TrueImage locks up Lenovo ThinkPad

This is just a tag for "Notify me when new comments are posted". I didn't see this option when I originally posted.

You needn't have bothered ... it doesn't work most of the time.

What doesn't work? Acronis on a ThinkPad, or "Notify me when new comments are posted"?

Because I did just get an email notifying me of your post.

Maybe they fixed that (the Notify thing) but in the process made a right mess of the rest of the forum.

I am having a similar problem. I purchased the True Image 2010 Box today and it updated to the 6053 latest build. When I started a full file backup to an external 1TB esata drive (from a Lenovo Y550 Ideapad running Vista-x64 SP2), the internal disk lit up (lots of access) and then my system hung (or to be more specific) I was not able to access anything (the system seemed to still be up, but the screen was frozen ... no mouse or keyboard, but the internal drive still had some random acces). I had to power down the laptop to restart.

After power up, it took a while of constant disk access and no display (login screen), but it finally came up again.
Then, when I started True Image again (while the system volume info was still being updated), the graphics driver stalled a few times (screen went blank for 10 seconds several times and then came back with a system tray notification from Vista each time that the graphics driver stopped working and recovered).

After the system volume update settled and vista went quiet, I tried another small backup to the external ESata drive. It worked.

I then tried another larger backup (about 85MB) and True Image went through the process (i.e. internal drive access for a while and then nothing ... progess bar not moving, nothing happening). I tried to cancel the backup, but even though it said ok, it didn't update in the app window or in the system tray icon. I tried right clicking on it and cancelling again, and it says ok and the icon shows cancel but If I try to cancel again, it still says ok.

Bottom line, build 6053 isn't working for me consistently on small backups, how is it going to work on full system backups????

Is this build certified and tested or is it a test build???

Any suggestions on how to get past this?

Steve

Steve

Are you planning on using TI to just backup files rather than an image of a disk or partition?

If so I would suggest you use something like Karen's Replicator, It is free and had the advantage it does not bundle all the files into a proprietary container that only can only be open by one programme.

Hi Tatou,

My intent in buying this product was specifically for disk imaging and Incremental backups that are file based. I heard that TI has an issue doing Incremental sector based backups (specifically, the incremental backup file sizes are significantly larger than the actual files being backed up). Have you observed this?

I only did a few small file based tests to see if it works and was quite disappointed in seeing the system issues.

I'll check out Karen's Replicator website tomorrow, just for curiousities sake ... thanks for the suggestion :-)

By the way ... Pierre Clouthier... I just happened to notice this item in the knowledge base -> http://kb.acronis.com/content/6529

Seems to describe this issue we are both having and provides a driver update to install. I haven't tried it myself yet but thought I would pass it on to you..

Thanks Tatou
Steve

Hi Steve

I keep it simple.

A new manual full backup image of my system drive once a week (unless I plan to install something that would install low level stuff). I found no advantage in incrementals for the level of risk I am prepared to tolerate (they would just seem to introduce complexity in the backup process) and from what I understand sector based backups would certainly mean the tib files would be large. I backup from booting from the Recovery Disk (well actually a ISO file on a USB mem stick. I find TI excellent for simple manual backups and restores. I have Win 7 32 bit

I have never tried TI File backup due to my aversion to having the files stuffed in a TIB container. If it gets corrupted you can't access any files in it where as the chances of all 3000 files getting corrupted at once is quite low.

I use Karen's Replicator both manually and scheduled to make backups of critical folders and files from both my system drive and my other drives.

MY philosophy on backups is here (for what its worth)

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=1383642&postcount=13

Steve -

Thanks for the tip on KB 6529. However, I am nervous about installing patches to an off-the-shelf product to "avoid conflicts with VolSnap", and my ThinkPad was recently restored from scratch with the factory-supplied DVDs, so I do not have a "rare software and hardware configuration".

I think I'll go with TeraByte Image for Windows, and also check into Karen's Replicator.

I'm too old to face the terror of "Your system may not restart" after four days of restoring my PC. This is the message I got when True Image 2010 froze my ThinkPad, and I had to force power off in order to reboot.

OK Pierre. I understand how you feel ... I'm the same :-)

Just for your information ... I tried the patch ... it doesn't work. I uninstalled and re-installed everything from the boxed DVD and then updated to 6053 and then the patch... now TI doesn't work AT ALL on my Lenovo Vista-x64 Home Premium System. The app comes up (although now it seems to not come up properly since I see several instances of it running in the task manager .... eventually (After I kill all of the extra instances that failed to come up), goes through it's motions to assess the backup and then just sits there doing nothing ... and you can't cancel it successfully at all from the app or the system tray progress icon. This app definitely does NOT work under Vista-x64 home premium.

