Can't boot clone after Drive Copy 11 Pro

Discussion in 'Paragon Drive Backup Product Line' started by BillW50, Mar 24, 2011.

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  1. BillW50

    BillW50 Registered Member

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    I used to have dualboot XP and Windows 7. I got rid of Windows 7. I had to FIXMBR and FIXBOOT to get XP booting once again. Everything works fine.

    Although Paragon thinks it is clever and somehow believes Windows 7 is still there. As I get the Windows 7 Boot Manager popping up on the clone looking for boot files.

    I can fix this again by FIXMBR and FIXBOOT on the clone, but what do I need to do to make Paragon to believe this is a XP boot drive and not a Windows 7 boot drive?
     
  2. BillW50

    BillW50 Registered Member

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    My idea is there is something that is tipping Paragon off that it thinks it is doing me a favor by removing the XP MBR and making it bootable by BCD. And I was thinking maybe there is a flag or something in the partition table that Paragon is looking at or something.

    Checking BOOT.INI once again and it is a perfectly normal BOOT.INI for a single XP boot system. But hey, here is something in the remarks section which states:

    ;Warning: Boot.ini is used on Windows XP and earlier operating systems.
    ;Warning: Use BCDEDIT.exe to modify Windows Vista boot options.

    Say you don't think Paragon is reading this and thinks that Windows 7 is installed do you? Paragon creates log files and all of them say something like this one:

    :Date is 03/24/11, Time is 09:16:47
    ;The internal version of BioNtDll is 10.0.16.12846 (Jan 28 2011)
    ;The Windows version is 6.1.7600 (Microsoft Windows 7)

    I wonder where it is getting this idea from?
     
  3. SIW2

    SIW2 Registered Member

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    Look on your Active partition for bootmgr and a pale yellow folder called boot.

    Those are windows 7 files.

    You will need to go to folder options and show hidden and system files to be able to see them.

    If you have win7 bootsector and win7 bootmgr still present - then of course, bootmgr will pop up.
     
    Last edited: Mar 24, 2011
  4. BillW50

    BillW50 Registered Member

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    Owww... I like that SIW2! Yesterday morning I did have a Boot folder which were basically harmless. But I got rid of it yesterday since I thought this might be tripping Paragon to think Windows 7 was there. I didn't think of BOOTMGR and BOOTSECTOR though. Good catch.

    Although that didn't do it either. Now I am getting "Error loading operating system" which I have seen here before. While I didn't try it yet, but a FIXMBR and a FIXBOOT should take care of that.

    Paragon Drive Backup v9 (works)
    Paragon Partition Manager 2009 (doesn't work)
    Paragon Drive Copy v11 (doesn't work)
    Acronis True Image Home v11 (works)

    I have other products of Paragon and others that I haven't tested yet.
     
  5. BillW50

    BillW50 Registered Member

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    Does Paragon offer a money back guarantee?
     
  6. SIW2

    SIW2 Registered Member

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    Yes, 30 days , I think.

    I am surpirsed you are asking - they are the best products you can get.

    There are very rare occasions when they don't play well with particular systems.

    Usually it is operator error that is the problem.


    "Error loading operating system" means the disk code can't load the first sector of the volume boot sector on the Active partition.

    Probably all that fixboot you have been doing.

    You may be better off using win7 bootsect.exe to do the job.

    The command for writing XP bootcode is:

    bootsect /nt52 < driveletter: |sys | all >

    That will only be any use if ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini are all on the Active partition.

    View attachment BOOTSECTGUI.zip.txt
     
    Last edited: Mar 27, 2011
  7. BillW50

    BillW50 Registered Member

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    I know, I have many of their products. I am quite happy with most of them as well.

    Actually I use FIXBOOT to fix the problem that Paragon creates. If Paragon just cloned the drive without changing anything, it would be working just fine. Although Paragon is trying to be clever (normally nothing wrong there) and it thinks Windows 7 is on this system and then tries to correct it.

