F11 key already assigned - New HP PC
I have True Image 11 Home and have used it successfully on other machines in my home and business. I just purchased a new HP PC (HP S5120F, Windows Vista Home Premium-SP1). During initial boot (before Windows loads), I am presented with an initial screen with several "F" button choices; one of these choices is F11 (System Recovery). Pressing the F11 key at boot launches the "HP Recovery Manager" which gives a number of options including restoring the C Drive to the "factory image". (The machine has a D drive called 'Factory Image' of approx 13.8 GB).
My concern: If I install Acronis True Image 11 Home (with or without a Secure Zone), what happens to the "HP F11 key" that is presented at Startup? Will this be overwritten by the Acronis F11 recovery key function? I don't want to lose the factory HP F11 functionality as I may have to reload the system back to "factory" some day. I also want to be able to use Acronis True Image Home functions like creating the secure zone, taking full/incremental backups, and restoring TO one of those backups if required. (It is far more likely I will need to restore the machine to a previous state created by Acronis via a backup rather than a FULL "back to factory" restore, but, I would like the capability to have BOTH.
Do I do any harm by creating a secure zone on this big C drive??
Please assist. Thank you!
You may want to think about not using the Secure Zone at all to hold your backups - an external drive will be a much safer option, especially as you have other machines under your care.
If you never setup or activate the SZ or Acronis Start Up Manager, then your current F11 function will continue as normal and TI won't care about it.
My own preference would be to make two images of the HP recovery zone - one to DVD and one to an external drive with a copy if the TI installer and licence number included, and then (after testing that the images can be mounted and that the TI rescue CD can see all drives on your system), remove the HP recovery partition and gain an extra 13GB of usable space.
Thanks to all who responded.. In all of my previous TI installations, I have always created the SZ on the same/primary hard drive as where the operating system lived (which I remember was a separate action I took AFTER the TI installation was complete.) So I understand the advice here to not setup or activate the SZ.. Bodgy states "...If you never setup or activate the SZ or Acronis Start Up Manager...." Is the "Start Up Manager" an option at installation I assume? The C drive is 500GB (I'll be lucky to use even half of this..) so I'm ok with leaving the little 13GB HP recovery partition on D. (Leaving the D hard drive intact and not losing the "HP F11" functionality gives me some peace of mind..) With no SZ at all, then I'm assuming I will use TI to create the backups and these backups will be on the external hard drive?. If the last statement is true, in the event I had to RECOVER from one of these TI created backups, wouldn't I need to create/use some kind of bootable TI cd (either one I create or just use the "TI product cd"??) Sorry if my questions are elementary, but, I would be using TI in a whole new way.. All help deeply appreciated.
The ASM function can be activated from either the Tools and Utilities option. This then overwrites the MBR and works very much like the HP recovery utility except it can be pointed to an external drive where the image is stored.
Any other boot managers are overwritten when activating the ASRM. However like the original OEM recovery option if your hard drive is stuffed then this is totally useless. It is brilliant for machines that very rarely have additional software installed, then if there is an OS problem you can go back to the beginning.
Correct, with no SZ all your images need to be pointed to an external hard drive with your particular setup. You will need to make the Rescue CD and check that it will boot your computer and see all your drives. The Rescue CD works in Linux, so make sure that you give all your disk partitions meaningful names, as Linux lists drives differently to MS OS's. To give your partitions(s)/drives(s) names, right click on the 'C' or whatever drive letter you have, click on Properties and then in the General tab, give it a meaningful name.
To make the Rescue CD, click on Create Bootable Media. I would suggest registering your copy if TI on the Acronis website and then download the 'safe media' option and install it. Then when you create the Rescue CD you will have both options available to you. If the full version doesn't see all your drives, then the SAFE version might. If neither do, then you'll need to come back here for further advice.
Store a copy of the TI installer and a text file with the your licence details on the external drive, just in case you need to re-install Windows before you can restore the image.
Thanks Colin!!!
Hello Ralph,
Thank you for using Acronis Products
Here is a procedure to change F11 key in Acronis Startup Recovery Manager. Locate the f11.cfg file in the following folder (you should install Acronis True Image Home first):
- Acronis True Image Home C:\Program Files\Common Files\Acronis\TrueImageHome
Open f11.cfg with any text editor (e.g. Notepad). The section of interest of the file's contents is the following:
[bootmgr]
echo Press F11 for Acronis Startup Recovery Manager...
default continue
delay 30
bootmenu 389
Change the numerical key code in the bootmenu string (the default 389 code stands for F11).
F1 corresponds to 315
F2 corresponds to 316
F3 corresponds to 317
F4 corresponds to 318
F5 corresponds to 319
F6 corresponds to 320
F7 corresponds to 321
F8 corresponds to 322
F9 corresponds to 323
F10 corresponds to 324
F11 corresponds to 389
F12 corresponds to 390
Thanks Dmitry! Now I'm a bit confused.. Per your post above, I can reassign the F11 key of Acronis to be something else, let's say F4 (assuming F4 is not used today). Bodgy kindly posted above: ".....The ASM function can be activated from either the Tools and Utilities option. This then overwrites the MBR and works very much like the HP recovery utility except it can be pointed to an external drive where the image is stored. Any other boot managers are overwritten when activating the ASRM. However like the original OEM recovery option if your hard drive is stuffed then this is totally useless..."
With that said, I don't want to LOSE the "restore the hard drive to factory-out-of-the-box" functionality that is now on the HP PC, via the F11 key, given no recovery CDs/DVDs were shipped with this machine.
