How to boot into Acronis from locally stored AcronisMedia.wim file?
Does anyone know how to boot into Acronis from a locally stored AcronisMedia.wim File? This is typically accomplished from the command line using the BCDEDIT command which adds a boot entry to the Windows boot menu. I installed the True Image Plus Pack and had no problem creating the wim file from which I created the boot media on a flash drive which contains both True Image 2010 and Disk Director 10. The problem I'm experiencing is adding it to the Windows 7 boot menu.
Here are the commands I used which resulted in a BSOD when booting which displayed the message UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME:
bcdedit /create {ramdiskoptions} /d "Ramdisk options"
bcdedit /set {ramdiskoptions} ramdisksdidevice partition=c:
bcdedit /set {ramdiskoptions} ramdisksdipath \boot\boot.sdi
Create a new boot entry.
bcdedit -create /d "Windows PE boot" /application OSLOADER
(The following step returns the GUID that is associated with the newly created boot entry. It is referred to as NewGUID in the subsequent steps)
bcdedit /set {NewGUID} device ramdisk=[c:]\sources\AcronisMedia.wim {ramdiskoptions}
bcdedit /set {NewGUID} path \windows\system32\boot\winload.exe
bcdedit /set {NewGUID} osdevice ramdisk=[c:]\sources\AcronisMedia.wim {ramdiskoptions}
bcdedit /set {NewGUID} systemroot \windows
bcdedit /set {NewGUID} winpe yes
bcdedit /set {NewGUID} detecthal yes
bcdedit /displayorder {NewGUID} /addlast
When I created the wim file I placed it into the c:\sources directory. I also copied the boot.sdi file into the c:\boot folder.
I had previously been successful using these steps to add DriveClone Pro Recovery Environment to the Windows 7 and Vista boot menus. It's obvious I am missing a key element with Acronis. If there is anyone who knows anything about this I would be very grateful for some input!
Thanks Mark for the tip, but unfortunately adding the commas yielded the same result: BSOD with message
UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME.
Any other ideas what might be the problem? Possibly enabling EMS or debugging options might help?
Scooter:
Can we have a look at your BCD - that may help us see what may be wrong. Start an elevated command prompt and cd to your desktop, then run bcdedit /enum all >bcd.txt then attach the text file to your next post.
For comparison, my BCD is attached. It has an entry for Windows RE added with the WinRE files on the hidden boot partition, so that's why you don't see a drive letter in the BCD entries that refer to the boot partition. Otherwise the syntax should be similar.
Here you go. You have a much better handle on the problem than Acronis technical support did. I really appreciate your help on this!
Scooter:
Note that in your BCD, the WinRE entry references the RAMDISK like this:
ramdisk=[C:]\Recovery\2e743ccc-cd8d-11de-b179-8aea9c17cc56\Winre.wim,{2e743ccd-cd8d-11de-b179-8aea9c17cc56}
Whereas the entry for the Acronis recovery environment does it like this:
ramdisk=[C:]\sources\AcronisMedia.wim,{ramdiskoptions}
Perhaps the "friendly identifier" {ramdiskoptions} isn't being translated correctly. Why don't you try explicitly referring to the GUID of the ramdisk options like the WinRE entry does. Use these two entries:
bcdedit /set {f8731e1f-0eac-11df-9c05-0016cfcfd6bc} device ramdisk=[C:]\sources\AcronisMedia.wim,{2e743ccd-cd8d-11de-b179-8aea9c17cc56}
bcdedit /set {f8731e1f-0eac-11df-9c05-0016cfcfd6bc} osdevice ramdisk=[C:]\sources\AcronisMedia.wim,{2e743ccd-cd8d-11de-b179-8aea9c17cc56}
Thank you very much Mark!
It worked like a charm! You're a genius! True Image boots right up now. I was curious, were you able to do the same with Disk Director Suite? I was expecting to boot to the Acronis Menu which includes both TI & DD since the the bootable flash drive I created included both. Any suggestions?
Scooter:
I don't boot TI and DD recovery environments using the Windows Boot Manager. Instead I have a copy of the ISO file for the Acronis Recovery Environment on my hard disk and I boot directly to the ISO file using Grub4Dos. More information about this method can be found on forum member MudCrab's web site here (see Section 3). It's the slickest method of handling multi-boot systems that I've used, and it's become a favorite.
If you are not booting to the Acronis menu screen then there must be something wrong with the way the AcronisMedia.wim file was created. Since I've never done this I'm afraid that I may not be of much help. Perhaps if you could point me to the article that you used to create the .wim then I could take a look.
Thanks again Mark. I appreciate all you've done already. I'll take a look at GRUB4DOS. It looks like a good tool. I use Osloader. It can boot to any type partition whether it's primary or logical. Was able to use it to boot to the flash drive as well. Currently I have all 4 primary partitions used up on my system. Which includes 3 primary and 7 logical drives of which one is bootable. If you would like to know the article I used to create the wim file and flash drive here's the link: http://kb.acronis.com/content/5421#iso
Thanks again!
Since you have a boot manager (Osloader) in use, here's another alternative. Make an image of your bootable Acronis flash drive with TI. Restore the image to a small logical partition. Set up Osloader to boot to the logical partition. MudCrab and I have done this with other boot managers and it should work.
Hello Mark,
Just a follow up to let you know a few things I discovered. First of all, the Acronis boot entry would not load into memory as configured. Instead it booted from the specified path on the hard drive. I discovered that when I tried to restore my system partition from backup and received a message indicating the drive cannot be locked. I made some adjustments omitting the path to winload.exe and re-inserted ramdiskoptions as the identifier. It now boots into memory and functions perfectly.
Here are the steps I took to create a bootable entry:
bcdedit /create {ramdiskoptions} /d "Ramdisk options"
bcdedit /set {ramdiskoptions} ramdisksdidevice partition=c:
bcdedit /set {ramdiskoptions} ramdisksdipath \boot\boot.sdi
bcdedit -create /d "Acronis" /application OSLOADER
bcdedit /set {44804355-1018-11df-9bdb-0016cfcfd6bc} device ramdisk=[c:]\sources\AcronisMedia.wim,{ramdiskoptions}
bcdedit /set {44804355-1018-11df-9bdb-0016cfcfd6bc} osdevice ramdisk=[c:]\sources\AcronisMedia.wim,{ramdiskoptions}
bcdedit /set {44804355-1018-11df-9bdb-0016cfcfd6bc} systemroot \windows
bcdedit /set {44804355-1018-11df-9bdb-0016cfcfd6bc} winpe yes
bcdedit /set {44804355-1018-11df-9bdb-0016cfcfd6bc} detecthal yes
bcdedit /displayorder {44804355-1018-11df-9bdb-0016cfcfd6bc} /addlast
Thanks again for all of your help! I wouldn't have been able to accomplish this if not for your input.
Very interesting. So to paraphrase, all you needed to do was to delete the "path" statement?
(Figure is from your original BCD)
Glad you got it to work!
That is correct.
When the path points to the hard drive the boot loader will attempt to boot from the partition instead of loading the wim file to memory. It took a little time but it finally works.
What I'm working on now is to find a way use imageX to capture the flash drive files to create a new wim that contains both TI & DD which will replace the current wim that only contains TI. Still working on it. Will keep you posted.
Tried copying the flash drive files to a logical partition to boot from but, unfortunately it will only work on a primary partition.
To boot from a logical partition change the value of "Hidden Sectors" in the partition's boot sector from 63 to the absolute sector number of the first sector of the partition. Your boot manager should then take it from there...