Can't restore to (greyed out) USB hard drive.

When using the tool "Add a new disk", you do not need to create any partitions or use Windows to format the drive. Leave it in the "un-allocated" state after running the "Add a new disk" tool. Acronis will create the partition structure when doing the restore. Because you are creating the partitions in Windows after using the tool, Acronis may not see this as a viable location to use as a destination.

These issues aside, you will not be able to boot to the drive if it is connected via USB, as Windows does not allow booting to USB connected disks. If you can get the restore to work, (try doing the restore without selecting the MBR/Track 0), you could use a bootable utility disk containing a remote registry editor (third party or free tools) to open the registry on the restored USB drive, and export the settings you need.

Another option would be to back up the current system by creating a new full disk image, with validation, to the USB drive (using your Acronis Rescue Media), and then restoring the older backup to your system. Boot it up and save whatever registry settings you need by exporting the registry items to a file, or files, on your USB drive. After that, restore the newly created full disk image back to your system, and import any registry settings you need from the exported registry files saved on the USB drive.

Thank you for the response, James. Using "Add a New Disk" as you recommended and then selecting only the system partition to restore to it still doesn't allow me to select it. Any more ideas?

Should I find success at that can you suggest a utility that would access it the way you describe? A PM answer is fine if you don't want to name anything in the forum.

Are the .tib formats interoperable between 2010 and 2013? If not is there a utility to convert either to the other? I would like to upgrade but not if my 2010 backups become unusable of if I can't make backups with 2013 that can be used by 2010. I understand that 2013 has a convert to virtual machine option that could provide another path to what I want to retrieve but only if it can convert 2010 backups.

I understand your suggestion of restoring the older backup to my system disk to be able to boot and get the data and then restore back to my current level. I consider restoring to my working disk only as a last possible resort since I have an irrational fear of restore software leaving me dead in the water. It happened to me once before switching to Acronis and I've been gun shy ever since. Getting another laptop disk for just this purpose, however, remains an option.

Thanks Again

2013 can read/restore from earlier backup files without issue, provided that they are validated and working files.

The issue could be the source disk partition size being too large even though it has small used space.

Try selecting only the drive C (not whole disk) and try a slight change of partition size. There have been reported instances of some successes using this method. You can restore the track0 as a separate pass. As it is your goal to make the new disk bootable, if there was other partitions on the old disk which were involved in booting, those old partitions would need to be restore as well--such as a hidden active or recovery partition. Ultimately, you may have to get a larger usb disk.

Thanks James & GroverH. I tried your suggestion, GroverH, to no avail. Nothing allows for the selection of that USB disk as a restore target. Since I'm still at 2010 it is likely an old bug.

I decided to seize the opportunity of this disaster to upgrade my system disk to a larger one. After cloning to that and making sure it boots I can swap the old one back in and restore the backup to it that has the Firewall policy data I need retrieve from a booted system. Fingers crossed. (This will have to be done offline to avoid potential problems with synced cloud data, a new dimension to recovery.)

FWIW, in trying to recover from this before I found the Firewall wipe I set the ownership of everything on the disk recursively to admimistrator. What that did for performance and responsiveness is simply amazing. Also when the system is idle with a bunch of FF windows and tabs open the cpu usage has dropped to a couple of percent or less instead of hovering around 10%.

Thanks again.

Recalibration, James. 2013 can _not_ access .tib files created by 2010. Could you point me to where I can get a refund on yesterday's 2013 purchase?

And worse, after uninstalling 2013 and reinstalling 2010 that no longer works. Either crashes or hangs unresponsive but will not back up.

You can request a full refund of your 2013 purchase by contacting Acronis here: http://www.acronis.com/support/contact-us.html

I have .tib files created as far back as version 10 (and possibly older) and all can be validated and restored.

Uninstall 2010 from your system. Download and run the 2013 cleanup utility located here: http://kb.acronis.com/content/34876. It is designed for 2011-2013, but will clean up any previous version as well in most cases. Be sure not to let the utility reboot your system after finishing, and double check the registry entries referenced in the instructions. Make any needed deletions of the Acronis filter drivers mentioned in the instructions, and reboot your system.
Clean out your user profile "temp" folder of any files and folders located there, and then install 2010 again.

Running the cleaner upper. Do I or do I not want to remove extended capacity disks? Everything in my being says NO! but I'm not really sure.

You do not have this feature installed by default, but you can opt to remove it without any consequences even if it is not installed. This is a driver that allows greater than 2.2TB disks to be used on systems that do not support GPT disks. (XP)

Well, after the cleanup, reboot, reinstall, and reboot it crashed three times just trying to start up and now it crashes when trying to back up and hitting "Next" after selecting what to back up. Consistently. Thanks for the help but I think I've wasted more than enough time on this and it's time to look for an alternative. Very nasty virus that left an environment that TI (but only TI) won't run in any more.

Agreed.

Which version were you installing again, 2010?

Yes, 2010. Thing is that it worked fine before the virus. While there don't seem to be any detectable traces of the virus any more you just never know.

As a computer technical consultant, when a client gets a virus on a system, we always wipe the hard disk and start over loading a new image or re-installing from scratch. The newer viruses esp. rootkits, can do untold and undocumented things to a system. Removing the virus only gets rid of the offending program, but many registry settings (and Windows core functionality) can get changed that the removal tools don't even know about. Using a system after a virus infection is dicey at best, and a huge security risk if you ever use the system to get back on the internet and expose any usernames or passwords to ANY website after the virus(s) have been cleaned. There still can be browser issues and page redirects, unknown exploits and opened undetected vulnerabilities that are just waiting for a visit to the right (compromised or intentionally programmed) website to take advantage of them.

In addition, most computer users have at least several account user names, and passwords, that are the same on multiple different websites.

Yeah, I hear you and can't disagree but starting from scratch with a system as old and evolved as mine (15 years of accumulated data and applications successfully upgraded from Windows version to Windows version) is more than a bit of work. Re-installation of everything on a clean system is out of the question which is why I'm so reliant on TI. Laplink makes a migration tool that worked quite successfully moving from my last laptop to my current one so that is a possibility but it may also carry across bits and pieces of nasty from the virus.

After writing my prior comment and putting my head down for the night I realized that it wasn't in fact the virus that crippled TI. What screwed it was my try out of 2013 to see if I could get around my original problem of trying to restore an old backup to a USB drive. I have several successful 2010 backups of the system while it was still partially infected and had to go a ways back in time to find one that wasn't.

Having installed 2013 and finding it couldn't interpret my 2010 backups I uninstalled it and installed 2010 again. It's from that point forward that 2010 no longer works even using the clean up utility.

Well, it seems to have healed itself. I did the full backup from the F11 boot Recovery Manager instead without incident and then after rebooting back into Windows, I checked out validate and mount with TI without problems so I created a new incremental backup against it again without problems. So I guess I'm good to go until further notice. Whew! And thanks for the hand holding. :-)