MAJOR PROBLEM With Acronis True Image

[BGBG]

Hello: New to forum, 1st post, big problem, hope someone can help. I will be brief as possible. Have Win98se. Have had problem with Acronis Restore. Have tried it with version 7.0 all builds, 8.0, and 9.0. I can create images with no trouble. When try to check image it always freezes and I have to turn off power. I have 3 images over the last few days I have been trying to restore. In 2004 I DID restore an image so I know it is possible and this was version 7.0.613.
I have just tried version 8 and version 9. In all 3 images it gets as far as 25 minutes remaining in Restore and all well up to that point. At that time the HDD light turns amber or green, the mouse cursor and keyboard are non-operative (frozen, I call it) and I can do nothing but turn off power.
Now I find I cannot start windows, although I can start Acronis fine with boot floppies or CD. I can also start windows with a W98 emergency disc but I dont know what to do then. I may be able to start in safe mode or acronis safe mode but still do not know how to proceed from there. I do not know if C:\ is even there or how to tell, but Windows wont boot and the blinking rectangular mark in top left corner of sceen keeps blinking but no Windows.
I keep trying to Restore one of the images but it keeps stopping before it gets started or will actually progress to 4 green progress squares then freeze. I simply do not know what to do at this point. I do have access to a computer, my wife's, so I am able to access this board. Maybe someone here has had similar experiences with Acronis Recovery and HDD 1394 or can point me to some website with step by step instuctions on how to boot safe mode and what to do to get to normal windows. Must be something I am doing wrong, unless its just a bug in the program. I have read Acronis forum and they say Acronis Support is nonexistent, inadequate, expensive, or simply cant help. In 2004 I had problems booting with floppies when I would get some Kernel Panic, idle task error and they were never able to fix that.
Now I simply want to be able to create an image, check it, and restore it, without being unable to start windows and not knowing how to proceed.
That sums it up. I dont believe the programs are bad, the images could be but MULTIPLE ones? Computer working fine otherwise. In fact I think the BIGGEST problem is the idea that I NEED a disk recovery program and have actually tried to use one when there was no reason to start with.
Has ANYONE had troubles like this and found out how to solve them?? If someone could just get me back to Windows I would be happy. Thanks for your help and patience. I know there are many qualified people here.

[mommalina]

:welcome: to our forum, BGBG. You've come to the right place. Some of
our moderators and members will be here shortly to help you resolve your
problem with Acronis. They keep preaching, "Backup, Backup, Backup!"
Backup is a subject close to their hearts.

BGBG, we appreciate suggestions and comments about our relatively new
board. Please post them in the KH Feedback forum for the immediate
attention of our Administrator and Super Moderators.

We often discuss Acronis in our Wednesday Night KH Computer Help
Desk Paltalk chatroom. We're there from 9 pm EST until 12 am. Try to
join us there this Wednesday. We'd like to know how you and your
computer are doing and if we can be of further help. Here's how to get there:

www.paltalk.com
(Download free version)

..ChatRooms
...\Rooms
....\_Computer and Technology
........\_Computer Help and Advice
............\_Wednesday Night KH Computer Help Desk

For more chatroom details, please check:

http://www.kickenhardware.net/forum/calendar.php?do=getinfo&day=2006-6-14&e=1&c=1

In the chatroom you can receive or give one-on-one, hands-on help for
computer problems, alert us or learn about new developments in computers
and software. Computer subjects get first priority. If there is a lull, then
humor, finance, and whatever can be discussed intermittently. We try not to
talk about politics or religion-- there's enough disagreement about antivirus
scanners, F-8 and System Restore, motherboards, and lately, Vista vs
Linux .. :)

And you don't have to have a problem to visit our chatroom. You would be
surprised at the things we learn from each other....and the camaraderie is
great! .. :tea: .


Again, welcome aboard, BGBG.. :yo:


Lina

[kelly]

I haven't experienced these problems. However, I normally run backups and restores using the boot CD. That way I don't have to worry about any problems that may be in the Windows OS. Maybe you have something going on in your Windows OS that causing the problem.