I tried it by booting from the TI Install CD and everything works fine from there (in terms of backup too and from an external ESata drive, so at least we have that, but I was hoping to be able to do file backups occasionally, from within Vista itself.... doesn't seem meant to be :-(

If this is only useful for image backups and none of the other functionality works, I paid a lot of money for that. :-(

Tatou - can you please tell me if you ever got this to run properly under Windows 7. I know you mentioned you boot from the CD and do your image backups and then use the other tool for interim file backups, but is that because you couldn't get TI working properly under Win-7?
Did you ever try to get TI working from within Windows 7 for both image and file backups?

Do you have a 64 bit version of Win-7?

I'm curious if this is just Acronis not addressing 64 bit properly.

Steve

I have 32 bit Win 7 Home Premium

I prefer to use a boot ISO method because I have found it works reliably all the time. I haven't tried to backup my system disk while Win 7 is running. I have run a backup from TI whilst my Windows 7 is running. I did it to backup a memory stick image on a USB mem stick (As discussed below)

I actually use GrubDos on the USB memstick to boot an ISO WinPE 7 image that has the Trueimage plugin installed. I also have the Linux ISO of TI. I can select either at boot time
All boot and work (do backups and restores) but the WinPE image runs faster due to the native Windows drivers.

I never tried file backups with TI- use Karen's

I think you are right 64bit seems to be a common link.

Several people including myself (I'm running Win7 x64) have had the same problem with anything past build 5055. If you serach the forum you will find a long post regarding this issue and links to download build 5055.

With the ThinkPad you will have another issue in that TI cannot correct ly recreate the MBR. All of the data will be correctly restored but not the boot record and you will not be able to boot.

I did see one post that reports to resolve the issue with the W500 but I've not tried this with my W700. Nor have I tried to restore the MBR with the Lenovo R&R and then restore the data with TI.

I have a Lenovo x61 with TI 2010 b5055 installed on a W7 64 bit platform. I'm not having any trouble with TI 2010 on the machine, however it is also true to say it doesn't have all the IBM provided software either due to W7 being a clean install over Vista.

It does sound as though something from TI is clashing with something from IBM. If it is of any help, these are the IBM utilities I've redownloaded for W7, and which obviously are not interfering with TI.

Fingerprint driver.
IBM Help and update centre.
IBM power and WiFi utility
IBM BIOS utility
IBM Chipset drivers
IBM Video drivers.

The one thing I haven't downloaded (because it's not available to my knowledge) is the antishake and drop drive utility.

Colin:

The Active Protection driver works well on Windows 7. It's available on the Lenovo Win 7 drivers page here: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=WIN7-BET…

K0LO wrote:

It's available on the Lenovo Win 7 drivers page here:

Thanks.

This may be too late for you but to save myself a lot of grief and avoid the point of no-return I'm using a second pair of hard drives for my clean install of W7. e.g. one pair is my Vista Business x64 and the other pair are my W7 (I'm running a RAID1).

The installation of Lenovo drivers can be greatly simplified by installing the latest version of "ThinkVantage System" for your system (see the Lenovo Site). After you install this, reboot, click start > all programs > ThinkVantage > System Update. First you will see the ThinkVantage System Update window and 20-30 second later you will the the update window to check for updates. Click check for updates, Select ALL available updates and install. For me this installed 17 Lenovo drivers and made it soooooo easy and no mistakes on my part.

During this install the Lenovo Toolbox was installed and it will keep you aware of any driver updates.

Note there is still an issue with TI and the Lenovo MBR I found a post at http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=211428 which looks like a solution. The poster stated the following:

Once burned to CD, boot to CD which will ask you to load it on the hard drive.
Once finished copying to HD, you'll pop out the CD and reboot on which it will boot into BootIt.
Choose the Work with Partitions option.
Then there is a View MBR button.
Once in the MBR I had three selections listed;
IEM_PRELOAD-0 (which was set as Active)
MBR Entry 1
Bootit EMBFM

All I did was set the second option (MBR Entry 1) to Active.
After that it would boot fine.
****** End of poster comment********
I've not tried this yet but plan to do so unless somebody has a better solution.

Wow! This sucks big time! Been using TI Home v10 and loving it for two years including running it for the last 6 months on a Windows 7 Ultimate pre-release box with NO problems.

