Vista - Acronis True Image + Vista

Hi All,

New to this forum and appreciate any assistance that anyone can provide. I have been working on computers since 1984; mostly IBM mainframes (MVS-OS/390-z/OS), but have worked intimately with Windows Server 2003 & 2008, plus lot's of desktop support over the last 10 years. Ok... enough about me.....

I just (finally) upgraded my XP Home OS to Vista Ultimate. Was going to wait for Windows 7, but oh well. Anyway... I have Acronis True Image backups of my old XP system and data partitions. I am, of course, only interested in restoring my data, but I get errors when trying to do that. My backups are located on an external Western Digital MyBook (1TB - RAID0).

I did a clean install of Vista Ultimate and so had to (chose to) wipe out all partitions; with the knowledge that I had good backups via True Image and could restore my data, but I keep taking errors when trying to restore; either when booting off the Acronis rescue media or even from a BART-PE build that I had made which includes True Image.

Sorry about lack of specifics on the error. I will go back and recreate the issue and post back with some screen shots telling the exact story. I am running Acronis True Image Home v11.

Here is what I get when I try to run the Rescue Media:

"The version of this file is not compatible with the version of Windows you're running. Check your computer's system information to see whether you need an x86 (32 bit) or x64 (64 bit) version of the program, and then contact the software publisher."

I know that sounds pretty straight forward and I need to call Acronis, I guess. I just was wondering if anyone has had any experience with Acronis True Image Home v11 and Vista Ultimate; somewhere along the lines that I laid out in my original post. Thanks very much!

Oh.... BTW, I am running the 64 bit version of Vista Ultimate (just a small fact that I left out).

No problems retrieving things from a backup here. I have a backup from my previous install saved on a separate partition and instead of trying to restore from it either with thw recovery disk or through TH is to treat it just like any other archive file. I just double click on the archive (pretty sure this only works if TH is installed on the new system/install), it will open in a new explorer window and I just navigate to the data I want, right click on it and copy it to where I want it elsewhere; works like extracting things with Winrar or Winzip.

Thanks, Stormy. My problem is that I don't have the install CD for True Image and, even if I did, the product key is on the image backup that I need to restore (and can't). Catch-22.

Do you (or anyone else) think I should download a trial of the most current version of True Image and go from there?

Digital download? If so you should be able to download it again from Acronis. You should also be able to get your license key from them.

If not you can try the trial and see if you can at least get into the backup file and retrieve the key that way, then use the key to turn the trial into the full. Another method is if any of your hard drives are Seagate or Maxtors you can use Seagate's Disk Wizard, which is basically nothing more than a basic/limited version of True Home; can do full backups and recovery, but not incremental backups. Not sure if will allow you to do incremental recovery, but won't hurt to try.

Cool. Thanks! I neglected to say, before, that I also have an email into Acronis Tech Support. Between that and your fine advice, I think (and hope very much, because my whole life is on that backup image) that I'll be able to get things restored. Take care.