather, my concern or perhaps paranoia, was that if it is slow now, then possibly with subsequent subtle changes to the pc over the course of usage then somehow it may no longer function at all and thus never find the network neighborhood.  That said, I confess I can't really come up with a scenario where that would happen hence why I might label my concern as perhaps paranoia.

I am going to try a system backup and target it to the NAS box for storage. Then I will try to do a  recovery in the boot CD mode by recovering from the NAS box  to an external usb HD that I have.  Finally, I will then attempt to restart the pc and have it reboot from the external usb HD.  My thinking here is to test the system recovery process out without having to actually let acronis erase the internal HD of the pc before it writes the image back to it.  Assuming that I can reboot from external usb drive do you see any issues with this idea? Is there any reason that I fundamentally won't be able to boot from the external usb drive assuming the .tib file is not corrupted?

Thanks again Mark.

Jon Kleks wrote:

...Finally, I will then attempt to restart the pc and have it reboot from the external usb HD.  My thinking here is to test the system recovery process out without having to actually let acronis erase the internal HD of the pc before it writes the image back to it.  Assuming that I can reboot from external usb drive do you see any issues with this idea? Is there any reason that I fundamentally won't be able to boot from the external usb drive assuming the .tib file is not corrupted?

Jon:

You will not be able to boot from the external USB drive. Windows cannot boot from USB devices because of a fundamental design issue. But if you can open the enclosure of the external USB drive and remove the hard disk inside, you could temporarily connect it in place of your existing internal hard disk and then try booting from it. Since the internal disk is disconnected during this experiment, you won't risk your current Windows installation by trying this way.

If you cannot do that then going through the motions anyway will be a useful exercise to gain familiarity with the restore process.

Mark,

Got very busy with work stuff so I didn't get a chance to act on your advice till now.  As usual you were right and thanks again for the advice.  I forgot that the external HD I had was a multi-interface type (usb, firewire, and esata).  And I had the Dell guys remind me that on the back of my optiplex there was an esata port (guess I am not as with it as I should be perhaps). I read that esata is bootable so I went out and bought an esata cable.  Then I switched off my internal raid SATA disks in the BIOS menu (under drives). Then I rebooted and voila I was booting from the external HD via the esata connection.  And it booted perfectly. No problems so I was able to recover the image from the NAS box onto the external esata drive  and it booted perfectly from there.  And all from the boot CD recovery environment.  That really does give me a lot of confidence in the TI swe.  Time to make a purchase.

Thanks again for all of your help Mark.

Jon

Jon:

Great! Nothing like a good ending...