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Acronis promises to fix Windows 8 Secure Boot bug

By Barry Collins

Posted on 18 Jan 2013 at 14:19

Acronis has promised to fix a problem that prevents customers restoring their Windows 8 PCs in the next couple of months.

Users attempting to restore PCs using Acronis True Image 2013 are being blocked by Windows 8's Secure Boot facility - even though the software is sold as fully Windows 8 compatible.

Secure Boot is a new anti-rootkit feature introduced with Windows 8, which is designed to prevent the PC from booting an unrecognised operating system. However, it has the unfortunate side effect of also blocking Linux-based recovery environments, such as Acronis' Start Up manager.

In a statement sent to PC Pro, Acronis' senior vice president of research and development claimed "it’s a problem that’s affected several vendors that use custom unsigned loaders including ourselves".

"The good news is that we already have a solution that we are testing internally. We plan to release it [at] the beginning of February and roll it up in a general update on the beginning of March," he added.

Disable Secure Boot

PC Pro reader Brian Taylor contacted Acronis when he couldn't recover his Windows 8 Ultrabook. In an email from the company's support desk, he was told: "I can understand your concern and I would like to inform you that the reason why you are getting the error message, that is because of Windows 8 certification. As a workaround it is necessary to disable the Secure Boot."

A subsequent email from Acronis support said the company's engineers were working on the issue, and urged Mr Taylor to "wait for the newest build of Acronis".

Nevertheless, the company sells compatibility with Windows 8 as one of the core new features of Acronis True Image 2013 on its website. It makes no mention of having to disable a core security feature in the UEFI BIOS to perform a system recovery. "In my view, this is clearly a misrepresentation, under the UK Sales of Goods Act," Mr Taylor said in his emails to the company's support desk.

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User comments

If availible.

Of course, this didnt help the other week as Acer's laptops (the one we had in the other week anyway) dont have an option to disable secure boot.

Nice!

By JStairmand on 15 Jan 2013

I suppose this is why there's a free 30-day trial. And why the website says "works on virtually any PC" under the Windows 8 section http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/true
image/#whats-new .

By John_Greythorne on 15 Jan 2013

Nitpicking

Secure Boot is a feature of UEFI, which Windows 8 supports. It is not a requirement for Windows 8, although it is a requirement for the Windows 8 logo program for new hardware.

By big_D on 15 Jan 2013

Neither does WHS2011 work!

I have WHS2011 working on my home network, looking after and backing up 6 Windows 7 and one Vista machine. For Christmas, I bought my wife a new HP laptop with Windows 8 and whilst I can connect it to the network, it cannot be backed up.

Why? Because WHS2011 cannot cope with EFI or GPT partitions that come on most pre-built Windows 8 systems. Oh great, the most important machine in the house cannot be backed up.
Microsoft's "solution" is to buy and use Windows Server Essentials 2012. My solution was to uninstall Windows 8 and put Windows 7 on, at least that's an OS that works and I can back up.

By Elsie on 17 Jan 2013

Paragon?

What about Paragon's products? Presumably these are affected in the same way?

By cbyhyh on 17 Jan 2013

Blame MS!

Although it can be argued that Acronis should have checked this problem, to my mind this is an MS fault, creating an environment which leaves software vendors mired in the proverbial, and not taking any responisibility for the fault. A 'security' feature which locks out your machine - in any way at all - is NO security at all. As another respondent said, "I installed Windows 7" and the problem was solved. I was not at all amused having to buy new scanners and printers etc. after moving from XP to W7, because MS can't manage to stabilise their driver strategy, or create a 'Legacy Layer' for older drivers (thanks MS!), I'd put the ball firmly in MS's camp as a "You've broken it - again!!" situation. If people buy W8 and find any legacy problems, MS should immediately give users a free copy of W7 AND XP, and hope they can sort themselves out, rather than asking for a refund.

By Wilbert3 on 17 Jan 2013

Secure Boot Paragon

Certainly my versions of Paragon "Image Backup for Windows 8" and "Backup & Recovery 2012" - Both downloaded on 4 Jan 13, both require Secure Boot to be disabled!

By mit1944 on 17 Jan 2013

Nit-picking

Sorry but I cannot agree with the charge, Nit-picking.

Unless software is sold, "only for use by experts", I think it is reasonable to assume, that if you install on your PC, then it should function, as described in the Sales description, without delving into the operating system, or BIOS!

By mit1944 on 17 Jan 2013

Windows booting bugs and solution

Thank you Barry Collins. You were very helpful. Many type of error available on world wide web to refused windows boot, ok i have share some thing for windows booting error problems and fixing solution like Kernel for windows data recovery software to repair windows booting, log errors and recover all over data documents from windows partitions.

By bertleen on 6 Jun 2013

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