Before we go any further with this, can LarryD and kam33mitch tell us what filter driver values were in upperfilters before they deleted it? PartMgr is supposed to be there and deleting that may be why LarryD is now seeing formerly hidden stuff. I am wondering if there was an Acronis filter driver name value there and maybe it was only necessary to delete that name value. The only value I have there currently is PartMgr and I am reluctant to delete upperfilters and lose that.

Also, lowerfilters at the same key may be involved too. According to what I have read, Acronis puts stuff there too. Mine only has drvmcdb which I think is normal.

Mine says:

PartMgr Snapman

I'll try blanking the text and leaving the key to see what happens. As a note, I did not have any extra drives pop up like LarryD and I don't have any LowerFilter key listed in this class. I'm sure that results will varry based on what people have installed.

I agree that in some cases it may be needed or is serving some function but it is definately linked to the crashes and getting rid of it stopped the BSOD for me.

If I have some time I'll play with it and report the results.

OK,

Restored the key and the BSODs came back instantly.

Blanked out the value for the key and everything seems to work OK. I'm not sure that this will fix LarryD's problem. Maybe instead of snapman he needs something else. But, for sure getting rid of the PartMgr Snapman solved my problems.

Good luck to you guys.

Kam

Maybe I didn't understand you but Snapman is the Acronis bit. When you double clicked upperfilters a window came up that listed both Snapman and PartMgr - right? Just right click on Snapman and you can delete just that value and leave PartMgr there.

Like I said, I may not have understood you but is that what you did? - delete the Snapman value and leave PartMgr there?

OK,

tried it both ways and PartMgr is the culprit. If I leave that one it crashes. Leaving Snapman was OK.

So PartMgr is the offending entry.

I had only PartMgr in my UpperFilters; no snapman. (I did have a remnant of snapman on my system, but deleted it earlier per the posting on the Acronis user forum.)

If I restore PartMgr to UpperFilters, then my hidden FAT drives disappear (as they should). Also, drive letters appear next to the Volume name in the Disk Management console. (They disappeared when PartMgr was removed.) But the BSOD comes back - same as for kam33mitch.

Anyone think the Discwizard/Max Blast/Acronis stuff could have modified or replaced "partman" native to windows? Any idea on how to check this? Hope we are getting close...

My partmgr.sys (in C:\Windows\System32\Drivers) says it's from Microsoft with a version of 5.1.2600.0. So I don't suspect any change here.

Agree...mine is same...partmgr.sys (in C:\Windows\System32\Drivers) says it's from Microsoft with a version of 5.1.2600.0

Have not had a chance to do a lot of research on this. It looks like PartMgr is a legacy driver.

It can affect systems by deleting it. On my other system, the drive letters changed after deleting it. No huge problem but just so you are aware you may have side effects.

Obviously the final solution to this is to get to the bottom of why PartMgr has such a "Disagreement" with the new clone. I think this will have to come from Acronis or Microsoft.

[quote=My husband and I are looking for a copy of Ghost 2003 (which has the ability to clone the whole drive, not just each partition separately like more recent versions of Ghost) so I'll let you all know if that has a different result than the Acronis product![/QUOTE]

I bought Ghost 9 recently because Ghost 2003 was included in the box on a second CD, and that's the version I wanted. It runs in DOS which means it makes more reliable clones than the Windows-only version. Norton included it for those who have older versions of Windows, but it's a well known fact the 2003 version is what everyone should be using -- even XP and Vista owners.

I think Ghost may be at v10 now, but even so I think it very likely Symantec are still including the 2003 version in same box. I thought I should pass on this info in case you are specifically looking for a Symantec CD box with "Ghost 2003" emblazoned across the front -- such a box doesn't exist any more but the CD is inside the box, with only small print at the back to inform you of this.

Regards

Phillip (pip22)

I experienced this problem after a DiscWizard Disk clone of a Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 installation where the backup failed due to a problem with the Volume Shadow Copy Provider. I believe after some testing on Windows XP installations in a MS Virtual PC environment that the problem is related to the disk signature in the Master Boot Record (MBR). The disk clone operation gives the cloned disk a new signature (probably in order to prevent conflict with the source disk), and also changes the signature in the following registry key on the cloned disk:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

The result being that Windows starts without recognizing the disk as a new drive. Since the disk is not considered a new no update is performed on keys that needs update when the disk signature is changes (like those of the Volume Shadow Copy Provider).

If you replace the source disk one solution would be to check its signature and apply this to the cloned disk after the completion of the clone. You would then also need to restore the signature in the appropriate registry key mentioned above.

Another solution, the one I had to use on my Win SBS 2003 disk since I didn't write down the original disk signature, is to simply give the cloned disk a new signature and have Windows recognize it as a new disk. This requires a reboot after the change of the signature and a new reboot after the "new" disk has been recognized.

I used the utility MBRFIX (just do a Google for "mbrfix download") to read (MBRFIX readsignature) and change (mbrfix generatesignature / mbrfix writesignature <4-byte hex>) the disk signatures.

An alternative solution might be to skip the MBRFIX-program and leave the disk signature unchanged, but to delete the disk registry key (\??\Volume{...}) under "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices" and have windows rediscover the drive. I have [COLOR="Red"]NOT[/COLOR] tested this one though.

So far I the above mentioned solutions have solved the problem for me both under Windows XP and Windows SBS 2003.