Bought my son a TP T500 for school and it says that v10 is not compatible with W7. Hmm, I've been running it for six months without a problem. So, I upgraded to 2010. And all of the problems listed in this thread came to bear. Tried both recommended fixes, the service kill and the driver patch (which also required a removal and reinzstall of the app just to get it to even run), without luck. Not a happy camper especially to read that a restore will have to be a hybrid using both Lenovo's restore and Acronis'. This is NOT where I want to be with this after wasting 5 hours on it on Christmas night.

Am I wasting my time calling tech support?

John:

If version 10 worked well for you, try this: http://forum.acronis.com/forum/5908

Hi John,

Just to let you know some of the things I've discovered with Lenovo's and TrueImage. I'm using a Lenovo Ideapad running Vista-x64.

1) If you are looking to just restore partitions and have them boot, I was able to accomplish this very easily using TI2010 on my Ideapad Y550. The partitions aren't exactly what was on the original drive, but it's close. Re-sizing partitions with TI also works well.If you do a sector-by-sector restore of the MBR and tick off the drive signatures checkbox it seems to boot fine without ill effect.
2) I'm not sure about the thinkpads, but the IdeaPads have a little button above the power button (frequently referred to a "Novo" button in various forums) that is used to restore the system either to a previous backup (located on the D: drive) or a factory installation restore (located in the hidden partition).... THIS DOES NOT WORK after a TI restore (at least to a larger drive ... I upgraded my drive from the 320GB-5400RPM WD drive to 500GB-7200RPM Seagate). I'm not sure if it's just different drive geometry or TI itself, but the partitions are NOT the same sizes or locations as the original drive ... particularly the number of sectors and where partitions start and the OneKey Restore requires everything to be where it expects it to be (per the values in the MBR)... Even if I don't resize the partitions and just tell it to recover the entire disk as imaged. Lenovo seems to use the 63 sector start and offset principle, which is consistent with what TI does, so I can't figure out why the restored partitions are different from the original.
3) Be aware that the Lenovo restore DOES NOT restore your data files, programs, etc... only the Operating system. It completely wipes out the partition so you'll lose everything on a restore... it's not selective. You MUST backup your files using another approach.
4) Since you are using TI, that accomplishes both goals of System Restore and File Backups.
5) I'm still trying to figure out a way to create the partitions and then using an MBR editor to reset them to what was on the original drive in the hope that I can get the Novo button restore to work again... I like the idea of being able to bring things back to factory install... just in case.
6) Keep in mind that even if we can figure out how to get the Novo Restore working again, you must perform a backup to DVDs.If your entire drive goes, the Lenovo restore doesn't work in that event. Also, it doesn't restore the hidden partition or the visable D drive (as near as I can tell). It certainly doesn't restore any Lenovo backups on the D drive. I stored mine on an external drive and DVDs.
7) I saw some posts in other forums about re-installing the OneTouch Recovery software, but I haven't tried it. I believe these were the case to create backups using Lenovo, but again, the goal is just to get the OS back up and not recover your data.

9) Definitely don't use the latest build (6053) of the TI-2010. Everything I read is consistent with my experiences... It doesn't work properly. The out of box (original release build) for 2010 works quite nicely. I've also seen that some of the problems I posted above still occur with the out of box version, as well (even after you uninstall the software ... so it messed something up on my laptop that I can't resolve currently). It works great for me if I boot from the TI disk and perform backup's and restores that way. Other people have more positive experiences with it working properly when installed under Win 7, but based on my experiences, I'm not going down that approach again. TI Support was not able to address this at all.

If I have some sucess restoring the OneTouch Recovery Novo Button, I'll post back with the process.

Good Luck,

Steve

Thanks Steve for the lenghty, well considered response. I had my son run the Lenovo disaster recovery and he reported that it won't use an external drive (ridiculous) and so he burned a startup disk to CD. So I'm thinking this is gonna take some thought to determine the best convoluted solution to come up with a reliable off-disk image (that can stay here while he's away at college) as well as regular data backup routine. This doesn't need to be this complicated at this stage of the game.... I am also regretting having neglected to option a 7200RPM drive and so he ended up with a 5400 which dogs the system some. He's happy with it since overall it's faster than the CoreDuo laptop he's giving me back but I slap myself for that error and the minimal cost (and the impending aggravation of trying to upgrde in light of this complicated crap)....

