hal.dll missing AGAIN

[Brian K]

Originally Posted by corinthian

In other words, do we select MBR last after selecting the Main boot drive for restoration? Does it matter?

I don't think so. Can you select them together?

It says there is a drop down list to choose from. I don't see any such list. Should it be there?

I can't recall. I don't think you should assign drive letters. I don't. Let Windows work it out when it first boots.

We are getting close to the booting stage. Fingers crossed.

[corinthian]

Well I booted from the floppy disk (after the restoration), started editbini from the a: prompt, only one choice showed up hard drive 0 -- naturally selected that. Next had only one choice again "MBR entry 0 partition (01)........", (I only restored the Seagate G drive plus the MBR. When I went back to the most recent image I had made, I was surprised to see that the recovery partition was not included, but only the Main Windows boot drive and the MBR. Anyway, I selected that one and only choice, and there was the boot.ini file showing both partition areas as (2). Edited both to (1). Rebooted and got "MBR error -- press a key". So no luck, darn it! I just went back into the boot.ini program from the a: prompt, and it shows that both of those changes to (1) were saved correctly.

This is a typed copy of what it said after the edits:
[Boot loader]
Timeout =5
default= mult (0) disk (0)rdisk (0)partition (1)\Windows
[operating systems]
mult (0) disk (0)rdisk (0)partition (1)\Windows= "Microsoft Windows XP home edition
C.:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT= "Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons

since I did not restore the recovery console, for the heck of it I deleted that last line. Didn't matter, same error message.

I might say again that this error message is different from the hal.dll message. I have been confused about which hard drive to choose after selecting MBR for restoration, and it asked me to "select a disk drive MBR you want to recover". I have never known whether to choose the source disk or the disk being restored to. It becomes more obvious, however, when only the destination disk is attached during restore. Then they only choices were the Western Digital internal or the Western Digital external. The choice Sainsbury obvious that has to be the Western Digital internal. But if I have both internal hard drives connected, then I will have a choice of both the Western Digital (internal and external) and the Seagate internal source disk. I have made the choice of the Seagate in the past, and that's one I get the hal.dll error. If I try to restore and choose the Western Digital internal as the "MBR you want to recover", then I get the "MBR error -- press a key" message.

Oh well -- back to the beginning! I'm hoping you can find something I did wrong or have another idea?

Thanks for so much effort. I think I'll go back to the Seagate, make yet another image of the entire disk, and try again. I'm really surprised that Acronis is not coming here to offer their take on these MBR problems and hal.dll problem.
Thanks,
Bill

[corinthian]

I remain mystified as to how my Seagate drive every got its letters changed and listed in reverse order. It used to say C: for the Main Pavilion Windows boot drive, and D: for the recovery partition. I'm not sure I ever looked in disk management to see the order. But now for some reason the recovery partition is listed as I:, and in disk management the recovery partition is listed first. Is the recovery partition supposed to be listed as first, instead of the boot drive? Does it make any difference?

Here's something I'm thinking about doing. I'm thinking about making an image of the recovery partition, and in disk management deleting the entire recovery partition off of the hard drive. If something goes wrong I have a copy of this partition on an older hard drive that came with the original system. Anyway, then it should all be unallocated space for this partition. Then I was going to disconnect, reconnect and reboot just to see if C: will then be listed first, which I don't see that there is any choice about since it will be the only internal hard drive connected to the system. But the unallocated space may still be listed first, though I believe you have said that doesn't make any difference. Anyway, I think I may try this. Let me know what you think.

And I'd still like to know what Acronis thinks also.
Bill

[Brian K]

Damn. Bill, could you try this. From your floppy, at the A prompt type

fdisk /mbr

This writes a generic MBR. See if it works now.

[Brian K]

I wouldn't make any changes to the Seagate Recovery partition until we can restore images of your C drive. Let's keep working on that.

If you can restore TI images then you don't need that Recovery partition at all.

[Brian K]

Bill, I think you need to use a Win98 boot floppy for fdisk /mbr to work. I'm not 100% but I don't think it works from a WinXP boot disc.

At least you have the correct boot.ini now. I hope we can get the HD to boot.

The MBR that you needed to restore to the SATA HD was the MBR from the Seagate.

fdisk /mbr from a Win98 floppy makes one extra change than fixmbr. Fixmbr doesn't zero the DiskID but that isn't important here.

