Try to boot into the HP recovery environment and see if you can enter the bootrec line in a command prompt.This article describes how to run existing Acronis True Image backup tasks from command line. Bootrec.exe is not available in a standard WinPE built using winpe.wim. The WinPE I used was built using winre.wim (Windows Recovery Environment).
Unlocking or removing Bitlocker and doing the clone operation from Windows will have the same result. You will need to create a WinPE disk with TI to deal with this computer. The problem is that when Acronis loader can't start the Linux recovery media on your hardware, it never gets to the point of rewriting the MBR leaving you stuck in the loop you are in. After the operation completes, it rewrites the standard MBR so Windows starts on the next boot. When you reboot, it runs the operation you requested. On this type of system, TI writes a new MBR to start Acronis loader. The system now booted into windows and skipped Acronis loader. I got a message that the operation completed successfully. In the command window I entered "bootrec.exe /fixmbr" without the quotes. I was able to undo the Acronis loader by booting the system with a WinPE CD and opening a command prompt.
I tested on a Windows 7 system on a MBR disk in a legacy BIOS system. Bitlocker is a decent native encryption software, but not good when things go south.Ĭan you tell me about your system? Is it UEFI or legacy BIOS? Is your system disk MBR or GPT? Start up repair, bootrec /rebuildbcd, bootrec /fixmbr. I don't see much in the way of help beyond what Enchantech has offered. So I think I'll have to give her company's IT department an SSD and have them image it for her.
I'm messing with my wife's work laptop now which employs bitlocker, but I can't install Acronis. I haven't tried for a while (over a year). This failed, since cloning a bitlocker encrypted drive is not supported using boot media. Before reading the articles, I had tried performing a back up of all partitions from boot media to restore to a new disk.
For my personal use, I always used a full disk image to restore the unencrypted partitions one at a time with boot media. Cloning is risky and the few times I've done it was on unencrypted drives a party had a back up of. I honestly don't know what the clone operation does exactly to the source disk. Sorry at ask, but are you saying you don't have a back up of your data and now only have a bitlocker encrypted system which will not boot? If that fails I think your probably going to have to start from scratch and perform a clean install of the OS and all applications. If that fails to boot then attempt to repair the boot record on that drive. I will not guarantee you anything but if I were you I would remove the current disk from the machine which I suspect is now the cloned or target disk of this mess and reinstall the original disk into the machine and see what happens.
It is further recommended that you perform a full disk backup of the source drive and verify that backup to be recoverable prior to any of this so that in the event something does go wrong you will have a working backup which can be restored to disk. This is all after you have first created the recovery boot media and tested that to insure that you can boot the machine to that device to begin with. Once booted into the Acronis True Image app you then perform the clone operation. You then would boot the machine using the recovery boot media which you must create yourself either on CD or USB thumb drive. Next would be to attach the target drive preferably via a second port internally within the machine and sans that via USB port.
The correct procedure to clone a laptop System OS Drive is to first remove the original (source) drive from the machine, next attach the new (target) drive to the same physical port and location in the machine. Granted the application does not tell you that during the process and so cloning can and does result in problems like yours. That is not per recommended steps of the documentation. You say you followed the Wizard instructions meaning that you ran the process from within the Windows environment I take it.