COM Surrogate – Acronis Delete Problem

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I am running Win7 Home Premium 64bit OS, and I use Acronis for backing up my computer. My backups are stored on an external hard-drive. Since upgrading to Win7 I am having difficulty deleting my oldest Acronis backup from the external hard-drive. When I attempt to delete the oldest .tib file I get this notice:

“The action can’t be completed because the folder is open in COM Surrogate.”

How do I work around this problem in order that I can delete the file? I am not familiar with what COM Surrogate is, thus I do not know how I can close it in order to delete the large .tib backup file. Can someone please lend me a hand in solving this problem? Thanks in advance,

Ed Schwing

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Hi ED and welcome

Acronis runs background serives that prevent it. One ways is to safe boot and delete it there. another way is just to go into services.msc and kill the acronis services

Ken.

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Hi ED and welcome

Acronis runs background serives that prevent it. One ways is to safe boot and delete it there. another way is just to go into services.msc and kill the acronis services

Ken.

HUH? Ken, the problem is not with Acronis; but rather, as I understand it, with Windows7. In both Windows Vista, and Windows OS’s before Vista, I never experienced this problem when deleting old Acronis backup files. It has something to do with Windows7. Please, if known, what is COM Surrogate, it has something to do with Windows, not Acronis.

Ed

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HUH? Ken, the problem is not with Acronis; but rather, as I understand it, with Windows7. In both Windows Vista, and Windows OS’s before Vista, I never experienced this problem when deleting old Acronis backup files. It has something to do with Windows7. Please, if known, what is COM Surrogate, it has something to do with Windows, not Acronis.

If you are using a version of Acronis that is not compatible with Windows 7 then it is an Acronis problem. What version of Acronis are you running?

Joe

--Joe

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If you are using a version of Acronis that is not compatible with Windows 7 then it is an Acronis problem. What version of Acronis are you running?

Joe

Joe, I am using version 2010. When I upgraded to 2010 the information describing the upgrade indicated that it was compatible with Windows 7. I went into Acronis and saw where I could delete files or folders, and brought up the specific Acronis backup file that I was trying to delete in IE. I clicked to delete that specific file and the durn program not only deleted that file, but the other two previous files too! I again last night, made a new backup, and it worked perfectly. I am concerned though that when I next attempt to delete a single backup file, it may delete everything in the same folder. Sorry for being such a DUMMY! Your help would be appreciated,

Ed

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Joe, I am using version 2010. When I upgraded to 2010 the information describing the upgrade indicated that it was compatible with Windows 7. I went into Acronis and saw where I could delete files or folders, and brought up the specific Acronis backup file that I was trying to delete in IE. I clicked to delete that specific file and the durn program not only deleted that file, but the other two previous files too! I again last night, made a new backup, and it worked perfectly. I am concerned though that when I next attempt to delete a single backup file, it may delete everything in the same folder. Sorry for being such a DUMMY! Your help would be appreciated,

You are not being a dummy. When you don’t understand questions are always good.

It has been a while since I used Acronis. Someone else who uses it may be able to jump in here and give you a better answer. Backups sets can involve more than one physical file. That depends on your Acronis settings for splitting files and your backup style (i.e always full, full & incremental, etc.). If you are using Acronis to delete a prior backup set it will delete all the files associated with a backup set.

Joe

--Joe

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You are not being a dummy. When you don’t understand questions are always good.

It has been a while since I used Acronis. Someone else who uses it may be able to jump in here and give you a better answer. Backups sets can involve more than one physical file. That depends on your Acronis settings for splitting files and your backup style (i.e always full, full & incremental, etc.). If you are using Acronis to delete a prior backup set it will delete all the files associated with a backup set.

Joe

Each of my Acronis backups are full C drive backups, consisting of EVERYTHING, system, data etc., and result in a single Acronis “.tib” file. I never do incrementals, always a full C drive backup. To clarify my previous statement, I had three full C drive, .tib, files – one for Jan 3, one for Jan 20 and one for Jan 27. I attempted to delete the Jan 3 .tib file, and Acronis also deleted the other two .tib files, each of which were full C drive backups. I am going to do another backup today and then attempt to delete only the one I did last evening, just to see if it will delete both my new one done today and the one I did last evening. Basically, I think it may be time for me to leave Acronis, since a couple years ago I had problems with them on another upgrade, and it took forever to communicate the problem and ultimately to get it fixed. Does anyone have a suggestion of another software program that will compete with Acronis?

