Imaging problem.....please help

Hi everyone,

I am having a problem with hard disk imaging. I am running a win XP pro, 512 MB RAM, Pentium 4, 1.59 GHz. Well, I have Acronis True Image 8.0 installed and I created an image after installing basic softwares like norton antivirus, MS-Office, Antispyware. I imaged it the first time and thankfully it has been going good.
The problem started when I tried to image again...either a full image or an incremental to the first one....when i reboot the PC after creating an image, i get a blue screen and it says some error occured and asks me to run the chkdsk....sometimes the chkdsk runs itself saying that it found errors and rectifies it . It restarts again and this time I get a glimpse of the blue screen and reboots in a cyclical manner.

Fortunately for me the first image works fine that is how I am getting to the system everytime this happens. I dont know what is making this happen? Please also note that a similar thing used to happen when I had Norton Ghost 2005. On imaging with ghost, I used to get a error message saying some hal.dll file was missing. Even on replacing, it used to ask for zillions of files as missing. Soon I had to take that down and tried Acronis.

I needed to know, where exactly I am doing wrong? Is there a way to rectify this problem.

I thank all of you for your invaluable advise and time.

Thanks

regards
ramuk

 

Run chkdsk /f /r on your C:\ drive. Does it report bad sectors?

 

Hello ramuk,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

It looks like you the problem is resulted from some hardware malfunction. To tell for sure could you please do the following:

- Open Computer properties either by right clicking on My Computer icon and choosing Properties or by opening System properties in Control Panel;
- Go to Advanced tab;
- Press Startup and Recover Settings button;
- Choose Small memory dump in Write debugging information box;
- Close all the dialog windows by clicking OK buttons.

Then please reproduce the system crash and send the mini-dumps created (usually in Windows\Minidump folder) to support@acronis.com. This will allow us to investigate the problem thoroughly.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

Sir,

How will I be able to access the minidump folder after reproducing the crash?

I did it see in a few replies to other ATI users, to use memtest+....I used it, but didnt give me errors. Is there any other test I could do to check my hardware? Well, I also wanted to remind you that the image is stored on another partition of the same hard disk. I hope that is not a problem.....pls tell me if it is so.

Another thing is I have my hardisk set to Master, do u want me to change to Cable Select?

thanks for ur response.

ramuk

 

Hello ramuk,

After the crash please reboot the computer and access the Minidump folder. If you have set the options I described above correctly then you will be able to locate dump files that we need to examine the problem.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

DESPERATE HELP needed,

Sir as you told me I was about to reproduce the crash, an interesting thing happened. My system crashed no wonder but I didnt reproduce using ATI, I unzipped a 700 mb file in my E: and when it was about done, I got a love msg from my computer saying a file was corrupted u need to run chkdsk...yup I knew this was it but this time I had not used ATI at all. This has been the nth crash but for the first time a non-ATI application.

As you had told me earlier to access, minidump.....I couldnt even log on windows XP screen, so I put my winXP cd and went to repair screen.
when I put in my coomand cd windows. It said the drive has been corrupted. I tried running chkdsk /p /r. But it used to run till 72% and comeback again to 50%. I know not why. I then reimaged using ATI and got back to square 1.

Maybe I need to tell you some more details abt my system. I have a 160 GB Maxtor harddisk only. I have divided this into 3 drives - C: 70 GB NTFS; D: 20 GB FAT32, E: 70GB NTFS. Now I install only windows, program files in C:. Nothing in D:, and a lot of programs, ATI images and my files in E:.

PLease tell me what I can do next.

I tested the memory using memtest+ for 9 hours with no errors (BIOS-std test).

Help me. I have had enough of reimaging the system the nth time.

Your input is highly appreciated.

Thanks
ramuk

 

It would be helpful if when an error occurs you could note the error message and tell us what it says.

 

Hello ramuk,

It seems that the problem is related to hardware since only in this case you get BSODs with different programs and since you get errors even when using Windows Recovery Console trying to access the drive. You may wish to plug the hard drive as a slave to another computer and run Check Disk using the "chkdsk /r" command (without qoutation marks) on each partition of the drive.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

Hi Ramuk,

I've seen a problem like this recently (constant running of chkdsk eventually resulting in a reboot loop, when no hardware problems were obvious atall after extensive testing) and restoring TI images apparently successfully would fail on reboot.

Everybody always look to memory or graphics card 1st and other obvious hardware basics in such cases which is probably why you've been testing your memory.

I've also seen the missing Hal.dll error as well many times in cloned multi-boot setups where the boot.ini file required editing to point to the appropriate partition when using windows bootloader and other bootmanager apps such as bootmagic after imaging with variuos apps such as Ghost.

Anyway in this case it turned out to be repetitive corruption of the Master File Table when used in the owners location.

Back here a complete reformat of all partitions would again allow the previously failing images to restore properly and then work (all hardware was tested with no problems) and severe stability testing also showed no probs.

This same problem happened twice in one month and in the end the use of a quality mains conditioner has completely solved the problem in this case.

It may not apply to you but just a reminder that sometimes problems have nothing to do with the pc or software.

Cheers, Trace.

 

Do u think I need to replace my hard disk since it is still in the warranty period?

Shall keep u posted after i use chkdsk again