OK I got some GOOD NEWS for the Lenovo/Thinkpad users
1) If you are using TI 2010 use build 5055. I know Acronis is trying to find a solution for the later builds but I have been 100% (I think) successful with 5055. The download URL for English is https://www.acronis.com/my/download/?TrueImage2010.5055_s_en.exe once you get logged in.
2) I'm in the middle of a HUGE data recovery on my desktop (4TB) and have involved my W700 to do most of the work (it is much faster). Also I'm updating the desktop along with my W700 to Win7 Ultimate x64 (much better than WinXP Pro x32 and Vista Business x64), also this will start me down the path to have all of my systems on the same OS.
3) Because of the data recovery at this time I cannot repro the steps that I've used but it goes something like the following
3a) Using TI 5055 create a total drive image - I put mine on a eSATA external drive, the USB drive is MUCH too slow. I don't recall checking anything extra in this step.
3b) Create an Acronis recovery CD with this build (I don't know if this build is critical for this step but I've had success)
3c) I shutdown and removed my Win7 500GB boot drive and installed a clean 500GB drive
3d) I booted using the Acronis recovery CD (the one I just created above)
3e) I found the full image on the eSATA drive
3f) OK here I think I did something different than I had before and this may be the key to success. I recall checking a box on one of the TI screens to recover something to do with the master signature or disk signature. This box was located near the middle (left/right & up/down) of the screen and I don't recall seeing this check box in my previous attempts, perhaps this is why my previous restore attempts did not work.
3g) After the restore completed I removed the recovery CD, powered off the PC and booted - like magic it worked and everything looked the same as with the original HD.

Comments for Steve Levine
1) The ThinkPad has a "ThinkVantage" button which may be like the little button you have on your Lenovo. It is necessary to install Lenovo code for Win7 to get the proper function for this button. See my above post regarding the easy way to install all of the drivers. I don't know if the non-ThinkPads have the utility which checks the Lenovo website to see what drivers you need but I'm sure you need to install Lenovo code just to get the button working.
2) If you perform a "clean" install as I did you no longer have the hidden partition thus there is no going back to the original factory install unless you created the Lenovo Recovery CD set BEFORE you performed the clean install. I have a set of recovery CDs that Lenovo sent me which will take me back to Vista Business x64 as I received the W700 from Lenovo and I have used them to rebuild my Vista system. About 6 months ago I accidentally blew away the boot drive when I installed RAID1 support.
3) If you install the Lenovo Rescue & Recovery software
3a) you can create an image (full or incremental) of your hard drive and use it to restore your system
3b) The ThinkPad version will only backup to an internal or USB drive. Whereas TI will also backup to an eSATA or network drive. In my case I was backing up to an eSATA drive with TI and this is what I restored from using TI. As a test I also did a recovery using the Lenovo R&R from my USB drive. The TI software was much faster. This was a FULL disk recovery not just data.
3c) I find the TI interface much easier to use and it has more function than the Lenovo R&R.

For John Caporale
1) The Lenovo R&R will backup to a USB external drive. I've backed my W700 for the last 6 months to a USB drive. It will NOT backup to an eSATA drive and I did not test backing up to my network drives (currently I'm too tight on HD space (I have about 80 different hard drives and almost all are full)). I have an eSATA port on my W700 dock and I will now use it for my TI backups and now that I have TI running with success I will stop the Lenovo R&R.
2) Having the start-up disk (this should be just one CD) for the Lenovo R&R is a very good idea if he is using it for his image backups.
3) I've tested with both the 7200RPM and the 5400RMP drives on Vista and I could not see any major difference and for sure not enough to justify the price difference from Lenovo. My system came with a 250GB 5400 RPM and had problems. Lenovo replaced it with a 7200RPM and then I installed two 320B 5400RPM drives and just stepped up to two 500GB 5400 RPM drives. I had considered the 1TB drives but cost became a major issue at this time.
4) When I installed Win7 Ultimate x64 I saw a HUGE performance increase. I have multiple drives and did a clean install on a new drive. This allows me to reinstall the old drive just in-case. Also having performed a number of new builds over the years I've created my personal how-to document to help me avoid some major pitfalls and install everything in the correct order.
5) I highly suggest doing a LOT of testing before you burn any bridges. I'm currently going through a major 4TB data recovery and it has been hell. I thought I was covered but discovered a major hole when I had failures.

Well, took someone else's advice and downloaded Paragaon Backup 10 and it seems to work great with Win 7.

However, my son reports that his new ThinkPad T500 doesn't see any enternal drives (he has a smal USB device with a laptop drive inside and I have a 5-1/4 external). I'm assuming this is a security setting perhaps in CMOS?

Tatou wrote:

I have 32 bit Win 7 Home Premium

I prefer to use a boot ISO method because I have found it works reliably all the time. I haven't tried to backup my system disk while Win 7 is running. I have run a backup from TI whilst my Windows 7 is running. I did it to backup a memory stick image on a USB mem stick (As discussed below)

I agree. Since I've been using TI since 2005, I've never created/restored an image with Windows running, always used the recovery CD and haven't had issues with either the creation or restoration of system images.