Acronis

[Blairgowrie]

Bad day for me yesterday. My new Samsung went in the dumper and my attempt to back up and restore only succeeded in knocking out Windows. This is what I was trying to do. I tried saving Helen's computer setup and transfer the image to my back up computer.

The image saving to an external hard drive seemed to go ok. Then I switched the external drive to my back computer and tried a restore. Everything looked ok. It said it had to reboot to complete the transfer and on reboot Acronis screen appeared and it started to restore but suddenly gave a black screen and windows was gone. Reloaded Windows and Acronis and tried again. Same bloody thing happened.

Heading off to Toronto today to pick up another widescreen. I have passed the time limit for direct store replacement.

[Snacko]

Sorry to hear that BG. Have you made sure you have the latest version of Acronis TI? Also, is there a restore image already on your laptop in a hidden partition? That would get it back to factory.

I am in kind of the same boat... I just bought a mini laptop (Toshiba Satellite T215D) last week. It has no CD because it is so small. So, I have a free version of Acronis TI 10 Personal Edition that I got last year during their promotion.

Since I have no CD I tried booting with my external hd using the eSata connection, but the laptop will not boot if it is plugged in. Catch 22, since I need it to get my 14gig restore image. Damn. So, I bought a 32gig USB Flash card. But Acronis Boot image will only install if on it if I format it to FAT32. However FAT32 will not allow any files larger than 4gig! Arggg.... So, I tried partitioning the flash drive with a 50meg FAT32 partition for Acroniis, and that worked fine. Then I tried to add another 30gig NTFS partition for my 14gig backup image. But it will not add the partition! It says it is Unable to allocate the space. Everything I try to do I run into a problem.

[Blairgowrie]

Just got back from Toronto with lots of egg on my face. The Samsung is fine after all! The techie showed me how to run the screen on!

Now to solve Acronis issues.

[fruitbat]

ahh, i bet you fell for the old touch button on the bottom right corner that turns it off, from standby, which i to didn't know was there when i first accidentally pressed it moving my monitor, and thought i'd broken it, grrrrr

[Blairgowrie]

ahh, i bet you fell for the old touch button on the bottom right corner that turns it off, from standby, which i to didn't know was there when i first accidentally pressed it moving my monitor, and thought i'd broken it, grrrrr

That was the problem exactly Fruitbat. Guy says he gets dozens back for the same issue.

[Jabo]

We have a similar problem with some of the Packard Bell laptops, the higher-spec machines have a touch button which turns the touchpad on and off - we see lots of those back, despite the picture of a touchpad, the fact it illuminates (in red) when OFF and, oh yeah, it's in the manual too - all 10 or so pages of an A5 booklet.

Jabo

[Blairgowrie]

Tried for the 3rd time to get Acronis to work to restore Helen's computer. This time I reformatted the external drive to make sure there were no corrupt files on it. Took a backup of Helen's computer and then tried to restore on my backup computer. Everything seemed to go fine and my computer asked for a reboot. On reboot, Acronis screen appeared and the restore started. Then it went to a blank screen, knocking out Windows XP once again. I have read the user guide but it is massive.

There must be a better way!

[Mayhem]

Well, I know this doesn't help with your current problem, but I have been using Macrium Backup for several years now and it's never let me down. I use the free version and the only thing missing is incrimental backup so you can't add to a current backup image you have to make a new image file for every backup but I hardly find it ia problem. With the licensed version incrimental backing up is availible, but without it it usually only takes me about 2.5 to 3 hours to make a backup so I just let it do it's thing overnight. I tried Acronis before but the version I had didn't detect all my drives for some reason. I'd recommend everyone use some form of backup software and store the images on a seperate drive. I pick up a nice Western Digital 1TB for about 75 dollar US about a year ago. Hope you get your issues worked out. Have you got any other clues as to the specific nature of the problem or what's causing it. There may be a way to verify the integrity of the image file.

[FoolTrottel]

I'm not really sure you can just simply backup one windows xp installation, and restore it to another computer.

The hardware (motherboard/chipset) must be quite similar to work.

Same brand.

Video card should (at least) be of the same brand.

Try and run Windows XP in safe mode...

[DD_Brando]

Tried for the 3rd time to get Acronis to work to restore Helen's computer. This time I reformatted the external drive to make sure there were no corrupt files on it. Took a backup of Helen's computer and then tried to restore on my backup computer. Everything seemed to go fine and my computer asked for a reboot. On reboot, Acronis screen appeared and the restore started. Then it went to a blank screen, knocking out Windows XP once again.

Could this be because the PC you are restoring to has a different ID code? Which Acronis program are you using for these operations?

B

[Blairgowrie]

Same serial number for Acronis Brando. I was using True Image Home 2009.

[Snacko]

..... Took a backup of Helen's computer and then tried to restore on my backup computer.

Not sure if I understand you correctly here Jim. Are you saying you made a backup image of one computer and restored it on a different computer? That may not work well unless they are the exact same computers with the same devices and everything. Your backup image may have windows drivers for devices that don't exist, and not have drivers for devices that do exist. This can't be what you are doing, right??

[Blairgowrie]

I'm not really sure you can just simply backup one windows xp installation, and restore it to another computer.

The hardware (motherboard/chipset) must be quite similar to work.

Same brand.

Video card should (at least) be of the same brand.

Try and run Windows XP in safe mode...

Not sure how I would do this FT. When Acronis restores you don't go into Windows.

I am anxious to get this done as I want to give my back up computer to Strider who has gone through some tough times in the past year.

[Blairgowrie]

..... Took a backup of Helen's computer and then tried to restore on my backup computer.

Not sure if I understand you correctly here Jim. Are you saying you made a backup image of one computer and restored it on a different computer? That may not work well unless they are the exact same computers with the same devices and everything. Your backup image may have windows drivers for devices that don't exist, and not have drivers for devices that do exist. This can't be what you are doing, right??

That is exactly what I am trying to do Snack. I made a backup image of one computer and restored it on a different computer (or tried to).

[Snacko]

Oops, well I see from your reply to FT that is exactly what you are doing. I have never tried that, but as we have mentioned there would be technical problems. My first guess is that would probably never work unless it was two of the exact same computers, and the backup images was of a basic windows install.

[Blairgowrie]

I have posted on the Acronis Forums to see if this is possible. http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=285544

[FoolTrottel]

Tried Safe mode yet?

[Jabo]

I'm with FT here Jim, you can't just create an image of windows on one machine and transfer it to another unless the two machines are near identical from a hardware point of view. Can you boot the machine in safe mode? If so, deleting the SMbus controller driver (in Device Manager) sometimes helps, but personally I've always found sorting out the problems to be such a ballache, I've just gone for a reinstall of Windows.

I can be available on TS if you want to discuss it.

Jabo

[Blairgowrie]

It appears that http://www.acronis.com/backup-recovery/advanced-workstation/universal-restore.html might do the restore job the way I want to do it. Anyone know what Universal Restore is all about?

Hmnn. Looks like it is only $37 until you check out and then you find you have to buy the rest of the store.