[mylanta]

Yeah BG first of all welcome old friend...but in reading your post it sounds as if you are trying to restore from within Windows and it's stalling or hesitating...have you tried from rescue cd? I have always found the rescue cd is what matters as your main use of this is when hard drive dies, in which case you will never be in Windows. Have you made Rescue Disk and tried that way?
I have never had that fail me.
If this does not do it, if you promise me your email will be open, I will have Acronis respond to you, but you need to open up all "@acronis.com"...let me know.
Also have you run full scandisk...sounds to me like hard drive may be weak and that is causing the freezing.

[Dan18960]

BG,

Welcome to the "rat" pack LOL.

While I am not the Acronis user here on the board - I have had a similar situation happen with Ghost.

I made an image of my drive to a slaved drive, checked for integrity, and everything looked great UNTIL I went to restore (this is my bench box which gets restored on a regular basis due to testing). Ghost would get to about 70% and then I would get a hard drive reading error and the program would dump. No booting, no windows, no way out.

I went through reformating the drive, saving a couple of files to the drive, deleting them, and accessing them from word/excel (word doc and spreadsheet test files) - no problems. Did a Ghost image, attempted to restore and same problem - 70% and it would dump.

I replaced the slave drive, reconfigured my bench box, created ANOTHER Ghost image on the "new" slave drive - and restore went without a hitch! I did this several times (NOW realize I was NOT using my production drive UNTIL I was satisfied that I had made several restores to a drive that could act as a replacement of the "production" drive) and it just seemed that something on the drive I was using to store my images originally was causing the failure.

I know this doesn't help you get back into Windows natively - but IF you have backed up your data in a "raw" state - you just need to re-install the OS, apps, configurations, and copy/paste the raw data back to the original locations.

[dbarrow]

Welcome to our forums!

1. Try to stick to the version of Acronis the image was created with.
2. Where is this image stored?
3. Do you have more than one image, version, incrementals?
4. Is this your first attempt to restore from an image?

While I believe newer versions are "backwards compatible" to restore an image created with a much older version, as I don't think they changed the actual file structure, I'm not completely sure ver. 10 can restore a ver. 7 image.

The image may be corrupt. Do you get any error boxes in Acronis?

The HD may be bad.
If there is one thing Acronis is very picky about, it would be bad sectors on a drive. If you read through some of our "backup" and "Acronis" threads, note that I use Acronis as a drive diagnostic as it will lock up when encountering a bad section on a drive.
Run chkdsk and other drive utilities to make sure the HD is not crapping out. Try a low level format of the drive to mark bad sectors before attempting a restore from image.

Restore using the boot cd
The cd runs in Linux mode with just the Acronis kernel loaded.
If the image is on an EXTERNAL drive, I believe you mention something about firewire, can you use USB instead? There were a couple older versions where there were driver issues with the ISO file used to create the Aconis CD and if you send support your specs, they will (may) send you a different ISO that may work. I had that problem with ver 7 and a Raid driver and they sent me an ISO that worked.

It sounds like you are restoring an entire C: drive with your OS. If the restore fails at any point, you are missing data and the drive is not restored and will not boot as it will be missing critical files.

Acronis help forums are very large. You WILL get a response from users and Acronis Support there.
Search them for any clues to the problem that have already been posted. They also have phone support.
You may also be able to send them your image and have them check it to see if it is complete/good.

Our forums have numerous "Acronis" and "backup" related posts. You may want to search and read them for some tips as well as backup strategy once you are back up.
Multiple backups in multiple locations!
NEVER rely on a single backup in a single location as Murphy's Law dictates that the one time you need it is when it will fail.
Acronis is not immune to bad images! I suggest multiple images and incrementals over a date range stored in different locations, different drives, different machines and/or external drives.

Using the Acronis boot cd, you may try to VERIFY the image but, if the drive is already farkled from failed restore attempts, it likely will fail that.

As a last resort, you may want to try restoring that image to a replacement drive or a slave drive on another machine. If the restore completes, then put that drive in the failed machine.