    Okay I will work on this. Although I noticed that I bought it exactly just one month ago, so I guess I should request a refund before tomorrow. Hopefully it won't come down to that though. ;-)

    Here's the info on requesting a refund.
    http://www.paragon-software.com/privacy.htm
     
  8. SIW2

    SIW2 Registered Member

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    Paragon searches the drives after restore to see if it can update any bcd stores - perhaps that is what you are getting.

    You would need to have a bcd store somewhere for it to be able to do that.

    bcd hive lives in the pale yellow boot folder.
     
  9. BillW50

    BillW50 Registered Member

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    Well I requested a refund on March 27th and I had deleted DCv11. I also never heard anything from Paragon yet. And frankly, I don't think I will ever hear from them.

    Yes all BCD stores were deleted. I even used a disk editor to look if I could find something. Normally a partition starts at sector 63. Although with DC11, the cloned copy either starts at sector 1024 or 2048. Other than that, I can't find anything.

    Both Acronis True Image Home 2009 and 2011 clones fine. Although Acronis True Image can only clone a system drive if you shutdown Windows. Paragon is the only one I know of that can clone a drive live. Which is very nice.

    So to update this thread, I have went back to Drive Copy Personal SE v8 (which I guess is the same as DCv9) and that works.
     
  10. SIW2

    SIW2 Registered Member

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    Thanks for the update - very odd the earlier version works for you and the new one apparently doesn't.
     
  11. wptski

    wptski Registered Member

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    Not exactly sure what you mean by "clone a drive"? Using HDM2011S when creating a RAW copy or sector by sector copy requires a reboot and the process runs before Windows loads just like True Image. A RAW copy can be created from WinPE directly since Windows isn't really running. I'd think that all Paragon backup products work the same way when it comes to that.
     
  12. BillW50

    BillW50 Registered Member

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    Hi Bill! Well I never use the sector by sector method because just copying the files and folders has always worked fine for me. And what I mean is making a clone of a drive, is by making a copy that works just like the original. Then I use the clone copy and put away the original and use it for a backup.

    I used to just make backups (achieve) to a larger external drive. Although you don't know if that copy will restore everything correctly? Thus I used to put in a spare drive and test if the restore works okay. Well silly me, cloning drives does it faster anyway. And since I have lots of hard drives anyway, I just rotate them. And since I use laptops and even have spare carriers for the spares, swapping hard drives are just as easy as changing batteries (yes the carrier screws have been removed).

    Now this laptop used to have a dualboot XP and Windows 7. Well I removed Windows 7 and there is no sign left that Windows 7 used to be on here AFAIK. But DCv11 sees something about having Windows 7 and sets up the cloned drive to boot BCD (which doesn't exist anymore). I know this because I can add the BOOT folder, BOOTSECTOR, and BOOTLDR to the clone drive and that loads up looking for the missing Windows 7. I can fix it by XP's FIXMBR and FIXBOOT. But this is a PIA. And later clones from DCv11 makes the same mistake again and again.
     
  13. BillW50

    BillW50 Registered Member

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    Well I spoke too soon I guess. It does get it right that it should boot XP. And the clone copy works great and no problems. Although the clone of the clone failed. The boot part was right, but Windows XP started loading and in about 5 seconds into it and the computer reboots and repeats over and over again. I should have investigated why that was, but I didn't. I just fired up Acronis True Image boot CD and re-cloned and that always works.
     
  14. BillW50

    BillW50 Registered Member

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    Oh yeah... I meant to add this. Most of Paragon's products can use either Hot Processing or MS Volume Shadow Copy Service. And this allows you to copy a drive that is currently in use (locked). So you don't have to use a WinPE CD or anything. And you can copy the drive, partitions, folders, or files right from Windows.

    Acronis True Image allows this too for backups (archives). But not for cloning a drive in use. Which seems like a silly limitation. As if you are already using MS VSS, you can use the VSS service to clone the drive too.

    But this isn't about Acronis True Image, but Paragon. DCv9 only allows for Paragon's own Hot Processing, but not MS CSS service yet. Although they allow the same thing and I don't know which one is better to use. Later versions of Paragon's products allows to use either or.
     
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