Unable to have Universal Restore on boot cd with WinPE 3

Same here. UR is shown for Linux, but not WinPE.

Hello Charlz and Edward,

Thank you for your messages. I will do my best to help you here.

I did not find any known issues with AUR not being available that is why I would really appreciate if you could get in touch with our Support team so that we can investigate and resolve this problem.

Please let me know if you have additional questions.

Thank you.

Hello Anton,

I just called for this exact problem and I was told that there is no universal restore option with the WinPE CD.
So I'm asking you, what is the point of WinPE!?!
The linux boot CD did not detect the network card of a computer here. So I created a WinPE CD with Acronis. It detects the network card fine but I have no option for universal restore. Since I'm restoring on a dissimilar hardware, I can't use WinPE CD and since the Linux boot CD does not detect my network card, I can't restore it from my NAS. This is ridiculous!

I really hope it's a bug and that the acronis phone support technicien was just wrong.

Please get back to me as soon as possible...

Hello Charlz,

Thank you for keeping us posted.

Acronis Universal Restore can surely be used on the WinPE media. There are many reasons why Acronis product doesn't prompt Universal Restore. Luckily, we have all of them described alongside with the troubleshooting steps in this KB article. Please follow the instructions mentioned and see whether the issue gets resolved.

We would also highly appreciate if you could let us know the case number you have opened with support regarding this question: we would like to review it and find out what caused this misunderstanding.

Should you need anything else or have any further questions - feel free to contact us at your earliest convenience, we will be happy to help you!

Hello Yana,

After looking at that article, none of the possible causes for the problem apply for my problem.

For the case number, I did not take note of the problem but I have the registration email used to open the ticket. I will PM you that email.

Here is the case number: 01164440

Post edited, according to TOU private communication cannot be posted.

I really hope this technician is wrong or else a WinPE boot CD is useless...

Claiming that a feature is absent as the best way to resolve issue at T1 ? (e.g. as in http://forum.acronis.com/forum/14723 )
It is available for Win PE media, at least per this article http://kb.acronis.com/content/15140 (Symptoms : You have WinPE with the Acronis plug-in and Acronis Universal Restore; ) ...

Hi dev-anon,
I'm not getting the error message mentioned in the article. The Universal Restore option is just missing in the options of the recovery wizard...

I mean that as that article mentions Universal Restore on WinPE, it should be available on WinPE, contrary to what the technician said.

Little update:
I got called by Acronis support yesterday right before I left the office.
What I was told is that there is no universal restore option in the WinPE Boot CD because there is already the option of loading drivers with WinPE...

What I still don't understand is that I thought universal restore was modifying some system files (like HAL.dll and other stuff) in order to be able to boot from different hardware...

I'll be doing some recovery tests on dissimilar hardware to see if there is really "no need for UR on WinPE CD"

Edit: Here is the official answer from support:
Acronis Universal Restore module is the implementation of the unique technology developed in Acronis that allows changing Windows Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL.dll) and device drivers.

WinPE has its own technology to add drivers for restore purpose. Please refer to the Microsoft articles on Windows PE Customization.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc721985%28WS.10%29.aspx

Charlz,

Keep us posted on how you make out with the recovery tests. Like I said, I get the same as you with no UR.

Thanks.

Ed

Just as I expected:
Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
\system32\hal.dll
Please re-install a copy of the above file.

By using the WinPE BootCD, the HAL.DLL file was not modified to fit the new hardware...
I don't know what the tech support means by "WinPE has its own technology to add drivers for restore purpose" but it's not modifying the files necessary to boot the acronis image on dissimilar hardware.

Another update:
Looks like there is the Universal Restore option in WinPE Boot CD afterall!

If you use an acronis image with sysprep, UR won't show up
If you use an acronis image with earlier versions (I don't know which exactly), UR won't show up

If you do use an acronis image from this current version, Universal Restore shows up.

As for you Edward, I don't know if you have the same problem as me but now I am able to use the universal restore feature. I just need to make sure the image being used is not sysprepped or from an earlier version of Acronis.

Hello all,

Thank you for keeping us updated.

I just wanted to post this screenshot from the WinPe media showing that Acronis Universal Restore is indeed available:

If it is unavailable there could be issues with the image, its location or the WinPE media was created without installing Acronis Universal Restore.

We also have this detailed guide for creating WinPE media.

If you have additional questions please let me know.

Thank you.

Ok, I have a question then. I haven't tried to do a restore on different hardware, so I haven't booted off of the bootable. But, it does not say anything about UR when creating the bootable with PE.

Should I still create it with winPE? I have the latest of Acronis.

Thanks.

Yes, it doesn't say anything about universal restore before creating the media. What you can do is select linux-based media and make sur it says universal restore is installed, that way you know that UR is detected by the bootable media creator and UR should be available also in WinPE.

Charlz,

Thanks a lot! I wound up creating Linux-based because that DID say UR was installed. Now I'll do the WinPE.

You should go work for Acronis support :)

Thanks again!

Ed

Eh... no thanks ;)