Outrageous response - Acronis appears to be done
Four months ago I upgraded to ATI Home 2010. I've been a True Image user for years. Two months ago I supplemented the application by purchasing the Plus Pack.
Last week I learned that I cannot mount a disk image using the new application. My system tries endlessly, and then becomes totally unresponsive, requiring a hard restart.
I know from these forums that I am not the only person experiencing this.
When I sent my issue to support I received back a note saying that despite the fact that I upgraded my application four months ago, and paid for an add-on two months ago, I was not eligible for support. I was told to pay a "Pay Per Incident" fee.
To add insult to injury, the note immediately tried to sell me the 2011 version. Why would I buy the 2011 version if the 2010 version failed and the company would not help me unless I gave them more money?
It appears that this application, and this company, have seen their day, I truly regret to say.
David,
What build of TI 2010 are you using and is the PP the same build number?
Are you able to explore your image(s) using a file manager?
Does mounting work with PP uninstalled?
I am using ATI Home 2010 build 7,046.
The Plus Pack is designated 13.0.7046, which I assume relates to the build above.
No I have not tried uninstalling the Plus Pack, and if I had to, that would be a serious failing on the part of the application. They are made expressly to work together. If they do not, that is also pretty outrageous. I'm not especially interested in jumping through hoops to make an application work the way it was supposedly designed to, no offense.
Thanks, DGI
Hello all,
Thank you very much for your posts and your help, Colin.
David,
I will definitely assist you with this.
Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience caused by our support policy. I will definitely submit your feedback to the responsible department. You are more than welcome to contact our Management team directly as well.
For the issue with mounting backup archives, we have an extensive Knowledge Base article that deals with this issue and provides a solution.
You can check it here.
Should you need anything else or have additional questions, please let me know.
Thank you.
[quote=Anton]
Hello all,
Thank you very much for your posts and your help, Colin.
David,
I will definitely assist you with this.
Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience caused by our support policy. I will definitely submit your feedback to the responsible department. You are more than welcome to contact our Management team directly as well.
For the issue with mounting backup archives, we have an extensive Knowledge Base article that deals with this issue and provides a solution.
You can check it here.
__________________________________________________
Useless.
Your support policy says (in fine print) "*If the product does not work as advertised and fixing the issue requires additional product development, only an upgrade to the most recent version can be suggested as a fix."
In other words, if our product does not work, gamble your money on an upgrade, which may also not work. That is a horrid policy.
The information in the knowledge base link suggested that if an image does not mount, user should check certain (common sense) conditions. I did. Knowledge base offers no help.
Again, useless. Very poor support. I stand by my original assertion and am extremely disappointed with Acronis.
DGI
David,
The reason I asked if by uninstalling the PlusPack if mounting reappeared was to attempt to narrow down whether the TI installation has become corrupted somehow or if the PP had caused it. Knowing if one part of the program is sound on your system, but goes belly up when the add on is added, helps to make it more likely that the problem is able to resolved more quickly.
Obviously for many people both combinations or work, as does TI2010 by itself, and just as obviously it isn't working for you at this moment. The reasons it isn't working for you might not be the same as why others have mounting problems.
So let me ask this another way, has mounting ever worked? What about 'exploring ' a disk does that work?
If mounting has worked previously, have any Windows updates been applied or other software installed?
David,
The reason I asked if by uninstalling the PlusPack if mounting reappeared was to attempt to narrow down whether the TI installation has become corrupted somehow or if the PP had caused it. Knowing if one part of the program is sound on your system, but goes belly up when the add on is added, helps to make it more likely that the problem is able to resolved more quickly.
Obviously for many people both combinations or work, as does TI2010 by itself, and just as obviously it isn't working for you at this moment. The reasons it isn't working for you might not be the same as why others have mounting problems.
So let me ask this another way, has mounting ever worked? What about 'exploring ' a disk does that work?
If mounting has worked previously, have any Windows updates been applied or other software installed?
==================================
You're absolutely right to suggest that there may be one or more minute variables at play, and I would be happy to explain those to technical support, but the other half of my complaint is that I was not given that option (the option, essentially, to help improve their product) without having to pay them for it.
To answer your questions (which I understand are offered in good faith, and I'm grateful for that): I purchased the upgrade to ATI 2010 Home in May, but purchased the Plus Pack in July. I do not recall trying to mount an image during that interim period (though I may have, and forgotten). The last time I remember successfully mounting an image was with the previous version of the product. I did not think to test this rarely-used function of the application when I installed the new version because I had never had a problem with it in the past.
I do seem to be able to "explore" the image.
At some time in the past year I did apply Service Pack 3 to my installation of Windows XP Pro. That may indeed be a factor. I also changed my antivirus protection to MS Security Essentials. I have a suspicion that this could be the culprit, as it may interpret the attempt by ATI to mount the image and alter partition designations as some sort of "attack". Naturally, MSSE starts at boot-up, being a system protection application. I could temporarily prevent it from starting up and see if this allows me to mount the disk successfully.
But I return to the other half of my complaint: When I asked for help or advice from Acronis I generated a system report via the application and attached it. This is a format they are familiar with, and to the best of my knowledge, provides full information about the system components and conflicts. But Acronis did not wish to investigate this problem unless I gave them money. For the third time in six months. This seems wrong to me.
DGI