Ed

(Okay, I finally figured it out. As I stated above, I ran incremental backup to my full C drive created yesterday. I then opened up Acronis and opted the “Acronis Drive Cleaner”, and there selected the new incremental backup I had just created, and selected that file for deletion – and it worked by only deleting the just created incremental file, and left the full C drive created yesterday on the disk. The action I took yesterday which deleted the entire folder, which included 3 files, and even though I had only selected one for deletion, was because I had used the “File Shredder” option. Lesson: If you want to only delete a single file in a folder, use the “Acronis Drive Cleanser” option. The “File Shredder” and “Acronis Drive Cleaner” options are found in Tools and Utilities section. I should mention that I am using Acronis True Image Home 2010.)

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Glad you got it worked out. Your good explanation may help some other Lounger. Thanks for posting back.

Joe

--Joe

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Basically, I think it may be time for me to leave Acronis, since a couple years ago I had problems with them on another upgrade, and it took forever to communicate the problem and ultimately to get it fixed. Does anyone have a suggestion of another software program that will compete with Acronis?

If you are always doing full backups and want to save some money you might look at Macrium Reflect free version – works very well with win 7, runs 1 small service (850kb of memory- for mounting/browsing images) and is quite quick to back up -it will back up full system images from within Windows see: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp
you can delete backups from Windows explorer and mount backups to browse with explorer to restore files – restoring a system image requires booting from cd.

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Thanks Curle! I downloaded the free program and ran it. It worked as well, or better, than Acronis. Since I have had to use one of my Acronis backups in the past, and that worked perfectly, I pray that Macrium would do the same. Have you had any experience using one of your Macrium backups to get your system going again? I created me their booting cd just in case too. Again, I thank you.

Ed

If you are always doing full backups and want to save some money you might look at Macrium Reflect free version – works very well with win 7, runs 1 small service (850kb of memory- for mounting/browsing images) and is quite quick to back up -it will back up full system images from within Windows see: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp
you can delete backups from Windows explorer and mount backups to browse with explorer to restore files – restoring a system image requires booting from cd.

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I am running Win7 Home Premium 64bit OS, and I use Acronis for backing up my computer. My backups are stored on an external hard-drive. Since upgrading to Win7 I am having difficulty deleting my oldest Acronis backup from the external hard-drive. When I attempt to delete the oldest .tib file I get this notice:

“The action can’t be completed because the folder is open in COM Surrogate.”

How do I work around this problem in order that I can delete the file? I am not familiar with what COM Surrogate is, thus I do not know how I can close it in order to delete the large .tib backup file. Can someone please lend me a hand in solving this problem? Thanks in advance,

Ed Schwing

Ed,
Hello, What version of Acronis are you using? Im pretty sure that in 2009 and 2010 you can only delete images from within Acronis itself .If you use explorer you confuse TI ,and probably get the error message. Regards Fred

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I just tried it with TI 2009 v.9709 to see what happenes. But I used [Backup and Restore > Manage and Restore > Browse for Backup…], browsed to the location where I keep 3 full backups on my external HD, and selected the oldest one. I clicked the red “delete” icon on the toolbar, and that single file disappeared. The others were still there.

I have always deleted them with Explorer up until now, with no bad consequences. When I have restored with the CD or my flash drive (my preferred method) I can always locate the archive I need and restore it.

Maybe deleting with Explorer confuses it if you try to run a restore from inside Windows. I have never done it that way though. It just seems like a bad idea.

I really like Acronis TI 2009. It has saved my tail a couple of times.

Just my observations,
Rusty

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When you run Acronis, it runs in the background. This often makes Acronis archives show up to Explorer as “in use”. Various components of Acronis use the Windows COM functions to keep track of where an archive is located, especially if it is still mounted. Closing the Acronis program window does not always unmount the archive. This can leave a COM operation running, hence the error message. In any event, when I want to delete an archive, I play it safe and do so from with True Image. This method allows the Actonis program to “forget” about the archive, and prevents the program from mistakenly trying to mount an archive which no longer exists during future backup or recovery runs.

