True Image Did Not Work
Bought a new Lenovo W550s very recently. For some reason it has been very squirrely re: OS integrity. My other Lenovo's (many) have never had this problem. I am very careful particularly with a new machine to do many Restore Points and Acronis Backup often in case a problem crops up, which luckily happens very seldom.
Unfortunately this machine has completely corrupted its OS (one was Win 7 and one was Win 8.1) in the first 7 days I had it. Unfortunately these corruptions have not been receptive to Restore Point restorations. Next step is to rely on my Acronis Backups. I am a long time user from 2011, 2013, and now 2015. 2013 was very buggy when it came out but across several updates it became quite stable and reliable. With the new computer I had run out of my 3 licenses for 2013 so bought 3 more for 2015. Unfortunately 2015 has, so far, been totally worthless. Different interface and not entirely easy to follow after 2013 but that is not a huge problem. The problem is that it simply doesn't work. I have had two OS crashes in the first 7 days with this machine and nether the restore points in Windows nor Acronis could recover the OS. OK, I can see the Restore Points being difficult, after all, Microsoft developed them, but I expect more from Acronis. The first crash I only had one total disk/partition backup. It simply would not initialize at all. So I had to reinstall the OS. This time 8.1 not 7 as that was the only disks included with the computer even though it had come with a downgrade to Win 7. By the time of the second OS disaster I had 4 full disk/partition backups available of my 200 GB of files, settings and programs that I had laboriously loaded over several long days. Again the OS crashed and defeated my attemps at repair. This time I was confident that Acronis would keep me from recreating the past 3-4 full days of work. Unfortunately all 4 of the backups would not recover to the disk. The disk shows no errors with CHKDSK, but for some reason Acronis BUs were corrupted. At least the error message was that the "file was corrupted......" Now there was no specificity as to which file or even whether the corruption was in the *.tib file or in a file on the partially recoverd disk. Even that basic information would have been most helpful.
So I am doing another fresh install of the computer's 1 TB disk. It should not be this hard. That is why we pay Acronis. So that they can save us having to redo an awful lot of work.
At this point I can recommend 2013 highly but would suggest staying far, far away from 2015.
The validation process tells me (after 60-90 minutes each) that all 5 of my disk/partition backups I made with my new Acronis TIH 2015 are corrupted.
I totally wish I had found a way to move one of my TIH 2013 licenses to the new machine. So far that one has worked for me. Relying on Acronis in the new 2015 system is a big mistake. One that so far has cost me 90 hours of extra work.
https://kb.acronis.com/content/34260
Here are the instructions for transferring a 2013 license to another computer. You can transfer one to the new PC to see if it makes any difference. It really sounds like your new computer has serious hardware issues. I would request an RMA from Lenovo.
Unfortunately I am beginning to think you are correct. I have run a number of comprehensive hardware tests and everything checks out, but if I have trouble with this new Win 7 OS, I will send Lenovo back the machine.
Thank you for the article.
I did a reset of Windows 8. One of the things a Reset will do is remove any loaded non windows programs. So I am now downloading TIH 2013 as 2015 is certainly not ready for prime time.
I forgot I had upgraded (that is a real misnomer) my older set up computer also from 2013 to 2015 and I tried to do 2 disk/partition backups today. Each took 5 hours (it does have 500GB) and then although it would verify, TIH 2015 could not find it, or at least couldn't find Version 1 (this was a new Full Disk Partition backup so had no Version 1). It did verify (that took another 2 hours. So basically 2015 simply will not work on any machine I have loaded it on.
I will get 3 of my machines back on 2013 as I have 3 licenses. I will let Acronis keep their $50-$60 I paid for 2015. Lord knows they need the money to fix 2015.
Got a nice email from Acronis, which I appreciate and likely will reply to see if I can get 2015 to work, but at this point 3 of my 4 machines are back on 2013.
I will keep the 2015 licenses as there is no doubt Acronis will get it to work and having it on one machine will allow me to monitor that.
Where do you store your backup files? Do the backups validate, but then fail to restore?
My problem with 2015 was my lack of familiarity with it minimilistic display, so I didn't properly set up my first 5-6 backups. I did the backups but did not add the validation. That was my bad.
I have converted 3 of my 4 computers back to 2013 simply because I understand the interface better. Those are going very well and validation nicely. Luckily my new W550s seems to have quit eating OSs, so have not yet had to try a restore, but with 2013 I feel very confident it will work. I do have a 4th computer and only have 3 2013 licenses so will keep 2015 on my least used machine and will try and get used to 2015 that way.
I ran into the same lack of familiarity problem with Windows 8. In fact 3 years ago bought a couple of new laptops and put Win 8 on one of them. It is a 3 year old brand new machine since that strange to me interface simply kept me from every using it. Now that I have Windows 8.1 on my new touchscreen laptop I am beginning to understand and like that OS, so may start using that perfectly good X220 I bought 3 years ago.
Philosophically I think many companies get deep into product design and come up with something that the engineers really understand well and think is much better only to have the public either reject or very slowly accept the new product simply because it feels unfamiliar to them. That happened to Windows 8 and cost a very good executive his job and likely his career. I am in a different industry but any success I have had has been due to my paying extreme attention to whether or not my customers understand exactly and clearly what I am trying to do for them. Brand new interfaces seem to forget that simple tenet.