How to repair XP after failed Acronis True Image restore

[Guest]

This seems like a long shot, but here goes anyway.

I was trying to restore a disk image I backed up with Acronis True Image 9
and the restore failed. What happened was I got an error message with backup
DVD #1/2 and the program asked me if I wanted to just use DVD #2/2. Without
thinking, I clicked OK and it started restoring. Dang! Then I realized 1/2 a
backup wouldn’t work and I cancelled. Since my backup DVD’s are toast, my
only hope seems to be an XP repair.

So how should I approach this? When I boot, I get an error message like “MBR
error – insert floppy.†I don’t have a floppy on my PC; just a CD / DVD
drive. I didn’t make an XP boot disk (I was counting on Acronis!). I checked
the Windows download center and all I could find was help on boot diskettes.

Sorry for the long post. Any ideas most welcome!

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

This seems like a long shot, but here goes anyway.

I was trying to restore a disk image I backed up with Acronis True Image 9
and the restore failed. What happened was I got an error message with backup
DVD #1/2 and the program asked me if I wanted to just use DVD #2/2. Without
thinking, I clicked OK and it started restoring. Dang! Then I realized 1/2 a
backup wouldn't work and I cancelled. Since my backup DVD's are toast, my
only hope seems to be an XP repair.

So how should I approach this? When I boot, I get an error message like "MBR
error - insert floppy." I don't have a floppy on my PC; just a CD / DVD
drive. I didn't make an XP boot disk (I was counting on Acronis!). I checked
the Windows download center and all I could find was help on boot diskettes.

Sorry for the long post. Any ideas most welcome!

Your backup DVDs may or may not be damaged. You would
need to run them on a different DVD drive to know for sure.

The most robust way to perform image restorations is by booting
the machine with an Acronis boot disk. If you haven't made one of
those then it's time you do so, obviously on a different machine.
This can be a boot CD or a set of boot diskettes.

If Acronis cannot read your image files then your Windows
installation is probably history.

 

[Patrick Keenan]

This seems like a long shot, but here goes anyway.

I was trying to restore a disk image I backed up with Acronis True Image 9
and the restore failed. What happened was I got an error message with
backup
DVD #1/2 and the program asked me if I wanted to just use DVD #2/2.
Without
thinking, I clicked OK and it started restoring. Dang! Then I realized 1/2
a
backup wouldn't work and I cancelled. Since my backup DVD's are toast, my
only hope seems to be an XP repair.

So how should I approach this? When I boot, I get an error message like
"MBR
error - insert floppy." I don't have a floppy on my PC; just a CD / DVD
drive. I didn't make an XP boot disk (I was counting on Acronis!). I
checked
the Windows download center and all I could find was help on boot
diskettes.

Sorry for the long post. Any ideas most welcome!

You'll still need an XP install CD to do a repair install. The image DVDs
will not help with this. What was the original install media? Did the
system come preloaded with no install media? If that's the case, there may
be a restore partition accessible by F-key at boot.

Floppy drives are cheap, and you can also get USB floppy drives if your
system does not have a drive bay available; this is a useful item to have.
You can download a program that will make a set of six XP boot floppies, but
that's not going to help you if you don't have install media (i.e. a Windows
install CD).

Ultimately, you may need to buy a new XP CD. If you have a qualifying
older version of Windows at hand (an ME CD for example) an upgrade CD may
work for you at lower cost. These CDs are bootable. Once Windows is
installed and configured correctly, re-install TrueImage and image the drive
and verify the image. Use this as your base image.

You should also contact Acronis support regarding recovery from the first
DVD.

HTH
-pk

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

You'll still need an XP install CD to do a repair install. The image DVDs
will not help with this.

If the OP took a full image of his installation and if he can
read the image DVDs then he can most certainly restore
his installation. This is the very essence of creating image
files.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the quick replies, folks. much appreciated.

The good news is that after copying the 2 backup DVD’s to my old PC, both
verified successfully. Thinking maybe the DVD-R format might have been an
issue, I reburned the .tib files to DVD+R and tried to restore from those.
Didn’t work.

Got the error message “File not Acronis True Image archive or file
corrupted†with each disk, then it prompted me to keep inserting the other
disk, one disk after another. When I finally cancelled out of this loop, the
program proudly announced “Data was successfully restored.†Ha!

I have posted on the Acronis TI forum as well but am not hopeful. So in case
the restore doesn’t work out, I'd appreciate some guidance on the boot CD
thing. I tried unsuccessfully to create a boot CD using instructions I found
here - http://www.nu2.nu/bootcd (it didn’t activate on booting). Is there a
foolproof method you'd recommend? I have my original XP CD but loading it
just begins the install process.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I don't usually store vital data such as images on CDs or DVDs.
I have seen far too many of them fail, especially after a period
of time. Since hard disks are so cheap, I prefer to use them.
Furthermore I always verify my Acronis images from within
Acronis. I learnt this lesson the hard way.

 

[Frank]

This seems like a long shot, but here goes anyway.

I was trying to restore a disk image I backed up with Acronis True Image 9
and the restore failed. What happened was I got an error message with backup
DVD #1/2 and the program asked me if I wanted to just use DVD #2/2. Without
thinking, I clicked OK and it started restoring. Dang! Then I realized 1/2 a
backup wouldn’t work and I cancelled. Since my backup DVD’s are toast, my
only hope seems to be an XP repair.

So how should I approach this? When I boot, I get an error message like “MBR
error – insert floppy.†I don’t have a floppy on my PC; just a CD / DVD
drive. I didn’t make an XP boot disk (I was counting on Acronis!). I checked
the Windows download center and all I could find was help on boot diskettes.

Sorry for the long post. Any ideas most welcome!

Just a shot. I am not familiar with Acronis, but some applications will
ask for the last disk first. Then back to 1 then back to 2.

 

[Guest]

Meanwhile, back at the ranch ...

The good After installing my old HDD as a secondary slave in my new PC
I was able to do a restore from there. However ... after restoring file 1/2,
ATI 9.1 informed me that I'd be restoring file 2/2 on a disk that wasn’t
empty, that I'd be restoring over existing files and did I want to do that –
i.e. it didn’t seem to know that files 1 and 2 were linked. Anyway, I clicked
Yes and it went ahead and did a second “successful†restore. When I look in
the explorer window of the recovery manager I can see file folders in my
restored HDD, including Windows, my documents, etc.

The bad the PC won't boot. I get a Windows 2000 blue screen stop error
telling me there’s no proper boot device. The BIOS doesn’t see my PC’s
restored HDD and only sees the old HDD, which is running Win 2000. My DVD
burner is recognized as the primary drive!

Grrr. Arggh.

Any suggestions for next steps - i.e. getting Windows XP to boot?

Thanks again

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

You have to get the BIOS to recognise your disk before
you can do anything with it.

 

[Guest]

Success!

I am writing this from my newly restored PC. Many thanks for the ideas and
suggestions.

What I did differently this time is that when I went to restore backup file
2/2 I didn’t select MBR (i.e. I just selected to restore the disk). This
meant I avoided the whole issue of restoring OVER backup file 1/2.

Also I made sure the BIOS was reading my restored HDD before rebooting. The
times before when it didn't work, I'm not sure what happened but somehow my
BIOS wasn’t seeing the restored HDD (although Acronis was).

You can't imagine my relief when I saw the Windows XP logo flash on my
screen. I kept expecting it to crash or something!

Once again, many thanks!