Once you get the machine back up and running,
TEST Acronis on it by creating a small partition, image and then restore to it. You have to be 100% certain you can create and successfully restore images with Acronis on that particular hardware before you settle in and rely on it as a backup solution.

Most of us here are Acronis users and fans and feel it is the best backup product out there. But, as with all software, it still requires testing and knowledge of the program before you rely on it 100%.
If at all possible, make sure you are using the latest Acronis build and stay current as many "issues" are resolved or fixed in each new build.

[mylanta]

Good point Doug there is my answer BG cannot be using Rescue cd I keep asking about and not getting answer to, because if he did and it stalled, nothing would boot up either because the image that was originally there would be gone.
BG you have to use the Rescue Cd and not go from Windows. Your problem is in Windows 98 (what else is new...)

[Guest110]

Hello from me and welcome to KH:)

[BGBG]

Hello: Im finally back again with this one.
Whole problem began when I began to wonder if images were any good so I tried to restore some. I did restore back in 2004 with version 7, once from Windows with Acronis rebooting, and another time with rescue disks, so I know it can be done. But this time I started without any problem and wound up with one I had caused, though inadvertently. Now for some reason this PC is not able to restore images by any of the usual method though it creates them fine. But the biggest concern now is Acronis itself and the philosophy of backing up. I DO believe back up is desirable, I know many of you backup and restore successfully, but I now feel the best way at least for me, is to create periodically, but NEVER try to verify or restore unless i am already beyond hope and it is last resort. I found that trying to verify and restore them corrupted the image because everything froze and I had to power off in the middle. That resulted in deleting the hard drive but being unable to restore any of the images. Now that did not devastate me for I have all i need to do Full Restore back to OEM purchased state and reinstall everything. A lot of trouble and time but I did it. But if I had not tried to test the image I would have saved myself the trouble, and later if the PC did fail I would have nothing to lose. So what I have learned is to create backup images but never touch them until I totally crash and nothing works and the alternative is Manufacturers Compaq QUick Restore Disc. Acronis website is no help at all nor was it back in 2004. My newest Acronis versions are 8.0 and 9.0 and both are great for making image but I dont believe I will try to restore one until no other option.
Meanwhile a few issues have come up, likely because I have changed some settings or left of some updates. I do have a lot cleaner PC for I found I did not need or want many of the programs that have always been there.
I appreciate all the replies and I really like this webboard. Might resume posting again. I still have to read all of the replies for ive been busy doing instead of reading but I will catch up. Thanks again for taking time to reply.
At least i am functional again.

[jcampi]

The Acronis True Image Rescue CD usually works for me in restoring my backup image. I don't tend to use this Rescue disc unless the issue is relatively severe. If I am experiencing a minor issue I usually try to work through it and resolve it. If my system becomes infected with something I can't remove or resolve, then - I resort to the Rescue CD. True Image is great. I am using version 10 right now and have backup images for all of our computers.

[BGBG]

Yes, I have a version 9 on a Windows XP Home and it boots with a Rescue CD and I make an image of C:\ every few weeks and when I have 4-5 I delete the oldest. But I dont think i would try or test image unless major problem. By then if it deletes C:\ then cant restore it, I can still do the Full Restore to OEM. I see some of the replies didnt realize I WAS using rescue disks as well as Windows but whenever i would try to resore or check image it would crash. When that happened I had to turn power off to PC. Either something else corrupted image or the power off thing did. But I am happy to keep making my images and hoping i dont need them for it is a lot simpler if they do work when needed.

[mylanta]

I really don't understand why the images might not restore but I do remember one thing. You are using Windows 98 so I would just bet your hard drives are old and if you have bad sectors, which the OS will set aside, and an image file hits it when trying to restore, it will stop dead as the image file has no way to cross over it. I would just bet that your explanation for 2004 working and now not is 3 more years on old hard drives. Remember hard drives were warrantied for 3 years. If any of these are original, then they are now 8 years old. I have seen XP installs fail on old drives that could run 98 or me fine, but just would drop dead trying toi install XP as well. I never use a drive beyond 3 years myself.