Can't restore previuously saved back ups

Kiwi_wombat,

As this is a recovery problem you are entitled to support from Acronis for either the 2012 or the 2013 program, so I suggest raising a support ticket.

I take it that the Windows versions were able to see the drives and it is just the recovery environment that can't. If your USB drive is connected via a hub, disconnect the hub and connect the drive directly to a USB port and a USB2.0 (USB3.0 occasionally have problems) one, disable any card or thumprint readers, card readers especially cause the recovery media problems.

Make sure the external drive is powered, sometimes self powered ones are not picked up by the Linux kernel that Acronis use.

Does your username mean you are an NZ'er who lives in the big island to the north or an Aus person living south of Tasmania?

The 2 TB drive was powered and connected by USB directly. There are no card readers connected.
The tib files are visible using Windows explorer and Acronis itself (when Acronis is started from the PC).
My biggest problem is that Acronis is not even reading the hard drive using a rescue disk, with or without an external drive connected.

In terms of residence, I am a kiwi who lived in Aus for ten years. The user name was set up then.
I have now returned to NZ for family reasons

Is it possible to power the external drive separately?

Does the 2012 CD work correctly on the Acer PC? If it does, the temporary workaround is to use that, and ask Acronis to make you a customised CD.

How is the drive in the Acer setup, is it GPT or MBR type?

Just to check, this problem is with the CD in the physical machine, not when trying to access the machine remotely?

From what I remember GPT is used with larger discs. If that is the case, I assume the Acer is MBR because it is only 640GB partitioned into C: & D:

The external drive is connected to the mains, so I assume that means it is powered separately. However let's ignore external drives and concentrate on the Acer internal drive.

With no external drive connected, the CD doesn't even recognise the internal ACER drive. It just gives the error message listed in my initial post and then freezes.

I have tried 3 CD's
2012 True Image with 2011 Disc Director
2013 True Image with 2011 Disc Director
2013 True image
The CD's have been put into the physical machine and then rebooted.

All CD's work load satisfactorily on another machine and that machine has 4 drives with 10 partitions

In case it is important, I should point out that there is a hidden partition on the C: partition to facilitate factory restores.

Kiwi_Wombat,

As you aren't getting any error messages or kernel panics, there isn't much at my end to go on, so I can only suggest some things that are known to cause problems on some systems and see what value they are to your problem. As I mentioned in a previous post, as this is a restore problem, you are entitled to support from Acronis, they will also be able to perhaps see the problem if you can get far enough with the CD or from within Windows to make an Acronis System Report.

I take it True Image runs OK from within Windows.

If the Acer allows, can you check in the BIOS and see if there is a legacy option for the drives and possibly things such as mouse etc.

You could try entering some parameters with the recovery CD to tell it to ignore trying to load certain Linux drivers.

As the CD boots you will see the Acronis Loader..... text, press the F11 button which should take you to a command line, remoe the word QUIET and type in: acpi=off noapic , if that makes no difference try nodma, if your laptop has a PCMCIA slot, use nopcmia, as this seems to be a hardware driver problem it might be worth trying pci=bios this forces Linux to use the BIOS to access hardware, conversely of this makes things worse then th elast thing to try is pci=nobios this forces th eLinux kernel to ignore the BIOS completely and try and access the hardware directly. I doubt though that this last option would be of use.

The hidden partition shouldn't be causing a problem in just seeing the drive.

The first thing to try

You can confirm whether whether your disk(s) are style MBR or GPT via the Windows Disk Management disk properites/Volume options.

Go to Start
Right click on the Computer Icon and chooses Manage
Click on Disk Management
Hover you moue pointer over the left section of any disk. This is where the Disk 0-Basic is listed.
Right click on that disk listing and choose properties.
Click on the Volume listing header.
The partition style information will list either
Master Boot record or Global Partitioning Table
Click OK to exist Properties.

If your target disk is an external disk, and you are having trouble getting the disk recognized.
power up the disk but do not plug in the usb cable into the computer until you have the have the TI menu displayed and them wait a minute or so before trying to access the disk.

I've tried everything suggested to no avail and just a reminder that I am now just trying to load Acronis using a rescue disc with no external drive. The only drives are one HDD and one DVD player

The HDD is a 640GB Hitachi SATA Drive HDT721064SLA SCI
It is MBR and partitioined as follows
14 GB Recovery partition
100 MB System reserved
290.95 GB NTFS C:
291.12 GB NTFS D:

In the BIOS USB Legacy support is enabled and I can use the mouse on the Acronis user interface screen
On the BIOS the DVD player is set to reead first and then the HDD

If I remove the word quiet, no matter what I put there makes no difference. I just get screeds of information scrolling up the screen. Eventually it gets to the copyright section and sits for a while
Then adds a line which starts with USB. It does that 7 times
Then a line which starts with hub
Then nothing further

I then decided to try the Acronis System Report (without pressing F11)
The splash screen comes up and then a black screen with the Acronis logo in the top left of the screen
Under that is says Loading please wait

I then get the following line by line. These stay on the screen
No block devices found
mdadm: no devices listed in partitions
Reading all physical volumes. This may take a while....
/bin/ipwatched:error while loading shared libraries: libnet.so.1: cannot open shared object file: no such file or directory
Setup AVD devices

The next line is a blinking cursor and nothing else happens

I haven't logged this with Acronis. I was just tyring to see if anyone had a simple solution

Thanks

IPWatched is the Linux script that monitors your network connections.

I am unsure if this is your problem or more likely that the kernel can't recognise your disk controllers either directly or because it can't get past recognising your USB hub.

What model is your Acer? My research has thrown up there are some models that have a problem with Linux full stop - this might be a red herring of course.

If you have been able to save part of the system report, or from within Windows make an Acronis system report, it needs to be sent to Acronis as only they will be able to shed any further light.

Acronis might need to see if they can produce a customised recovery CD for you. As this is a recovery problem, Acronis will not charge for official support.

You see all the text scrolling up the screen because you ahve removed the word 'quiet', normally where you see the module loading/device search hang is around the area of hardware that is causing the problem.

****EDIT****

I've just seen that the ipwatchd error appeared in the beta build of 2013 and was thought to be fixed. Perhaps it was only fixed for certain chipsets.

It is an Acer 1800

I wasn't able to produce the System Report from the Rescue Disc but was able to do so from Windows directly

I will lodge this with Acronis now and let you know the outcome

Thanks for your help

I lodged an incident with Acronis and ran some tests that they suggested. I sent them screen shots taken with a digital camera.
They have supplied me with a copy of TI 2013 Plus Pack and suggested I create a WIN PE media disc, however I can't even install AIK.

Attached are screen shots of what happens.

I know this isn't an Acronis error, but I am wondering if you have come across it before. I saw other complaints on WIN Forums with the same error messages.

Also the instructions in "kb.acronis.com/content/23882" say to install Net Framework 2.0 but my PC has Net Framework 4. Should I install 2.0, assuming I get that far?

At a subsequent stage it says "Create a folder with Windows PE files using copype command, e.g. run the following command: copype x86 c:\winpe_x86"

Is "x86" the correct instruction for a 64 bit machine?

Ignore my last post.

I reburnt the AIK ISO imgae using a different machine and Windows Native ISO burner and that now works

I will now try to create a new Acronis Rescue Disk

Here is another excellent option for the creation of a TI Recovery CD. (Mustang PEBuilder)
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/17630

As it happens i was successful in restoring my backup using the Winpe Media disc

Thanks to those that assisted me