True Image keeps track of Volumes and Archives using a separate drive mounter from Windows Explorer. These two systems can get badly out of synch with each other if you delete Acronis archives using Windows Explorer. On external drives, this can cause Acronis to “hang” when analyzing the drive. The only solution would be to uninstall and reinstall True Image. I have had this disaster happen in True Image version 11.

So play it safe and only delete Acronis archives from within the True Image Program. A “folder in use” error message is only the least of the problems which can result from using Windows Explorer to do the deletion. Especially if the Acronis Secure Zone has been activated on the target drive!

I have been using Acronis True Image since Version 7. I know what can happen.

BTW. the discussion of Macrium is off topic in this thread.

-- rc primak

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true Image keeps track of Volumes and Archives using a separate drive mounter from Windows Explorer. These two systems can get badly out of synch with each other if you delete Acronis archives using Windows Explorer. On external drives, this can cause Acronis to “hang” when analyzing the drive. The only solution would be to uninstall and reinstall True Image. I have had this disaster happen in True Image version 11.

So play it safe and only delete Acronis archives from within the True Image Program. A “folder in use” error message is only the least of the problems which can result from using Windows Explorer to do the deletion. Especially if the Acronis Secure Zone has been activated on the target drive!

I have been using Acronis True Image since Version 7. I know what can happen.

BTW. the discussion of Macrium is off topic in this thread.

That’s good information that I didn’t know. I have only been using TI 2009 for about a year and there is a lot to learn about it. All I use it for is to do a full “My Computer” backup to an external drive every 2 weeks. I delete the oldest one prior to starting the task. Though I do not have Secure Zone installed, I am going to un-install and re-install it immediately.

Thanks for the info,
Rusty

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I do not mean to state or imply that all people who have used Windows Explorer to delete backup archives should reinstall Acronis True Image. Only if you have deleted archives from the Acronis Secure Zone in this way. Or if you have set up the Acronis One-Click Backup option. Or if you did such a delete on an external drive which has an Extended FAT-32 File System, as Acronis can completely destroy the File System on these drives if it gets out of sync with Windows Explorer.

Only reinstall Acronis if your PC is experiencing symptoms, such as Acronis hanging badly when analyzing an external drive, or the Windows Right-Click Safely Remove Hardware option hangs or crashes with or without an error message. These signs are rare. Usually, all you need to do is open the Acronis program and Validate any archives which do still exist, and Delete from the available archives list, any archives which do not presently exist. Also, delete any scheduled or unscheduled tasks which point to nonexistent archives. This should be enough to prevent damage to Windows or the external drive. While reinstalling Acronis is the safest solution, it is not the most convenient.

Acronis is not the only backup and recovery program which behaves in the way I described. If a Backup Program can Explore within its own Archives, or if it can recover individual files and folders from within its Archives, that program is most likely also keeping track of its own “hidden storage volumes” separately from the Windows Volume Manager. This would make all such backup and recovery programs vulnerable to similar problems. So, nobody should recommend another brand of backup software on the basis of any alleged weakness or “bug” in Acronis.

I stand by Acronis True Image Home as the best backup and recovery solution for Full and Incremental or Differential Backups and recovery of Windows in the event of a disaster.

-- rc primak

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I’m glad that by, “immediately,” I really meant “when I get around to it.”

all you need to do is open the Acronis program and Validate any archives which do still exist, and Delete from the available archives list, any archives which do not presently exist. Also, delete any scheduled or unscheduled tasks which point to nonexistent archives.

And luckily I already do these things.

Thanks for clearing that up.

Rusty

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1. I use Acronis version 11 and will NOT downgrade to later versions. Version 11 does not give grief when I use explorer to delete *.TIBs

2. deletion of “Jan 3 .tib” is certain to take out ALL the Jan* backups.
With v11 I can create archives with names “abcd”, “XYZ”, etc without problems.
If I wish I can also create an incremental or differential based upon “abcd” and the new file is automatically called “abcd1”, (and “abcd2”, “abcd3” etc.)
Acronis recognises this as a series and if you designate one of the series and ask Acronis to delete it – it zaps the whole series.
If I wish I can create FULL images with names such as XYZ1, XYZ2, XYZ3, XYZ5, etc., with these unfortunate results :-
Acronis will initially think of these as being a series of incrementals ;
If you ask it to delete one it will wipe-out the lot ;
If you try to restore XYZ5 it could succeed, excepting I think its first thought is that I want the 5th incremental of series XYZ,
and I vaguely recall that it FIRST confirms the validity of the series, and when it finds that XYZ4 is not present it gives up in horror.