My testing of the suggested alternative solution with just manipulating the "MountedDevices" registry key didn't produce the desired results. I was not able to have Windows recognize the cloned disk as a new one.

The solutions with changing the disk signature with MBRFIX (or similar utility) and 2 x reboot however solved the problem for a new Windows XP clone test under MS Virtual PC.

I just had to come back to see if anyone had fixed this problem! Wish I had checked sooner, kam33mitch's solution seems much quicker than what I finally did!

I went back to trying Ghost 10, which will only do a copy by partition, not a full hard drive clone. (I like splitting my hard drive into C & D drives) However, doing it that way seems to mess up the partitions so that when Windows starts up, it tries to login and then immediately logs back out. My husband happens to own a product called BootMaster Partition Recovery. After removing my old hard drive, he booted my computer with the BootMaster diskette and used that program to fix the partitions. After that, everything seems to be working perfectly, and I am able to use my backup programs with "Enable busy files to be backed up" selected. No errors, nothing in the backup report about shadow copy failing! I think this pretty much proves that the answer wildman6801 got from Microsoft that said [COLOR="DarkGreen"]We need to install drivers when installing Windows XP on SCSI or SATA Hard Drive[/COLOR] was not a solution for this problem. I never installed any SATA drivers other than what was installed automatically by XP (SP 2).

One more thing. I had written a note directly to Acronis about their product. I finally got a reply from them but by that time, I had already made the Ghost 10 image work. Someone looking for help in the future might want to try what they told me, though. They said:

Hello Cheryl,

Thank you for using Acronis Migrate Easy 7.0 http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing...s/migrateeasy/

Please create Acronis Bootable Rescue Media following Tools-> Create Acronis Bootable Rescue Media, boot your machine using this media and perform the cloning again. Then please check if the problem persists.

Thank you.

(I had written them about using TrueImage 11, but I figure it probably would work the same way.)

Thanks Pip!

We actually do own Ghost 10, but I don't think it came with Ghost 2003. I was able to find 2003 on eBay, though, and went ahead and bought it, even though I don't have that problem anymore. This problem has bugged me so much that I'm thinking of experimenting with it more in the future...just not with my main desktop computer!

Great news!!!

I can confirm that halholme's suggestion does indeed fix the problem quickly with no apparent side effects.

You can download the latest version of MbrFix from http://www.sysint.no/en/Download.aspx

Here's what I did:

1. Reboot from a floppy or CD so we're not changing the MBR while Windows is running. (I'm not sure this is required, but it's what I did. I am very happy with the BartPE boot disk from http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ - it creates a bootable CD with a pared down version of Windows on it. I ran MbrFix from a floppy after BartPE started up. I'm pretty sure any DOS boot disk would do.)

2. Just to make sure drive 0 is the right partition to work on, run the command:
Examine the results to make sure that the drive has the boot partition and is the size you expect.

3. Again, to be safe, tuck away a copy of the current MBR with the command:
4. The key step is to generate a new signature for the drive with:
5. Reboot from your hard drive.

6. As halholme mentioned, Windows will detect this as a new drive and ask that you reboot. Reboot as suggested.

At this point, your drive should be working properly. I tested mine with both the Windows Backup program and NovaBACKUP and they both worked fine after this fix.

Just to be clear, this solution does NOT involve removing the PartMgr filter from the Windows Registry discussed earlier in this thread.

As a side note, an IT wizard friend of mine recommended Drive Snapshot as a great little utility to do complete disk backups and clones. It can take a consistent snapshot of your drive(s) at a particular instant in time even while you continue working on the machine. It's a little rough around the UI edges, but it performs very well and it seems many IT folks have used it for years. (As a matter of fact, it's pre-installed on the boot disk from the unrelated BartPE mentioned above.)

If anyone wants to verify a simpler set of steps, please chime in. (E.g. Can you do this directly from Windows instead of booting from another disk?)

I wrote to the author of MbrFix, Kåre Smith, and thanked him. I also asked him Here's the key part of his reply:

If we have any brave souls that would like to test that, please let us know how it works out.

I ran all my MbrFix-testing from a "DOS-prompt" under Windows XP / SBS 2003 and didn't experience any side effects.

When doing my cloning tests on Windows XP under MS Virtual PC the program used was Acronis True Image Home 11 (15-day free trial). Tried first with Seagate DiscWizard, but it required a Seagate (or Maxtor) disk present in order to operate and my virtual hard drives where not recognized as such.

On my SBS 2003 system after being able to access the "Shadow Copies" tab of the disk's Properties-dialog (select a disk, right-click and properties) I have a couple "\\?\Volume{.....}" entries in addition the normal drive letters. I assume that these are related to the two volumes on my retired source disk. My only use of the Volume Shadow Copy services before the clone was via the SBS Backup software. If the Volume Shadow Copy service is used to keep online version-backup of files I would guess that my solution with generating a new disk signature on the cloned disk would render the source disk's shadow copies unaccessible. The solution with giving the cloned disk the same signature as the source (requires the source disk to be removed after the clone) seems more likely to retain access to the shadow copies of the souce disk. This has [COLOR="Red"]NOT[/COLOR] been tested though.

Doesn't the recovery console, located on the Windows Install CD have a fixmbr program. Wonder if that might work as well. I beleive that can generate a new MBR for a drive?

Anyone else tried this? Any other brave souls tried this under Windows yet?