[corinthian]

right. I've got some new images being made- a separate recov console image and now the Seagate C: drive only. I'm also trying it without breaking it up into 1.4 GB blocks for DVD copy- just one big image. As soon as this gets done, Ill hook the WD back up and try the generic MBR. And you said it... Damn is right!!!!
Ready for the asylum Bill

BTW, Somewhere back near May when I was first having these troubles with restoration with my new Acronis software, I dimly remember that I've finally managed to pull off a successful restoration. And I think what happened with that was that I made the image to my old hard drive and restored from that. But I can't completely remember now how it went. I just looked back at my post describing the successful restoration, and it was definitely done from an internal hard drive. I just can't figure out if I made the image on my old Western Digital small hard drive and restore from there to the Seagate, or if I already had the Seagate up and running an image to that drive and restored from there. But I don't think I could've done that, because my D: partition was too small to hold an entire C: image, and I could not have restored to C: from C:, correct? So I must have restored this image -- this is all I can figure anyway -- from my old Western Digital internal drive (not the larger Western Digital I have been trying to deal with now -- the old original drive that is several years old). Anyway, I was able to restore an image from some internal hard drive and get it working on the Seagate. But I was never able to from any DVDs and I did not have an external hard drive then. So, I wonder if that tells us anything? Problems possibly Re: USB connections? I'm just guessing wild here.

[corinthian]

Originally Posted by Brian K

Bill, I think you need to use a Win98 boot floppy for fdisk /mbr to work. I'm not 100% but I don't think it works from a WinXP boot disc.

At least you have the correct boot.ini now. I hope we can get the HD to boot.

The MBR that you needed to restore to the SATA HD was the MBR from the Seagate.

fdisk /mbr from a Win98 floppy makes one extra change than fixmbr. Fixmbr doesn't zero the DiskID but that isn't important here.

Brian, I get "bad command or file name" when I type in fdisk mbr.

Regarding the MBR needing to be from the Seagate: unless the Seagate is also connected to the system, I can only choose the Western Digital. What I'm saying is that, when it asked me if there is another drive or partition that I want to restore and I choose yes, and then next I choose MBR, then next is the question "select drive disk MBR you want to recover", and if the Western Digital is the only internal connected, been the only choice will be the Western Digital internal and the Western Digital external hard drive which contains the images. Obviously the external is not the right choice, leaving only the Western Digital internal as the choice at this point. Now if the Seagate is connected the Seagate will also be a choice. But surely the Western Digital must be the right choice, because I could be trying to restore an image from the Seagate that is now dead in the water and would not show up as one of the choices even if it was connected. Am I going wrong here somewhere? Do I need to hook the Seagate backup during the restoration process, so that I can choose the Seagate after selecting MBR when it asked me in the next step to "select a drive disk MBR you want to recover"?

I wish Acronis was more clear in the wording at this point. I wish they said "select the drive disk that you want to recover the MBR TO", or "select the drive disk that you want to recover the MBR from", rather than "select the drive disk MBR you want to recover".

[Brian K]

Bill, just briefly this is how I'd restore an image to a new HD. I write my C drive image to a second internal HD as a single file. (I don't image non Operating system partitions). I then install the new HD as master, partition it with Partition Magic (floppies) and restore the image with a TI CD. I don't bother restoring the MBR because Partition Magic creates a MBR. You really only need to restore the MBR if you have a special MBR such as when using a boot manager, using GoBack and a few others. A generic MBR suits most circumstances.

With your Recovery partition you may need a special MBR for it to work. That certainly applies to the Dell recovery partition.

I've never had a failure and I've tried many image/restore apps.

[Brian K]

Brian, I get "bad command or file name" when I type in fdisk mbr.

Are you using a Win98 boot floppy for fdisk /mbr ?

Did you use a space between k and /

[Brian K]

I'm just trying to digest your info on the MBR. When you make an image of your C drive the MBR is automatically stored in that image. So the image of the Seagate C drive contains the MBR of the Seagate HD.

Clear or not?

[Brian K]

What I'm saying is that, when it asked me if there is another drive or partition that I want to restore and I choose yes,

You should answer "No". You don't want to restore a second partition.

[Brian K]

http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

Win98 boot disc

[Brian K]

Bill, I think you need to use a Win98 boot floppy for fdisk /mbr to work.

That's true. The WinXP boot floppy doesn't contain fdisk.