So, my specific questions (given Bodgy's statements) are now:
1. (After installing TI, initially, with NO SZ and NO ASM/ASRM): If I want to maintain the "HP F11 key" functionality, do I dare activate the ASM/ASRM at all?? ==> Stated differently, assigning the TI F11 key to let's say the F4 key is useless to me if the activation of ASM/ASRM obliterates the "HP F11 key".
2. Again, assuming NO SZ creation witrhout the ASM/ASRM, can I still create the backups on the USB external hard drive as described above? (Yes, I understand, in order to RECOVER FROM one of these USB backups, I'll need to create the Rescue CD as described above.
I truly appreciate the help.. Using TI in this manner is brand new to me as I have always installed "everything" in the past (ASM/ASRM, Secure Zone, etc.), and all backups were created IN the SZ).
RB
It has been a little while since I fiddled with an HP machine, but the F11 option for HP mode should still work, as I think HP place special code in the first 446 bytes of the MBR which TI doesn't overwrite. In non brand name machines this area only has a few bytes in it basically a jump instruction to byte 447 which contains the boot indicator. Note to others I'm using FAT systems as the example and not counting bytes according to programming practices.
It is also possible that the HP BIOS has the necessary firmware to execute the F11 option which would not require any entry in the MBR, just that the position of the HP recovery files is not changed.
What I would suggest is making an image of the complete disk as this would also include the hidden recovery area. Then you can test it out. Make sure though that the TI rescue CD does see all your drives before trying that.
Hello all,
So, my specific questions (given Bodgy's statements) are now:
1. (After installing TI, initially, with NO SZ and NO ASM/ASRM): If I want to maintain the "HP F11 key" functionality, do I dare activate the ASM/ASRM at all?? ==> Stated differently, assigning the TI F11 key to let's say the F4 key is useless to me if the activation of ASM/ASRM obliterates the "HP F11 key".
No, it's not necessary to activate ASRM in this case. As you were suggested above, the functionality of ASRM can be completely replaced with standalone version of our program. Your F11 key will be free in this case.
2. Again, assuming NO SZ creation witrhout the ASM/ASRM, can I still create the backups on the USB external hard drive as described above? (Yes, I understand, in order to RECOVER FROM one of these USB backups, I'll need to create the Rescue CD as described above.
RB
Yes Sir, that's 100% correct. You will be able to create backups (and restore) from USB external drive, this situation is not depended on ASRM and Acronis Secure Zone at all.
Thank you.
Hi! I am a bit frustrated with compatibility issue between HP Recovery and Acronis TI. I use EliteBook HP Vista Business 32. I installed TI Home 10, worked almost well untill I created SZ. Almost means I needed to use CD or USB Acronis bootable media to restore backups, it didn't work directly from windows. When I dared to create SZ it worked normal, at least I tried try-and-decide a couple of times. However HP recovery partition became unusable: pressing F11 could not load that recovery partition. I have also tried other tricks I found browsing forums like this - nothing worked. I have been cautious to make a full computer backup using Windows functionality immediately after purchasing the laptop. Restoring it (F8 on boot) did not work either, with the same error message!
Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the
cause. To fix the problem:
1. Insert your Windows Installation disc and restart your computer.
2. Choose your language settings, and then click “Next.
3. Click “Repair your computer.”
If you do not have this disc, contact your system administrator or computer
manufacturer for assistance.
Status: 0xc000000f
Info: The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible.
HP support suggested to order recovery DVDs. Then I could restore all hard drive using my windows backup, and HP_Recovery partition became accessible via F11 again.
I can confirm that on my system the problem was caused by SZ, even though the startup recovery manager has NOT been activated. Sector-to-sector recovery of that HP recovery partition did not help. Further I am a bit skeptical that reassigning F11 to another key can help. I'm not a techie though.
I have TI Home 2009 installed on an HP Pavilion laptop and lost the HP F11 boot up Recovery Option. I suspected (an now confirmed) it was due to creating a SZ in Acronis. If I delete the secure zone or reassign the F11 key will I regain the HP F11 functionality? Or is it lost forever unless I restore to a point before I created a SZ? One post says if you never created a SZ and another says to reassign the F11 to another function key. I'm just curious since I have a set of recovery disks from HP and I can restore a True Image backup from a boot disk.
Hi, I have a problem related to this discussion.
I have just upgraded to Acronis 2015 from an earlier version. My F11 function for starting Acronis during bootup worked fine in the previous version. However, it isn't working in 2015. Using the 2015 tool to activate it (and I tried activating and deactivating and reactivating a few times) appears to work in the 2015 app (i.e. no error messages and the program tells me it's activated) but I don't get the offer during bootup, nor does hitting F11 blind start it.
I looked in the relevant folder for my W7 64 pc and found the F11.cfg file, but I see that from the date of the file it isn't being written to by Acronis 2015, which might explain why it isn't working. I have looked in it (increased the delay from what it was - 10 - to 60 in case I was missing it) and this is what it says:
[start]
echo Starting Acronis True Image...
initrd ramdisk.dat /s
kernel kernel.dat quiet
quiet on
mbrcrcs on
vga vesa
[continue]
sysboot /active
[bootmgr]
echo Press F11 for Acronis Startup Recovery Manager...
default continue
delay60
bootmenu 389
Is that normal for 2015? Or is this file connected to an earlier (uninstalled) Acronis version? (I'm guessing that on the basis that the files timestamp in its explorer folder when I activate/deactivate it in Acronis 2015). And if so, how do I sort it so it works please?
Any help appreciated.
Edit: Okay I fixed that. Now I just have to figure out how to control the recovery program, as it doesn't accept input from my mouse or keyboard. I'm glad I'm not actually trying to recover after a boot fail or I wouldn't be able to try to find how to get the software to work with my mouse or keyboard at all....