Need Help Cloning Disk

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by Paul0521, Aug 23, 2007.

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  1. jonyjoe81

    jonyjoe81 Registered Member

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    As long as your image is good, you should be able to restore it.

    That your getting it to bootup to the splashscreen still points to a drive letter or boot.ini file problem. I would rule out the MBR as your problem.

    Theres one more thing that is rare but can cause bootup problems, that is how the primary partition's are slotted. If your original windows xp installation was in a different primary partition and you want to install it in another primary partition, that might cause problems. This is fixable by re-slotting the partitions.

    I don't think is a hardware problem, mainly because your system has no problem reading your hard drives and cd's. If you had a motherboard/hard drive problems you would have problems booting up with cd's and would be getting input/output read errors.

    I have never encountered a windows xp image, that I couldn't restored. Yours is fixable because, it boots, then reaches an area where it can't find the startup files. "Maybe you need to try to change the drive letter to e: " and try to reboot. At this point it won't hurt anything. From my expierence everything points to the drive letters.

    finally your boot.ini file has a reference to a "windows old" that looks out of place. I'm not sure if removing that entry will cause problems. Maybe someone else who is more familiar with the boot.ini file can suggest something there.
     
  2. Paul0521

    Paul0521 Registered Member

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    Another Update

    Another Update -

    Gets stranger by the minute -

    I went to install a clean copy of Windows XP SP2 on the new drive. I reformatted it and put two brand new partitions on it with the Western Digital setup disk. That went fine.

    Loaded XP SP2 from the slipstream disk that I had created. The OS loaded, but on the first boot it failed - blue screen of death. Same error message that I go when I tried Brian K's procedure.

    I reformatted the new HD again and tried to load Windows XP SP1 from my original Windows OS disk. It loaded fine. I then tried to install the Microsoft upgrade package to SP2. The package loaded fine, but when I tried to boot - blue screen of death again.

    So, there is obviously something about my computer that doesn't like the SP2 upgrade.

    It is interesting that I have been running SP2 fine on my old drive without any problems, but I got there by doing the whole series of automatic updates (not in one jump). I'm not sure why that would make a difference, but it obviously does.

    Sounds like a BIOS or hardware problem to me.

    Here's the good news (if I can find any good news in this one week journey) - I am actually in the process of building a new computer. This hard drive upgrade was just the first step. The other components (motherboard, CPE, GPU, etc) are arriving this week.

    I think that I am going to put the new system together and try to restore the image again with the new motherboard and CPU. My bet now is that the image works.

    Any other thoughts?

    Thx,

    Paul
     
  3. DwnNdrty

    DwnNdrty Registered Member

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    Re: Another Update

    This would be restoring to new hardware and for this situation you need to have the Universal Restore option that goes with True Image Workstation. And some users of UR report that they couldn't get it to work. So I would suggest that you start the new system from scratch and reinstal everything.
     
  4. Paul0521

    Paul0521 Registered Member

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    Re: Another Update

    Actually, what I was thinking of doing was installing my old drive into the new computer first, imaging it there, and then restoring the image that I created to the new HD in the new computer.

    I assume that should work, shouldn't it?

    Paul
     
  5. DwnNdrty

    DwnNdrty Registered Member

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    Re: Another Update

    If you can get the old drive to boot in the new computer, yes. But my guess is that it would not because the video adapter is different. A workaround which worked for me is this. Before you move the old drive over, boot it up in the old system and change the video adapter to a generic vga type then connect it to the new system - it should boot then. Now you can install the correct video adapter and any other devices on the new system.

    But instead of moving the drive over, after you change the video adapter to a generic type, make the Image while still in the old system. Then restore that Image to the new drive in the new system. Unless of course you ultimately want to have that old drive in the new system as a slave.
     
  6. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Paul,

    Your current computer problem is a mystery but it's worth testing your RAM with MemTest86+

    http://www.memtest.org/

    I'm with DwnNdrty. Restoring an image to different hardware is likely to fail but it's worth trying.

    You have nothing to lose. If it doesn't boot, run a Repair Install. If that doesn't work you are out of luck.
     
  7. Paul0521

    Paul0521 Registered Member

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    I did run the memory test - it came up clean. I stongly suspect a BIOS problem - I had a BIOS problem about 6 months ago where the boot drive priority order in the BIOS would change arbitrarily. I upgrade the BIOS and the problem went away. I'm guessing this is somehow related to that.

    Thanks for the suggestion on changing to a generic VGA adaptor - I wouldn't have thought of that.

    I am going to put the machine together this coming week. I'll update this thread, and let you know how it goes.

    Thanks to everyone for your advice and help.

    Paul
     
  8. Paul0521

    Paul0521 Registered Member

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    Just a quick update for everyone -

    My parts came yesterday and I put my new machine together. I had a few very frustrating hours where things weren't working - it turns out that one of the memory sticks was bad. Once I removed the bad stick, everything worked fine.

    I did manage to boot to my old c: drive, but there were too many issues - Drivers not found, etc. I worked on it for about an hour, but decided that I could spend forever trying to fix the issues associated with this and still not get it right. I figured that my time would be better spent over the next few days reinstalling my software, so that I started on a clean machine.

    I'm in the process of doing that now - it is really tedious, but at least I know that it will ultimately be right.

    Thanks again for everyones help.

    Paul
     
  9. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Paul,

    Thanks for the updates.
     
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