Cannot find an operating system on the current machine.
I don't know how many times I've encountered this error, "Cannot find an operating system on the current machine" after mutilple attempts to run Universal Restore.
Please explain why Acronis restores a primary active partition but yet fails to find it with Universal restore? What is the value in this? Why isn't Acronis identifying the problem or issue before I spend the 15 to 20 minutes restoring the back up image and another 3 to 4 minutes booting Universal Restore only to find out nothing can be found?
Here is what I'm trying to do. I bought a new SSD and want to move/copy my primary active partition (drive C) to the SSD. I don't wan't to move/copy all the other junk partitions that the laptop manunfacter created when the machine was assembled. For example the OS restore partition. And I want the primary active parition to assimilate the all the extra space on the new SSD.
- I installed the SSD in my laptop created a Acronis True Image/Universal Restore CD and booted from the CD.
- I initalized the SSD to have a MBR layout. (I tried the other layout as well)
- Go into Recovery, select my incremetal backup image from my USB drive, right click->Recover.
- Select Recover whole disk and partitions.
- Select, NTFS (OS) (C:) partition. (I do not select, "MBR and Track 0" and "Recovery" partitition.)
- Select the SSD as new location.
- Resize partition size to use entire SSD.
- And Go...
- Sucessfull restore.
- Boot to Universal Restore and get message, "Cannot find an operating system on the current machine"
- What's up with this?
The OS I am attempting to restore is Windows 10 x64.
Frustrated...
Patrick


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On OEM systems with manufactuer recovery paritions, the manufacturer may have modified the bootloader and changed the order of the recovery paritions (you may have multiple - the Windows one and/or the OEM factory parition). This may be the root cause of unbootability after the restore if not recoving all partitions.
1) Why use universal restore here?
There is no need to as you are using the original computer system (motherboard) - correct? UR is only for changing major hardware components - does not apply when only changing from regular SATA HD to a SATA SSD or any other SATA disk. Typcially UR is only needed if the motherboard, CPU or RAID controllers have changed when moving the OS to a new computer system . With Windows 10, you really don't need to use UR all - the drivers are that good. The only only time UR is needed for Win 10 is if using special raid controllers that have changed between systems, or if you have changed the SATA mode in the bios and want to move from RAID to AHCI. For the most part though, UR with Windows 10 is basically not necessary.
2) What happens if you leave off the OEM recovery partitions, but do select MBR track 0. After that, just try to boot after recovery and see what the behavior is.
3) As for the mystery of the UR not detecting the OS, when you booted universal restore, did you launch it in UEFI mode or Legacy mode? You want to launch the recovery media in the same manner as your OS was installed. If you launch in UEFI mode, but your OS is installed in legacy/MBR mode, that is an issue. The same applies if your OS was UEFI and you launch the recovery media in legacy mode. The recovery boot method needs to match.
Using your one time boot menu or boot override menu should allow you to specifically pick legacy or UEFI mode on your bootup options. If using a CD/DVD, you may want to try with a USB recovery flash drive instead... some PC's only boot CD/DVD in legacy mode and this can be a problem if the system has a UEFI OS.
4) Same as #3 above - how you boot the recovery media also makes a difference for the restore. If the OS was originally legacy/mbr, you need to boot the recovery media in legacy mode. If you boot it in UEFI mode, it will format the drive as UEFI/GPT and can cause issues since it will change the partition scheme from MBR to UEFI. In most cases, going from MBR to UEFI is OK (if your bios supports both and is configured properly to allow booting of both EUFI and MBR (legacy / CSM), but it never works going from UEFI to MBR (it will do it, but it will never boot).
5) Did you go back into the bios and make sure the boot order has the correct boot priority after the restore. It may have changed with the detection of a different disk being installed - especially if the MBR and track 0 was not restored. If legacy/MBR, it should be just the hard drive (for instance SSD SATA 0) that shows up. However, if it was converted to UEFI, or if booting a UEFI OS, the boot priority must have "windows boot manager" listed first. UEFI does not boot Windows from an internal SATA drive by selecting the hard drive (for instance SSD SATA 0).
6) Did you try to boot the system without running UR and if so, what happens? Does it boot OK, or do you get a BSOD that says hardware is missing? If getting the BSOD the bootloader may need to be repaired as a result of the OEM changes to the paritions with their custom recovery not being there and/or from not selecting to restore the MBR track 0.
Assuming everything else was done correctly (like booting the recovery media in the correct manner), if still getting that BSOD, pop in a Windows 10 installer disk and go to advanced mode and run "startup repair" and see if that helps. If not, you may need to go back into recovery >>> command prompt and run some bootrec commands to check the status of the Windows bootloader and/or attempt to manually repair and then reboot.
http://www.kapilarya.com/fix-windows-10-master-boot-record-corrupted
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Changing the boot order (in the bios) allowed my machine to boot Windows 10. It was that simple.
So this is what was done.
- Initalized the SSD to have a MBR layout.
- Restored the "NTFS (OS) (C:)" partition (pimary and active parition). All other partitions were unselected.
- Restart sytem.
- Enter BIOS and change to boot order to SSD.
- Save BIOS settings
- Reboot and Windows 10 started.
Thanks for your help guys; however, I need to point out that video: https://youtu.be/qbe8yTOaVGg does not make clear when UR is needed. I was of the understanding from the video that UR would stitch the boot record with the primary partition as it resolved driver issues. Hence the meaning of "Universal Restrore"; it fixes everything in order to boot.
Patrick
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Patrick, thank you for your feedback and update.
With regards to Universal Restore, please do not rely solely on videos posted on YouTube as the definitive source of information should be the Acronis Knowledgebase.
Please see KB document: 2149: Acronis Universal Restore which has a full description of this tool.
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Had the same problem, but restored without mbr. Will try this.
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I tried a day to restored my image from a desktop PC to a notebook. I forgot all the time to restore also the mbr, so it didn't work. After restoring with mbr Windows 10 Boots up fine ????
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MBR = master boot record. If you don't restore the MBR, Acronis is supposed to create a new one during the recovery process. However, I have always selected to recover the MBR (even to different systems) and that's always worked the best. In most cases, if I take a full disk image, I just try to restore that full disk image and work with that. The more changes we make a long the way, the more chances for problemsm to occur. I suspect that some of these images are from the original OEM install which have custom recovery patitions (in addition to the Windows recovery partition). This may be causing an issue with creating a "fresh" mbr if these extra paritions are not properly accounted for in the MBR creation process when it's being built from scratch. Just a hunch/guess though.
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