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I am trying for the first time to boot my Windows 8.1 laptop from the internal CD-DVD drive. I have a bootable CD in there, and yes, I do have the bios set with CDROM drive as first in the list to boot from. But when I try to boot from the CD, it won't boot, instead the computer gives me this message:
"ATAPI CDROM has been blocked by the current security policy."
(Its actually a DVD drive.) All it lets me do at that message is hit the Enter key to OK the message, and then it boots from the hard drive.
I have no idea where "security policy" settings are or what they are set for. What do I have to do to get this to boot?
This is a Gateway laptop, 2.2 MHz Intel Pentium processor, 4 GB RAM, 64 bit OS, with Windows 8.1 fully updated, and Windows Defender running and fully updated.
I have already looked everywhere I can find, but nothing seems to address this message or issue, as follows:
*I went to Help menu to look up "Security Policy." While the computer is giving me the message about "security policy," the Help menu has no idea what "security policy" is, it just comes up blank!
*I went to Control Panels/System and Security/Action Center/Change Windows Settings/Smart Screen/... All I found in there that might be involved is a setting to block anything downloaded from the Internet until I give administrator access. Well, the booting issue didn't allow me to give administrator access (yes, I am the administrator) when I tried to boot, I only could hit the enter key to OK. Nonetheless, I changed to: notify me but proceed (not a quote).
With that, I tried again, but it still would not boot from the CD, got the same message, so that setting is not it. I changed the setting back.
I see no other setting there that could be related by even a stretch. And the control panels should be dealing with the OS anyway, and this is happening while trying to boot from the OS on the CD, not the hard drive. That is, this is something in the root.
*I then went into bios area (UEFI Firmware) by sweeping in from the right and into Settings/Change PC settings ..., and found a tab in bios for Security. Looking there, there is a list of things, but it lets me access only "Supervisor Password." It was currently set as "clear," meaning no password. I left it as that -- surely I can't need a password just to boot from a CD, and the message I got in trying to boot from the CD did not allow me to enter a password.
Other settings in the Security tab were not accessible. The only ones they included that might be remotely related were:
*Password on Boot, which was set as no password. But again, the message I get with this issue does not ask for nor allow me to enter a password.
*Secure Boot Mode: Standard (It does not let me access to change that.)
Some others also were in the list that are not worth listing, not even vaguely related.
I then went into some other things elsewhere in the main settings called Startup Settings. The only thing in there that sounded the least bit vaguely related was "Enable boot logging." I punched F2 to go into that, but the machine instead restarted, and did not start from the CDROM, same message again. I went back to it, and it is still listed as Enable boot logging, does not instead say Disable - so I don't know if anything even got changed. I did not touch it again, left it as-is.
So, that's it. I've checked all the settings I know about. Nothing about this bit about "ATAPI CDROM has been blocked by current security policy."
I tested with two DVDs that I have booted from in the past on other Windows machines -- they also would not boot, but they did not give me that message.
I note, all three CDs/DVDs are being read fine by the DVD drive once the machine is booted in Windows 8.1 from the hard drive - so the issue is not that the DVD drive can't read the disks.
Where is this "security policy" set?! What do I need to do to get this to boot from the CD?
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Hi,
So everything is back to normal... or at least working to your satisfaction ?
You seem to know more about manipulating your email than I do, but though I may be able to help by describing what my screen looks like !
I know how that kind of conversation goes... Not so much with Microsoft, but with my internet provider sometimes..
Hi,
Did you mean you selected the external to image by mistake, and then the external for the location ? The way I do mine, it always asks what to image first... But then I never see the screen for the "Incremental" and "Differential" either...
For the issue concerning Bad Sectors... Your external could be freshly formatted and still have bad sectors... A Bad Sector is basically a bad spot in the magnetic material on the HDD... If this was detected while copying\imaging, the drive or Windows should have simply skipped over the bad spots, and\or marked them as Bad...
I don't think Acronis can... or will... save an image of a drive\partition, to the partition that is being imaged... At least not without a lot of complaining...
So I don't know if you actually have Bad Sectors, or of Acronis simply didn't generate the right complaint...
As far as the Incremental question... It probably did a Full Backup... You would have had to select an existing image for it to do a Incremental...
It is not all that unusual for a new image to be smaller than the previous... Especially if you have done a Disk Cleanup of System Files... Clearing old Windows Update files can easily reduce the size by a GB or two, and deleting the leftover Windows.old would eliminate a lot more..
It is also possible that you simply deleted an old windows installation file of something as well... 4GB would be about the right size for a Home\Pro ISO combo...
It probably wouldn't hurt to do a chk\dsk on your external drive just to be sure of the bad sector issue... if they exist, it will mark them so that some operation doesn't try to use them... If they haven't already.... It is possible that they were already marked, and that is what Acronis was noting... Or it could be that Acronis discovered them...
Or it could be they don't exist, that the message was generated for another reason...
Since Acronis used the term "Partitions" it could have in fact been referring to the internal drive... You may have lost track of what buttons you pushed, for instance...