Moral of a long story – ensure that the name of an Acronis image does NOT have a number at the end.

3. “Acronis hanging badly when analyzing an external drive”
An instant solution for me was the Acronis Forum advice to disable the Windows service
“Distributed Link Tracking Client”
Described as “Maintains links between NTFS files within a computer or across computers in a network domain.”

Regards
Alan

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Alan —

In general, all of these are good points. However, I take exception to Point #3.

3. “Acronis hanging badly when analyzing an external drive”
An instant solution for me was the Acronis Forum advice to disable the Windows service
“Distributed Link Tracking Client”
Described as “Maintains links between NTFS files within a computer or across computers in a network domain.”

Regards
Alan

This point is kind of irrelevant to the Acronis hanging behaviors I was describing. There is no “Distributed Link Tracking Client” on my computer and never has been.

The current version of True Image is more than two upgrades beyond Version 11. Version 11 had serious flaws in its Rescue Media. That’s how I got into trouble and discovered the separate Volume Manager in Acronis. If you have archives more than two versions old, current True Image versions may not be able to restore from them. That’s a warning Acronis gives at their web site. I remind readers that I use Windows XP Pro on my computer. And my disks are all NTFS formatted.

-- rc primak

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Bob

I did not intend to offend you.

I accept that you have encountered a hanging problem and you have a solution.

You stated that
“Only reinstall Acronis if your PC is experiencing symptoms, such as Acronis hanging badly when analyzing an external drive, or …”
I am merely pointing out that Acronis hanging badly MAY require re-installation,
but simply disabling that Distributed Link service may be the correct solution.
This service disablement is advice recommended by Acronis experts on the Acronis user forum,
and it worked for me, and presumably for others.

I am surprised that you do not have that service on XP Pro.
I have it on XP Home + SP3.

Perhaps I am failing to understand something, but according to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/312403
“The Distributed Link Tracking Client service runs on all Windows 2000-based and Microsoft Windows XP-based computers, including those in workgroup environments or those that are not in a workgroup.”

I am mostly concerned with backups of NTFS partitions,
But I prefer FAT32 partitions for holding the images.

I think I was using Acronis 9 when I bought an external drive and I experimented with that.
I found the time taken creating a *.tib file was not significantly affected by a FAT32 or NTFS destination partition,
but restoring Drive C: from an NTFS file took twice as long as using a FAT32 *.tib
I never received any answers, but I assume the native Windows drivers can send data to either NTFS or FAT32 with similar speed when creating a *.tib file,
but the “Linux type” boot drivers needed when restoring the system partition have been optimised for FAT32, leaving NTFS is an “also ran”.

Regards
Alan

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Alan —

First, when I say “take exception to” I only mean that I respectfully disagree, not that I am offended. Poor choice of words on my part.

Second, while the Distributed Links Service may be available on my WinXP Pro SP3 installation, I run a minimal configuration, meaning that many unnecessary Windows Services are always turned to Manual or Disabled.

Right now as I write this, my Windows Services list shows:

Distributed Link Tracking Client: Started. Automatic.
Distributed Link Transaction Coordinator: Not Started. Manual.

Neither of these two Services has ever been changed (by me) from the way it was originally installed. The Acronis TIH-11 problem occurred before I ever installed SP3. And I now use TIH-2010 with no problems so far. I have not had to do any restorations since I had TIH-11.

The Service you mentioned is running on my computer by default. When I go on line, the other of the two Distributed Link Services is often active, but not always. While disabling these services may be a helpful solution for many users, it does not seem to fit my situation the one and only time I had an Acronis error resulting from Acronis and Windows getting out of sync and Acronis showing its “hanging” behavior as it churned away analyzing each partition above the C:Windows level. (Internal EIDE and external USB drives.)

