Can't get past "initializing"

Welcome David,
When a drive fails to due to bad sectors, it should not be trusted again until its health is verified. Reformatting does not neccessarily mean the drive is safe, nor should it be trusted with your data. Have you taken the time to evaluate its SMART values? These are usually expressed as trends. These values can often be used to determine a disk's overall health as well as its viability in the long term. Bad sectors occur normally during a disk's life. Disks do come with a bank of "extra" sectors. This surplus is not unlimited and eventually a disk will fail when the disk surface itself becomes physically damaged due to normal read/write operations or other failure. In some cases, even available good sectors cannot be remapped successfully.

If an adequete number of sectors remain, performing a low level format might restore disk function, but again, the amount of trust you put in the drive's health and reliability should be weighed heavily.

Based on your description, it's possible that the drive had failed to the point that it could not be read or written to correctly. Formatting might have helped, and you might have been able to restore an image after this procedure. Then again, I wouldn't neccessarily trust the hardware I was attempting to install or restore to at this point.

ATI cannot make a broken harddisk work, only replacement of the hdisk can get you a working hdisk again. If the problem was only a software issue -- something went wonky in the software on the hdisk -- then a restore to the same drive from a backup made before the wonk occurred can bring things back.

Take heed of shadowsports's comments. Once a hdisk mechanically, or electrically begins to fail, it will usually continue to create errors with ever increasing frequency. If you have any doubt, just replace the drive, they are cheaper these days than replacing your hair.

Now, a different issue that might be happening here is that the bootCD does not work on your machine. Have you ever tried it before? There are some machines on which the bootcd will not operate.

One should always make and test the bootcd before relying on ati and best if yoiu do it before the no-additioanl-charge tech support period is over because Acronis can sometimes provide a diff image for a bootcd that can work on your machine. IF the bootcd just won't work on your machine, then try downloading the is for the boot cd from acronis.com (login and go to product updates) -- sometimes the downloaded iso for boot cd will work when the other won't.

I appreciate the concern about the HD - which I share - but I was able to load the Windows 7 start disk and reinstall Windows. It did a chkdsk during the installation and found bad sectors and corrupted files, fixed them, then reinstalled Windows.

Why can't Acronis do the same? Or more to the point, I expected the Acronis emergency recovery CD to start up even if my hard disk was completely non-functional, which it was not as evidenced by the Windows 7 install disk behavior.

Also, I actually really do appreciate your time and effort to help me understand. I share your concern with the corruption and bad sectors - all very bad signs. I'm watching it closely (frequent disc error scans).

Except for one thing...I think I may have interrupted an MS Windows automatic update that I wasn't aware was running. You know, the ones that often say, "Do not turn off you computer!"....well, I may have done exactly that. The reason I'm not sure is I came back to my desk after a meeting and noticed the laptop was running very slow - which could have been a sign that Windows was installing an update in the background...I've been surprised by that sequence more than a few times.

In any case, I just unplugged it and shut it down using the "hold the button until it resets." After that is when the trouble started.

In any case, I appreciate the help, but am still concerned that Windows 7 startup could address the issue, but Acronis could not...and in fact, could not even get past the "initializing" screen. I had expected it to be able to start from the emergency recovery CD even if my hard disk was totally non-funcitonal.

David,
Quick question since I see you are here now. Was the disk configured to use Acronis Startup and Recovey Manager?

Yes, I'd used the built in feature of Acronis to create the emergency restore disk with this computer just a month ago. I tested it after I made it and it work fine. I didn't actually do a restore, but it got me right up to that step before I stopped.

Possibly the Startup and Recovery Manager didn't play nicely with the windows boot manager -- this might be what shado is getting at -- I always prefer to boot from the bootCD when doing a restore.

Could also be hdisk going south. If sector errors start popping up on one of my hdisks, I replace it. Chkdsk can fix them but it gets tedious running chkdsk more and more often -- meanwhile, if the disk is going bad, your backups, as you make them, are recording the software as wonked by the hdisk. So, at a minimum, save at lest one older backup just in case.

Thanks Scott... that's exactly where I was going with this. The Startup and Recovery Manager modifies the MBR.

I booted off the emergency recovery CD. When it comes up with the introductory screen asking if you want to boot to windows or go to Acronis 2012, I chose the later. That's where it hung saying "initializing...." I waited 25 minutes...nothing.

Also, as I indicated above, the hard disk was accessible by Windows 7 installation disk. It did have bad sectors, but they were marked off and corrupted files were found and deleted. I eventually got my files off my backup, so nothing lost and the HD is stable for 2 days with no additional issues. I'll watch it and if any more appear I'll replace it. I'd replace it now, but as I indicated earlier, the initial upset may not have been the HD's fault, it may have been me turning off the computer in the middle of an MS update I wasn't aware was running.

In any case, the bare facts are that booting to the Windows 7 installation CD - it could access my HD, repair it, and allow me to restore from backup files. Acronis could not.