It is entirely possible that one of your no -OS partitions have a problem... You still have the one that contains the OEM "Restore To Factory" files on it don't you ?
Then again... the message said "Some" partitions had errors, but did not specifically sat "Bad Sectors" as per what you posted... The Bad Sector stuff is what I would think that would mean, but not necessarily Acronis...
All done, new image done, Acronis said the new image succeeded.
But some comments and maybe questions.
Since last writing, I reformatted the external drive, thus erasing it, and formatted it with a single partition, no longer multiple partitions, those were for the cloned files that I killed out. And then dragged and dropped the Acronis images back onto it. They got there in the exact number of bytes as original.
I then booted Acronis to make a new image. I note, and this is because of what follows, I made a mistake at first, I clicked to make the image to the external drive, and then I clicked to make an image of the external drive. I had a brain fart. I mention this because of the comments and questions that follow, because when I then clicked to proceed, I got a message from Acronis:
Some partitions contain errors and can be imaged only sector-by-sector. [I did not want that, it already had told me that sector-by-sector will make a larger image, and I wanted as small as I could get.] You should consider checking the partitions with the system's disk-checking tools.
But how could this be? I had just reformatted the disk, everything was new, only a single partition even though the message used "partitions" plural.
I could in retrospect think it was actually referring to the internal drive - but I had accidentally clicked to image the external to the external, there was no involvement of the internal in what I set up. (And after the disaster with chk dsk on the internal over the weekend, I'm not doing that again now.)
Could it be detecting some corruption in the image files -- that's all that's on there? Again, they are the exact same byte size as original, but maybe the original had errors?
Or, could it simply be that setting it up to image a drive to the drive being imaged confused Acronis, and it blurted out a haphazard message?
Could Acronis for some reason actually be referring to the internal drive, even though it wasn't part of the setup? Why?
For some reason, a mistake I think, I then shut down Acornis, and booted to desktop. But I realized my mistake in that, and booted Acronis again -- so, now a fresh boot of Acronis, no memory from last boot.
I then set it up correctly, image to the external, make an image of the internal. I proceeded -- no message this time. At that moment, it did not surprise me, I figured earlier it was talking of the external, and this time I was imaging the internal, so not surprising I did not get the message even though the external was involved in this setup. I proceeded and imaged. And note, this lack of message was without any memory from the last boot, so it was not skipping the message as already given.
Image finally completed, and fit with 4.86 GB to spare (and I can make that about 8 GB if I want to by killing out the image of the Windows 8.1 Media Creation Tool, which I don't really need any more.) That is, I can actually squeeze some more files on there if I want, but I won't. And Acronis said the imaging completed "successfully."
I note, I imaged as incremental. But Acronis language is so poor, I'm not sure how that works. It indicated first time will be a full image, subsequent to add to it will be only what is new. OK, I understand that. But I have two other OS images on that drive, one of them for Win 10. Did Acronis do the full drive image this time, or did it see some of that was in the previous image, with a different image name, and image only that which is new? I think if it is doing an incremental update, it actually puts that in the old image, not a new image?
I ask because the new image came in at 92 GB, but the old Win 10 image is 96 GB. I expected this one to be something larger, as I've only added things since a year and a half ago.
Also, I forgot when I imaged to look around for the place to select the level of compression, so it went at whatever is default, which I recall is on the higher side. I know I went with the lowest compression on that other Win 10 image, I had to, we had all those issues about it being too big to fit. So, this image wasn't even compressed at such a serious level, and it still came in smaller. But it is a separate image, and a different name. Hmm.
So, back to the consideration of any partition "error." If the internal has a partition error, and I imaged the drive -- are there any considerations? When I try to unimage it to put back on a drive, will it simply put it back as-is now, including the error, the error won't somehow prevent it from unimaging -- that is fine, I will be where I am today in that case? Or, will it create some kind of trouble that it did not during imaging?
Do you think a possible error might be why the image is smaller than the last one? Don't forget, Acronis gave the message at the end that it completed "successfully." Who knows, for everything I added since last image, maybe I killed out more.
So that's it, except for these closing questions. I think I'm done, now am ready to upgrade to the Creators update when I can get it.
And again, thanks for taking me by the hand through my endless problems with this.
Hi,
Here's what I use to check hash values... I use the free version... it doesn't install...
If you try this, use the Softpedia download link at the webpage... it seems to be less of a pain... https://raylin.wordpress.com/downloads/md5-sha-1-checksum-utility/
Just FYI, the hard drive issue yesterday was not the external, it was the internal. So, not related to anything we did with the external previously.
The precise way to know if there has been any corruption or changes is to check the sha or md5 of the original against the copy. But I don't have any Windows software to check that. But the precise byte count should be fair good too, although maybe not as good as the sha or md5.
At any rate, I will now erase and reformat the drive and into a single partition today, then copy the files back. Then the next step will be to make a new, current image of Win. 10.
And then I will be ready to go up to this new Creator's Update, when I can get it.
