Finding driver for Universal restore.
Acronis Universal restore literature says about this restore process:
''Make sure you have drivers for the hard disk drive controller or chipset drivers for the new computer. These drivers are critical for booting the operating system. You can download the drivers for your motherboard on the Vendor's web-site. ''
I find this complicated to find the good drivers.
Is there a way or a software to find them easily,without any risk of error?
Thank you.
Hi Yana,
Thanks for your help.However, I finally found a software, Double Drive, that retrieves all the current drivers on a computer, which is what I need if I use Universal Restore.In addition ,they appear to be in the right format such as inf, *.sys .as requested by Acronis.
A feature of this software is that drivers can be backed up on a removable media.
It looks like it has every thing needed to run Universal Restore smoothly.
But before buying UR, I want to make sure that my finding will work. Can you help on this?
Thanks again.
http://www.boozet.org/dd.htm
Dear Babac,
Thank you for your comment and for sharing you findings with us, we really appreciate that.
According to your description it should work. Though still it is hard to guarantee successful recovery since we never tested it here. I will forward this information to the tester's team, but cannot promise that we will receive a reply soon - currently they are busy with testing the Update 2 for Acronis Backup and Recovery.
I will anyway keep you posted as soon as we have any news. We will also appreciate any updates from your side!
Thank you once again for your suggestions and patience!
Hi Yana,
You will agree with me that the most critical step in UR is to find and,specially, identify the correct drivers.If this step is accomplished directly on the target computer,I think this step is no longer critical.
In the meantime ,is it possible for me to use Acronis Home 2010 Pluspack on a trial basis to check my finding?If so, you will be kept updated pretty soon,even sooner than from your tester's team...
Thank you.
Dear Babac,
You're absolutely correct, and I'm definitely agree with you. The only critical step in restoring onto the dissimilar hardware is gathering all the needed drivers. So your solution will be a great help if testing is successful!
I regret that I cannot provide you with an answer regarding trial version of Acronis True Image Home 2010 Plus Pack: officially we do not have it available. But I will contact our Management team to find out whether there is any workaround available, and will update you via PM.
I really appreciate your cooperation, and will be glad if you could kindly keep us posted regarding your concerns and suggestions!
Thank you!
P.S. Just wanted to add, that this solution will work in case you have Windows installed on the target machine. Should it be a bare metal recovery, you will anyway have to contact the vendor for the new hardware drivers.
Hi Yana,
Yes my target computer has a Windows xp installed.
I shall follow the recommanded steps and keep you posted on the results within 2 weeks.
Thanks again.
Hi Yana,
Here's screenshot of my folder containing all the drivers of my target computer.
May be you can identify those unwanted.
http://yfrog.com/1adriverscompaqj
Dear Babac!
Thank you for the screenshot provided! I've checked it and can see that there is actually nothing to exclude (maybe the Display folder, but that's not critical as well), so I guess everything is ready for testing!
Let me know if there's anything else I can help you with - I'll be glad to!
Thank you!
P.S. Currently I'm waitimg for news from testers team as well, so will keep you posted!
Hi everyone,
I proceeded as discussed above with the following material:
1-Source computer:Toshiba laptop -Windows xp pro-Motherboard Toshiba htw20
2-Target computer :Compaq desktop-Windows xp fam-Motherboard:Compaq evo d310a
3-All drivers on the Compaq computer were backed up with Double Driver on a USB key.
I booted the Compaq computer with the Acronis PLusPack CD and restore the image previously created on Toshiba.During the restore process, I pointed to the USB key to indicate Acronis where to find the drivers to patch the registry.
At the end of the process, I received a ''successful restore'' message.
I rebooted and was ''happily''welcomed by the Toshiba welcome screen.
However, I had a message from Microsoft to validate my Windows.I did it twice with my two legal keys and I was turned down on the ground of an incorrect key.
If I recap, it's a very successful operation as far as UR process is concerned.But I'm waiting for some explanations for the Windows key and the legal side of all this.
Thank you.
OEM versions of Windows are not normally allowed to be moved to another computer, especially to another brand of computer. If you had a retail version of XP, it probably would have activated without problems (I'm assuming you moved an OEM version).
Also, OEM and retail keys can't be used to unlock the other version. For example, if the Toshiba had an OEM version of XP and the Compaq had a retail version, you couldn't use the Compaq's key to activate the restored Toshiba's XP.
Thank you for this explanation.
However, I don't think I have OEM versions of Windows.My Compaq computer was bought used but with a key number stuck on it.
Can you tell me how I can check that out.
Look at the sticker and see if it says OEM or Compaq on it. I don't have any older ones here to compare. In most cases, if you have a sticker on the PC case, it's for an OEM version of Windows.
My retail XP keys are included with the packaging (stuck on the back of the CD holder).
I'll check my old Compaq tomorrow but I'm just about sure there's no Compaq on the sticker.I did not get a CD either when I bought it.
But in Acronis literature on UR, I did not see any mention of a problem related to an OEM product.
Did I misread?
Thanks again for your kind explanations.
Hello MudCrab and Babac!
Thank you for your comments!
I'm realy sorry for the situation with reactivation of Windows. Unfortunately this is not listed in the User's Guide, but we'll improve it.
The reason is that Windows assigns its license key to some particular hardware, thus it identifies the change of the device and may ask for another activation key. This happens due to the Security settings, and in this case you need to contact Microsoft support - they will be able to assist with such situation.
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!
Thank you!
Hello all!
I'm glad to inform you that I finally received a reply from the Testers' team.
They succeeded in restoring the image onto the dissimilar hardware, using the drivers, extracted by http://www.boozet.org/dd.htm, but you need to keep in mind the following:
- You need to have identocal OSes installed on the target machine (every particular hardware has individual drivers for every particular OS)
- You need to manually specify the path to drivers since the program puts them to the different folders. (and drivers should be located in one). Or put all the extracted drivers to one folder
Should these conditions match your situation - feel free to use this solution for extracting drivers!
Once again many thanks to babac for his valuable suggestions and awesome cooperation.
Great job!
I tested Universal Restore with Double Driver as suggested by Babac .I did not have to manually specify the path of all the drivers as you say in # 2.
When using the Backup feature of DD there
is only one path created containing all the drivers in one folder,that has been previously created by the user.During the restore process, I had to point to this folder and there was nothing else to do.
I think your testers missed something.
Hello Romeo Latour,
Thank you very much for your feedback. I am terribly sorry for the inconvenience, but as Yana mentioned in her first post in this thread, this is only a workaround. We officially recommend to download the drivers from the vendor's website.
However, I will create a Customer Listening Case and forward it to our developers so that in the future this workaround can be implemented in future releases of our software.
Please let me know if you have additional questions.
Thank you.
Thanks for your comments.
I somehow expected an answer like this.I presume that an Acronis product can only be improved by ...Acronis people.