Help with Acronis 2020, my PC no longer boots to USB first

[eRazor]

Just upgraded my ASUS X550CA from Win 8.1 to Win 10 Pro as per suggestions here to solve run time errors 217.

Before the upgrade, while following instructions here about using SFC,SFCFix, et al, I noticed that my PC was no longer booting to USB first, as it always did.

It now has "EFI System"

I don't know how, why, what, or when that boot up was changed.

Anyway, I have Acronis 2020 and need to get this straightened out so I can use Acronis Universal Recovery/Restore and/or other recovery tools.

Here's a screenshot of the PC:

 

[SleepyDude]

Hi,

Are you using the Acronis 2020 Rescue Disk that is based on Linux or Windows?

I think your best option is to create a new Acronis Rescue Disk on Windows 10 this should result on a Rescue Disk compatible with UEFI.

If I'm not mistaken on your user account at Acronis website there is a Rescue Disk available to download not sure if its ready for UEFI or not I suppose they should have some information about that on there!

 

[eRazor]

Hi,

Are you using the Acronis 2020 Rescue Disk that is based on Linux or Windows?

I think your best option is to create a new Acronis Rescue Disk on Windows 10 this should result on a Rescue Disk compatible with UEFI.

If I'm not mistaken on your user account at Acronis website there is a Rescue Disk available to download not sure if its ready for UEFI or not I suppose they should have some information about that on there!

I just made two of them because I'm not sure of what I'm doing or how to use Acronis. I made a USB one "for this PC" and one for
"any PC." Is that what you are talking about?

 

[SleepyDude]

I used an old version of Acronis so I don't know exactly those new versions...

USB one "for this PC" sounds like a Windows PE Rescue Disk that should give you the best results because most likely it includes specific drivers for your computer hardware (if needed) and also will be created in a way compatible with the UEFI boot.

Don't know what they mean with "any PC"

 

[xrobwx71]

Win 10 installation added that EFI partition automatically. It holds some of the boot record and drivers to load at boot time.

A bit of reading on the UEFI/EFI stuff: UEFI Firmware - Windows 10 hardware dev

It sounds like you need to go into your BIOS/UEFI and change the boot order.

 

[eRazor]

thanks all for the help.

Not knowing anything about UEFI/EFI . . . .

I guess my question is this, I have these Acronis 2020 USB recovery/restore drives, when my PC won't start into Win 10 I just turn it off,
put the USB in and restart?

Is Acronis designed to boot from EFI?

What then?

Can I test it now to make sure it works?

I'm really confused about this, I don't even know the questions to ask. Just trying to setup a reliable back up/repair/restore for my PCs.

You cannot imagine the stuff I've lost over the years since 1985!

 

[SleepyDude]

Hi,

Yes you should test the USB to see if the OS loads from there and that you can access the storage location where you have the backups.

You may need to enter the BIOS/UEFI to change the boot order if the computer doesn't try to boot from the flash drive in the first place.

 

[eRazor]

Still beating my brains out trying to get the Asus to boot from USB . . .

For the life of me I cannot understand why Acronis would sell a product that does not automatically do this for us dummies.

I even bought their Universal Restore USB when I purchased the software. It does nothing when the PC boots up.

This cannot possibly be this difficult.

Anyway, can anyone point me to an easily understood how to on ASUS BIOS settings?

Or, even better (maybe) an Asus specific forum? I've yet to find one.

Thanks for the help!

 

[SleepyDude]

Hi,

Most likely isn't Acronis fault but a combination of factors from Microsoft boot to some UEFI implementations...

Check the UEFI configuration, look for Secure Boot and disable it, in some machines with Secure Boot enabled it doesn't accept to boot from anything besides the internal HDD!

If you press the F12 key during boot can you access the BIOS/UEFI boot menu? If so do you see there any reference to the flash drive?

 

[britechguy]

There was a recent post on this site, Keys for Entering BIOS/UEFI by Computer Manufacturer and Model, that list the keys to enter UEFI or BIOS by manufacturer and hardware style. F12 does not appear to be one used by Asus.

As a side note, if your machine has UEFI now, it has always had UEFI. You don't and can't zig-zag between true old-style BIOS and UEFI, and all BIOS functions are subsumed under UEFI on any machine produced from right around the time of the introduction of Windows 8 and onward.

There is always a way to change to boot order to suit yourself, whether as a one-shot or permanently. As @SleepyDude has noted, you may need to turn Secure Boot off and, possibly, enable legacy boot mode.

This isn't something that Acronis did, unless when you installed it you had it set itself up such that the boot manager asks whether you want to boot into Acronis Recovery directly, in which case a specific recovery partition would have been created and the boot manager tweaked to ask the question. Macrium Reflect has this feature, which I've only used once as I'd prefer to boot from external media on the very rare occasions where recovery is necessary. I've not ever used Acronis.