hal.dll prob after restore

Uhg, I'm having problems successfully restoring an Acronis image. I have the image both on an external hard drive and on DVDs. Same image, two places just to be safe.

I'm using Acronis True Image Home 9 and am wondering if an upgrade or another tool might help me solve this problem. I'm using Windows XP Professional on the afflicted PC. (I'm able to write to this forum with my Ubuntu Linux PC.)

I have an older Acronis image that restores fine. We'll call that one #7. It's the latest one, #9, that I'm having problems with. I've installed a ton of stuff in #9, and it would really be a pain to have to revert to #7 AGAIN and then reinstall all that stuff.

When I restore #7 via the Acronis rescue CD and its image on the external hard drive, XP boots fine. When I do the same thing with #9, the computer won't boot and instead gives me an error saying that <Windows Root>\System32\hal.dll is missing. I've tried restoring hal.dll both from Image #9 and from #7 to no avail. I don't believe hal.dll is the problem.

I think boot.ini is the problem, but am not sure how to fix it.

Here's the story: XP was getting buggy, so I restored #7. Then I did a TON of work reinstalling software and getting it set up how I want it. I then created Image #9. This machine is an ex-HP. It had a logical drive D where restore information is kept. However, that information is irrelevant because the hardware is so changed that the HP System Recovery will no longer run. I therefore used Partition Magic to format drive D to an NTFS partition and then merge it into drive C. That's where my problems started.

When I rebooted after the partition merge, XP would no longer load. That's when I restored #9 and first got the hal.dll error. I tried another restore, but it didn't work. I then restored a Norton Ghost image from 2005. The computer booted up (but demanded activation). When I restored #7, that one worked fine. I then figured that maybe #9 would restore and work, so I tried that. No dice. I get the hal.dll error again. Restoring hal.dll both from #9 and from #7 did no good.

I've googled this. From what I've read, it sounds like the problem is probably with boot.ini. However, I can't find or restore that from my Acronis images. From the info I read, it sounds like some kind of pro edition of Acronis automatically adjust for hal.dll problems since it's designed to also be able to clone Oses and then restore them on a different machine. I'm thinking the partition change must have made Acronis think I'm restoring to different hardware, which I'm not. It's the same hardware with a partition change. Oh, and btw, the Old Norton Ghost image from '05 restored the HP Recovery drive D. I've decided I can live with that. If I had known merging C and D would cause such a hassle, I never would have done it.

My questions are as follows:
1.Will the current pro version of Acronis read and restore my Acronis version 9 image that I've made? If so, will it automatically correct the hal.dll or boot.ini problem?
2.If the current pro version won't do that, will the pro version 9 do it? In that case, is it possible to buy the current pro version, but also download and use version 9?
3.Another option: What if I just restore my image #7 and then restore only the Windows registry and program folder installs from image #9? Could that work to get the new applications back and installed.

Any guidance on this is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

 

Tom:

I forget, but can version 9 mount an image in read/write mode like some of the current versions? If it can, you could restore your #7 image to have access to a working system with TI installed. Then mount the #9 image in read/write mode and browse to find C:\boot.ini. Edit the file in notepad to point to the correct partition this time. TI will create an incremental image containing this change (that is, if TI version 9 supports the ability to do so). Then restore #9 with its incremental and you should be good to go.

An alternative, if you have a newer Ubuntu Live CD or Knoppix or a distro that supports NTFS 3g read/write, is to restore your unbootable #9 image to the PC and then boot the PC with the Live CD. Mount the Windows partition and have a look at the boot.ini file. Edit it to point to the correct partition.

Boot.ini may have been pointing to partition(2) before and now needs to be partition(1).

 

What build of TI 9 are you using?

The last build (3,854) scrambled the partition table (as does TI 10, except it would fix the boot.ini files). Prior builds (3,677, for example) left the partition table alone. This can affect the boot.ini file's partition(#) value on some setups.

According to the manual, TI 9 supports read/write Mounting.

 

Yes TI 9 does support mounting. I'll read up on that. l'm using build 3,666. I also like the idea of using my Ubuntu boot CD. I also have a Puppy Linux boot CD. I was surprised that, when browsing #7 and #9 via Acronis, I could not find C:\boot.ini. One thought was to restore #9 and then restore the boot.ini from #7.

I very much appreciate the help.

 

The file boot.ini is a hidden, protected operating system file. In order to view it in Windows Explorer you need to go to Tools > Folder Options > View and then enable the viewing of both Hidden Files and Protected Operating System files. Or, if you are viewing from the command line, it's dir /a to see all files.

 

Mission accomplished! I want to thank everyone who helped. Turns out the problem was in the boot.ini as suspected. The idea to boot with my Ubuntu Linux CD was brilliant. What I did was I restored #7 and then saved its boot.ini to a floppy. Then I restored #9 and rebooted with the Ubuntu CD in order to edit boot.ini to make it like #7's. There were only two things that needed to be changed -- the number 1 to the number 2 in two spots. A couple of numbers can make a big difference.

Now I'm going to re-do #9 so that next time I need to do a restore, I don't have this problem. Many thanks for your help.