[corinthian]

Brian, so I can use a Win98 boot floppy in this case? I guess I can, since Win XP is not booting up anyway?

Whoa! You are saying I should not "restore another partition or drive"? In order to separately select the MBR? Because the MBR is already included when I first choose to restore the C: from the Seagate? Because I've been selecting another partition (the MBR that is) every time. Maybe I should try that -- maybe that's where I've been going wrong?

So in other words, when the first screen comes up asking me to select a drive to restore, I simply select the Seagate C.: drive, it going the MBR, and just go on from there and that's it? Because that surely is not what I have been doing!

But I will also download that Win98 boot floppy.

Bill

[corinthian]

There are a bunch of win98--- from oem to SE---- does it matter, I assume any of them do for fdisk?
Bill

[Brian K]

From memory, you select the image to restore and soon you will see 2 choices (two boxes to tick on top of each other). One is the image of the C drive and the other is the MBR. I think you can tick both but if not then restore the C drive and then start the wizard again and restore the MBR.

Did you get the hal.dll error this time? You didn't mention that.

fdisk /mbr should fix an incorrect MBR.

[Brian K]

There are a bunch of win98--- from oem to SE---- does it matter, I assume any of them do for fdisk?

I used Win98 OEM.

[corinthian]

Yes, I got the MBR error. But (Surprise) now I'm confused. In order to select MBR, I always have to say "yes" to "do you want to restore another disk/partition". Although it might be possible for me to select the little disk box above both C: and MBR. I'm not sure, I'll have to see. But just to make sure I understand you, I should definitely select "no" when asked me if I want to restore another disk/partition?

But I've got the Win98 boot disk copy now, so I can try FDISK MBR if necessary. I'm going to have to do another restore though first.
Thanks
Bill

[Brian K]

Don't forget to type fdisk /mbr You have omitted the / in your posts.

You are saying I should not "restore another partition or drive"?

No, that's only if you have 2 images. I'll check one of my images to make certain.

You don't need to do another restore. fdisk /mbr on your current SATA HD.

Did you get the hal.dll error?

[corinthian]

I did have to restore, because before I got the win98 boot disk, I had again deletd partitions on the WD, There are about 20 minutes left on the restore, but it's getting near bed time again. I may be about done for the night. This restore was without any MBR, because I would have had to "select another drive". The error I got last time was the "MBR error- press a key". When I press the key, it asks me for the system disk.
Bill

[Brian K]

From the TI CD, in the Partition or Disk to Restore window I see 2 boxes, the partition image and the MBR and track 0. You can't select both. Further on at Next Selection I usually tick No, I do not but I just noticed that you can select Yes, I want to... and it goes back to the window with 2 boxes. Choose the box you didn't tick before.
If you are asked again about further selections then you would choose No.

So basically it's just selecting both boxes. It may be different with your image as it may contain more than one partition.

[Brian K]

OK, this time was different. I understand now. When the OS boots in a few minutes and if you get the MBR error then use fdisk /mbr. Hopefully you will then see hal.dll error on the next boot and you can use editBINI. Hopefully again, WinXP should boot.

[corinthian]

No, it's the same with mine. And that's how I've been doing it. After that first instance of asking me if I want to restore another disk, I say yes and then I choose MBR. And when I choose MBR, it then ask me "selected drive disk MBR you want to recover". And if only the external hard drive with the images and the Western Digital two which I have been trying to restore are connected, then my only choice is Western Digital internal. And if I go that route I get the "MBR error -- press a key" message. If I have tried to restore (even through the Acronis boot disk -- which is the way I have always been doing this) while leaving the Seagate attached either as the boot drive or as the slave, then I am offered Seagate as an additional choice. But if I go that route, then I end up with the hal.dll missing/corrupt message.

Okay, I have just finished the restore this time without having selected MBR. Now I'm going to put in the Win98 boot disk and try fdisk /mbr .

[corinthian]

0k, when I finally got to the A: prompt ( I had to make some selections -- I chose "start computer without CD-ROM support" And That Got Me to the a Prompt) then I typed in FDISK /MBR. I don't know how long that action is supposed to take, but it only took one or two seconds and it got me right back to the a: prompt. It didn't give me any message about bad commands or anything like that. So I took the discount booted back up and now my message is "missing operating system". So something must have gone awry with the restore. Anyway, that's it for the night I'm shutting are down and going to bed. Have you ever seen anything like this? Goodnight and thanks.
Bill