Solved USB Mass storage devices not working - including card readers

Some while back I installed Acronis True Image Home 2012 on my Win7 64 bit PC. It is a backup solution that would have satisfied my backup requirements at the time. I immediately found a problem with the fact that it failed to recognise my network drive as a backup location. After days of communications with their support dept. and a couple of sessions of remote support they realised that the software was not happy about "empty" disk drives. I have a built in multi-port card reader and also have card readers built into the monitor. They show as disk drives in "My Computer" even when there are no cards in the slots. The option in Windows to "hide empty drives" didn't cure the problem.

They eventually sent me a patch that cured the network drive recognition problem but left me with the problem that my PC no longer recognises any USB mass storage device or any memory card plugged into either of the card readers. I didn't realise I had this new problem for some time as I don't use USB disk drives. It's not just USB attached devices that are not recognised, it also won't recognise firewire disks either. I have tried un-installing the Acronis software but it doesn't remove the errant driver(s).




I've tried removing the devices and rebooting to force an update and I've tried scanning for new drivers without success. The PC tells me I have the latest drivers installed.



I have now found the 2 errant drivers and removed them but still these devices show a problem.



It's not only cards plugged into the card reader slots that fail to be recognised as disks. If I use a USB card reader I still have the problem. Any other type of USB device works fine, just anything that shows in my computer as a disk drive becomes a problem.

Anyone seen or heard of such a problem? It seems Acronis can't help once you've un-installed their software. They have a patch to cure the problem if you have their software installed but can't correct the problem of their faulty un-installer to bring your PC back to it's prior state.

One final question. If I run the Win7 setup again to re-install Win7 will I retain all my application registry settings etc. I am prepared to do that and download all the required patches etc. but really don't want to start from scratch again.

Sorry for the long post.

Acronis

The backup software from hell.

I had a similiar problem with Acronis 2012. In the end I had to do a clean install to get rid of it. There is a post on this forum that I will look up for you and post back.

Links

http://www.sevenforums.com/drivers/206841-disk-driver-problem.html

http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware...ashdrive-could-not-found-error-code-39-a.html

Thanks for the reply.

I have already performed all the fixes mentioned in the Acronis forums. I have used the ATIH2012 cleanup tool and fixed the registry entries that loaded the two errant disk drivers. I think there are still entries in the registry that relate to Acronis and I have manually removed them in the past but it resulted in a failure to boot (not a BSOD). A restore to restore point was required.

I am prepared to do a re-install of Windows but don't want to have to re-install all my software again. I have a recent Windows backup just in case. When you ran an install of WinXPPro over a faulty version it retained all your program settings does Win7 not perform the same?

Repair Install

Read this over and see if it fits the bill.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/3413-repair-install.html

At the bottom of the tut you will find links to other install methods etc.

Thanks again Hammerhead. I'll have a proper read and keep this next to me (on my netbook) when I do this tomorrow. Too late in the UK this evening to start it now.

I'll let you know how it goes.

BTW - my daughter lives in Seville, OH but may be coming home soon.

Close Encounter

I am located in Canton. Not familiar with Seville but would estimate less than fifty miles from me.

I'm part way through the repair install. I'm at the point where the installer finished copying Windows files and is gathering Files, Settings and Programs.




It has been running for about 3 hours and is at 50% complete. My PC has 4 physical disk drives configured as two striped RAID arrays. Disk C: has the OS and program files and D: has my data. I have configured Windows so that "My Documents" are on the D: (Data) drive. I'm beginning to suspect that the RI is copying "My Documents" to it's temporarary storage area so that it can restore them at the end of the repair. If that's the case then I may have a problem soon.

My C: drive is about 900GB (0.9 TB) and has about 200 GB in use (just OS and programs). My D: drive is a similar size but only has about 200 GB free. If the RI is doing what I suspect I may well run out of disk space on C: soon.

Can anyone confirm that this may be what is happening and whether I can run RI without copying data that's on a different disk?

If it does fail, will it roll back to it's pre-RI state and allow me to temporarily point "My Documents" back at the C: drive?

OK, all finished and problem solved. Can now see USB disks and cards in the card reader(s). Thanks for your help.

Good Show

Hope everything is settling out and you don't find any problems on down the road. You spent considerable time on your problem but you stuck with it. Good job.
can't resist one more shot at Acronis. There software usurps your operating system and then there is no reliable uninstall option. I used Acronis from ver 2009 thru 2012. When I got into trouble with 2012 I demanded a refund (got it) and went to Macrium.

Cheers!

My experience was similar. Had ATIH from version 9 without any issues. Decided to upgrade to 2012, for their SYNC option. That option was total crap and I had all sorts of problems with disk recognition so uninstalled.

I don't think I'll re-install an earlier version, just cut my losses and move on.

Thanks again.