Acronis True Image Home 2012 recovery WIFI issue
Hello All,
I have been using acronis to recover my Dell E6420 computer running windows 7. When I have completed the recovery from the image, I restart the computer and there are no available connections. It says my computer does not have any network adapters installed. When I recover the image, I am recovering 4 partitions:
1. C drive
2. D drive (OS)
3. MBR and Track 0
4. Fat 32
Is this an issue with the image I created? Does anyone know how to get around this? I have tried using a brand new machine to create a clean image, yet even this image kills the wifi on the new machine. Your help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Jeff
Hi Colin,
When I go to select the disk to create an image of, I simply select "disk 2" which includes all the C drive, D drive, MBR and Track 0, and the FAT32. Is there another way to go about creating a complete disk image? I also see the option to clone a disk, however if my understanding is correct, this would only replicate the drives and copy them to a new destination rather than creating a file. Thanks for your help
Regards,
Jeff
Jeff, Colin asked that because you said you are "recovering 4 partitions", which suggested that you are recovering them individually.
Yes, you are following the safest procedure, selecting the entire disk to create a full disk backup (not clone).
Are you following a similar procedure when recoverying, selecting the entire disk rather than individual partitions?
Hello,
Each time i recover the disk, I use the same method which is to select the entire disk to be recovered. It has worked on several brand new machines. However when I go back to "reimage" returned machines, the recovery is successful with every other component except the network drives. Any thoughts on why a used machine would have this problem?
No, I've never seen that happen. I've done plenty of recoveries on many OS's and many hardware brands, but haven't seen that occur. After the recovery, does the PC have no Internet access and no LAN access?
Its a very strange occurance because it only happens to a select few machines. After the recovery there is no access to internet at all, no WIFI, no LAn, no established connections. I go to the device manager and find that there are no network adapters. Do you happen to know which disk the network adapters are stored on?
They would be part of the Windows OS, which in your case I assume is on your C drive.
Are you certain that the system had working network adapters when you created the backup image? I don't know why it wouldn't, but I'm just asking because it's strange that a recovered image would not include key Windows components that were part of the imaged system.
All the network adapters were working fine on the Master image. This image worked fine to dump on brand new machines, but whenever I reimaged used machines the network adapters were gone. I'm currently trying a sector by sector backup on a good image to see if that solves the problem; if not I'm fresh out of ideas.
That's bizarre.
Have you checked the BIOS settings on the returned (used) systems to be sure the NICs are enabled?
Also if the NIC's are bad, they will no longer appear in Device Manager. You could put a new NIC in the system to verifiy.
All NICs are enabled. When I go back to dump the original image back onto the computer all NICs work fine. For some reason they are missing from the Master Image even though all drives are selected to recover.
Okay, you have now confused me. It seems you're now talking about two different images, each of which may be used for restore/recovery: "the original image"; and "the Master Image". So, I return to my earlier question: Are you certain that the system had working network adapters when you created the backup image that is being used for restoration/recovery?
The master image is the image I created from a brand new machine with all of the necessary software and configurations. When i refer to the original image of a machine, I am referring to the used machines that are returned to me. I always create a backup of the used machines for situations like this where deploying a new image wipes out the NIC. In this situation, the original image "USER1" has all the previous users files and data. When i deploy the master image it wipes the NICs. So I dump image: "USER1" back to the computer and it works fine. I apologize for the confusion, I forgot to include that detail.
Jeff,
Are these machines brand name PCs and the same models? As you mention the restore works on some machines but not on a few, I'm wondering if perhaps they use a different model or series of network cards/WiFi adapters to those in your master image.
Is there any common denominator with the machines that have this problem?
If they are brand name machines with OEM altered Windows installations, I'm wondering if the type of WiFi/ethernet adapter is hard coded into the Windows system files in some way, such as the PnP ID requiring a match to a BIOS attribute.
Are these machines full PCs or Netbooks?
These machines are all the same brand name and model. The only thing that is a common denominator between the machines that seem to have problems is that they were previously deployed to users then returned to me to be reimaged and redeployed. Those which the image works fine on are all brand new computers. All machines are Dell E6420s running 64-bit windows 7 OS.
Jeff,
Assuming that Dell haven't changed software or hardware models for the same machine series, the next question then is what is different between non used machines and used ones.
Things I can think of off the top of my head.
Registration.
Activation
Software updates
If you take a new machine, and run it (including setting up as a user) without an internet connection what happens if you then try to recover your master image? Of course this does mean you need to be prepared to 'sacrifice' a good machine.
What happens if you clone the drive back to a machine?