how to redownload acronis
A few months ago I posted that I was going to have my computer hardware upgraded and asked about cloning vs imaging. The "expert" who upgraded my hardware did not give me time to make a new clone even though I asked that he give me at least a day's notice all he gave me was a few hours. I had one clone that was about 6 months old. He also said there would be no problem with a motherboard upgrade - he said windows would boot up just fine. Well, it didn't which I kept telling him.
Long story but I lost most of my software with a Windows reinstall. Luckily I have most of my personal files and folders saved to another internal HD. I used the older clone to reinstall Windows since it was newer and larger than the old HD. Some software is under old windows but will not start up. Acronis is one of them. I wasn't too worried because, hey I have a new computer hard drive, MB ram (more than 32 bit windows can use - another sign the "expert" does not know what he is doing) - so what could go wrong?
Well, yesterday I had a major problem getting windows to boot. After many repair attempts I finally got it up but after 7 hours of dealing with it I stupidly turned it off. This morning I couldn't get it to boot at all. Kept getting to the Windows logo then a black screen. So, I ordered a new computer!
With no other ideas I went into the BIOS and noticed that the boot order was a flash drive first (no flash drive connected) the optical drive second and the hard drive third. I put the hard drive first and Windows booted right up.
However, I do not trust this and want to spend the day backing up everything I can think of.
How can I get my Acronis software back? I think I have the registration key somewhere but I am not sure. I couldn't find an account that I can sign into. Is it even possible to reinstall it on another computer or what looks like another computer with the new MB. I could just save all of my personal files and then go find all of my software again and reinstall.
Any guidance of what to do would be most appreciated.,
Karin, if you do not know your Acronis account information, then you will need to contact Acronis Support via their Support link on the forum pages and let them try to identify your account based on any email addresses that you may have used to register your software.
If you have an Acronis bootable CD created from when the software was installed previously, then you could boot from this to make an offline full backup of the computer as it is today.
I found my account but it only listed Acronis 2014. I found the product key in my emails and the downloaded file for 2017 on my computer. I reinstalled it and it activated okay. I was worried that I would only be able to activate it once. I am currently doing a full back up. I see there is some discussion elsewhere about this but now if you don't mind my asking a related question:
What can I do with the full back up? The new computer will be all set up with the 64 bit version of win7. The one I am backing up has the 32 bit version of win 7 and obvious different drivers, etc.
Is it going to be possible to restore just installed programs and files and folders? I would not want to restore it completely. I have all of my personal files and folders backed up. I am suspecting that I would have to reinstall all of the software and the full back up would restore only to the current system. Am I correct?
Karin, glad to hear that you found your account and product key information - you should register your product key for ATIH 2017 to your Acronis account if you have not already done so.
For your full backup question, sorry but you cannot just restore installed programs etc from a backup file, there are too many tentacles for such programs that spread through the OS and Windows Registry to allow this to be successful.
See KB 19296: Acronis products cannot be used to transfer applications to different system or upgrade OS which covers this topic.