My own investigation and Internet research showed that there was in fact a problem of exactly the type I previously described, and it appeared only in restorations done with the Acronis True Image Home 11 Rescue Media CDs. A quick look into the Device Manager showed one clue to the root of the problem, as Acronis had created Hidden Storage Volumes which duplicated Windows Storage Volume Drive Letters, but had different parameters (start/end pointers and volume sizes, for example) listed. The “hanging” behavior I am describing here is another clue, and it also occurred when the right-click Safely Remove Hardware feature is used on an external USB Hard Drive on an affected Windows XP system. The result of that operation was that the “Run DLL As A Program” Windows Application crashed with an error message. Performing a fresh install of Windows and reinstalling True Image, then doing a True Image Restore from a USB archive completely fixed the problem.

The difference was not that a Windows Service was active or not active — it was a matter of getting Windows and Acronis back into sync with each other regarding Storage Volumes, which the TIH-11 Rescue Media environment was failing to do.

So you are right that I have the services you mentioned. And one of them is active by default. But, as far as I can tell, the Services have had no effects whatsoever on the behaviors of True Image which I have been describing, now or in the past, on my computer. Others may have different experiences with their computers. After all, there are a lot of possible Windows configurations.

Third, as for the slowness of restoring from NTFS vs. FAT-32, yes, that’s the price we sometimes pay for using a more modern file system. My concern is with external USB hard drives which use an artificial Extended FAT-32 File System. These file systems are notoriously unstable, and can result in file system corruption from even the most innocent moving or deletions of large files. That is why I recommend converting any large external hard drive used for Full Image Backup Archives to NTFS formatting. There’s less chance of the type of file system corruption errors which I have seen when folks delete Acronis archives from Extended Fat-32 USB external hard drives and then attempt to write new Acronis Image Backup Archives to the same parts of these external drives. In the original posting to this thread, this type of file system corruption may or may not have been involved in the error message reported.

These caviats about Extended FAT-32 USB external hard drives would not apply to straightforward standard FAT-32 formatted drives.

By the way, since True Image Home 2009 (the version after Version 11), Acronis is no longer using a Linux-based recovery environment. So what you experience with Version 9 may no longer be true for the current two versions (2009 and 2010) which Acronis still supports officially. If you ever upgrade, try the comparison again.

Your information is always appreciated, even if it does not always fit my experiences.

-- rc primak

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Bob

Thank you for the extra information.

I was not previously aware of Extended FAT-32.
I will definitely now remember to avoid any use of Extended FAT-32 partitions.

Regards
Alan

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I was not previously aware of Extended FAT-32.
I will definitely now remember to avoid any use of Extended FAT-32 partitions.

Extended FAT-32 was used by USB Hard Drive makers, especially Western Digital, when these drives first started getting over the normal FAT-32 limit (I think it’s 32 GB or 40 GB). Most drive makers are now using NTFS, because of the instability of Extended FAT-32, and because most external drives are now sold with automatic backup software pre-installed.

I personally hate auto-backups (not enough user control over what and when to back up), so I save any useful software (like SMART or Western Digital Drive Diagnostics) to another drive or partition, then reformat the drive and repartition it to suit my own needs. That is when anything not in NTFS or FAT-32 (normal) gets converted. This avoids any of a number of potential problems.

In the original post in this thread, the error could possibly be from a file system instability on the external drive. With NTFS formatting, large files are not spread out over so many sectors, making file system damage less likely when deleting or moving the large files and then overwriting the freed up spaces with new large files. (Larger files would also include media files, like iTunes Libraries.) This is the type of instability I’ve seen on Extended FAT-32 drives.

Also, the COM Surrogate is not only used when Acronis communicates with external drives. Acronis does usage reporting, creating and uploading to Acronis’ servers, Perl Reports on how users use the program. This happens whenever a network connection is available, and ties up COM and RPC Services, as well as that Distributed Client Tracking Service we’ve been discussing. The result would be a “COM Surrogate is in use by another process” error message. Waiting a few minutes and trying again should clear up this conflict. Acronis Reporting can be turned off, but if you ever need Acronis techinical support, they prefer to have the data available.

The best policy is to run Acronis operations off line (no network connection active), and with all unnecessary background processes and services turned off. Especially virus scanning and Firewall Notifications. Any of these activities can ruin Acronis backup and recovery operations. This would be true of any backup and recovery program. It’s also true of CD/DVD burning.

-- rc primak

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