Acronis True Image

[Alan2273]

Just received this e-mail and thought I would pass it on.

Three Step Fix-up Process for Acronis True Image

By Gene Barlow

User Group Relations

Copyrighted July 2011

Sometimes my customers will send me an email that their Acronis True Image system has been working flawlessly, but then it just stopped working. They want to know why it stopped working and what they can do to fix it. My answer to them is usually the same; you need to do my three step fix-up process. In this article, I will share this process with you to use. It’s a great way to start to resolve problems with True Image.

Reset your Computer and Windows

The first step to fixing problems with True Image is to make sure your computer hardware system and Windows are reset from any temporary complication. Computers can get confused and end up doing strange things. To recover from this confusion, all you have to do is to shutdown the computer and then power it up after a few seconds. All devices attached to your computer should also be powered off and then back on again. This causes the computer hardware to do a physical reset and your Windows system to restart fresh. Once Windows is back running again, start True Image and see if you are still getting the problem you had before. This simple reset of your Computer hardware and Windows will often fix minor problems.

Reset your Computer Hard Drives

The second step to fixing problems with True Image is to make sure your computer’s hard drives (both internal and external) do not have any hardware glitches on them. All hard drives, even new hard drives, can have glitches on them. Over time, additional glitches may develop on your hard drives. While most programs will not detect these glitches, True Image is one program that touches your entire hard drive as it runs. So, any hardware glitches on your hard drives will show up when running True Image and can cause it to fail and not run properly.

Cleaning off these glitches from your hard drive will fix any problem that is stopping True Image from running normally. Fortunately, this is easy to do using the Error Checking utility that comes with Windows. To run Error Checking on your computer do the following steps:

Click on Start and then on My Computer (Computer on newer systems). This will bring up a list of all of the partitions on your hard drives.

Right click on one of these partitions, say your c: drive, and then click on the Properties menu item that appears. This will display a new box on your screen.

Click on the Tools tab to display another box on your screen.

At the top of this last box you will see the heading, Error Checking. Under it, click on the Check Now button to start the scan of this partition. This will find and fix any errors found in this partition.

When you complete checking a partition on any hard drive, repeat the same steps on another partition on your hard drive. Continue to do this till all partitions and all hard drives have been checked.

This Error Checking process should be done whenever you start to have errors running True Image. As a precaution, you might want to run this process about every six months on your hard drives.

Reset your True Image Software

The third step to fixing problems with True Image is to reset your True Image software installed on your computer. Over time, the installed True Image software may become corrupted in some way and no longer functions correctly. The following steps will install a fresh copy of True Image on your computer and also update you to the latest build of the software:

Uninstall True Image from your computer using the Windows Control Panel Add/Remove Programs function (Programs and Features in newer systems).

Access your Acronis account and find the entry for your registered copy of True Image. In this entry, you will find a download link to let you download the latest build of the version of True Image that you run.

After the new build is downloaded, install it on your computer.

Recreate the backup tasks that were on your failing True Image system.

Test the newly installed True Image on your computer to see if this fixes your problems.

I have found that if you follow this Three Step Fix-up Process for True Image that about 80% of your problems will go away. If you still have problems after doing all of these steps, then my customers may contact me at [email protected] and describe your situation in detail and I will work with you to help you solve these problems.

[Boris]

I have never had any problems with Acronis.

However, I don't actually use it within Windows, but always boot from the CD to create my backup images manually.

[-pops-]

This advice is applicable to numerous software problems - not just Acronis.