System image restore failed

OK, I reinstalled Windows again - this time it's complaining about not being verified and being a "not genuine" copy.  I reinstalled Acronis, and did the conversion (of the middle one of the three Windows image backups).  I reinstalled Partition wizard.  I reconnected my E internal drive.  I adjusted the partition to make 150gb unallocated space at the start of it.  I used Acronis to try the restore.  It asks me what I want to restore: the system reserved bit, the "C:" part, or the "D".  I tried just restoring the system reserved bit.  It worked, but then the E drive failed to boot Windows.  Then I remembered that that should be the C part, so I ran Acronis again, restoring the system reserved bit to the system reserved bit, and the C part to the unallocated space.  I got the message "Operation has failed" from Acronis.  No further detail.  I tried it twice.  I do not undestand the part in #7 of your instructions "the small 100mb system reserved partition ... marked as the active partition during the image restore".  I don't see where (on which screen) there is any marking of the partitions as active or inactive.

Since the Windows install on the SSD drive is not what you plan to keep, just reinstall Windows and then install Acronis again.

The other option that may work is use a "System Restore point' with a date prior to when you installed Acronis and then see if you can run the trial.

J W Stuart

Acronis works from the bootable CD (with my system time set to November 2011) but does not have the convert a Windows image backup to acronis image option. :-(

ARRGH!  Managed to transfer the copy to my laptop 16hrs.  Then tried to run Acronis True image to do the conversion.  It says trial period has expired.  (See previous post where I'd noticed the date was wrong and fixed it to get the woreless network set up)  Uninstalled, downloaded and reinstalled Acronis Ture Image.  Still says it has expired.  I've spent the last couple of hours talking to Acronis on their live help system.  Took most of that time to get them to understand the issue.  They admit that the expiry date of the trial should be 26th March (from their download records) but won't help me, because I downloaded a second copy.  I've tried running their cleanup utility, which is supposed to remove all traces of Acronis, then reinstalling - did not work.  I've tried resetting the date to November 2011 and rebooting (Windows installing 26 updates).  Going crazy here.  Just had one more idea:  will try from the bootable Acronis CD.

Hi, to update you:  I deleted two old backups and made the copy of the Windows Image folder.  That took 4 hours.  Then I tried the conversion.  After a couple of hours it failed - it looks like it needs the same amount of space again to make the converted file (It sees the 3 files mentioned previously, so I sleected the middle one.  Then it looks like it might be converting all three anyway) 141gb needed for the copy.  So to make room for another attempt (and as you say not to move files to E yet) I set up the homegroup network, and am moving the copy across to this laptop (where there is _just_ enough space free).  It says it will take 18 hours, 16 remaining (those estimates I know are often way off).  It took a couple of hours to make the failed Acronis attempt and get the homegroup network up - that was failing, I eventually discovered because the date on C: was 2nd Nov 2011.  I've no idea how that happened.  So I'll get back you in 16+ hours (I expect both machines will try to hibernate...)