Need Help - Sysprep and clone problems

Hi all,

I've been trying to clone my older 100G HD (running XP Pro) to a new 250G for about a week now. I tried many times without using sysprep (from within windows and using the rescue CD and also tried fixboots, repair installations, etc. from the recovery console), but never got the cloned drive to boot into anything other than safe mode.

OK. So last night I tried to clone the drive using the sysprep tool and still had no success. In fact (and this is what really scares me now) sysprep has done something to my old drive so that I can not log on to my old accounts.

Here is what I did.
1. Installed only the old 100G HD in the primary master position and booted XP
2. Extracted the sysprep tool from my XP CD like the Microsoft article says.
3. Ran the sysprep tool with no parameters specified
4. Put the Acronis rescue CD in the drive and shut down the computer
5. Installed the new 250G HD in the primary slave position and booted to the Acronis CD
6. Cloned the drive and then shut the computer off.
7. Removed the Acronis rescue CD and installed the 250G drive in the primary master slot and did NOT install anything in the slave slot.
8. Booted the computer
9. the windows mini-setup ran and I entered all information. Then after clicking next/finish on the last setup dialog, the screen went black and the computer rebooted. The computer got to the XP logo screen during this second re-boot, but then flashed a quick blue screen and rebooted again. The blue screen had some text on it, but it disappeared too quickly for me to read. After this, the drive would only boot into safe mode.
10. At this point I put the old 100G drive back in the primary master slot and rebooted.
11. It ran the mini-setup (since sysprep was run) and was able to load windows.
12. But now I have a problem with the old drive. When I click on the old user accounts and enter the passwords, the computer does not log into the old accounts, but instead it creates new accounts by using the old names and adding the computer name to the end (e.g. chuck.computername).

At this point I am very concerned about getting my old drive back the way it used to be and only then figuring out how to clone it. Does anyone know how to restore full functionality/access to old accounts after running sysprep in the way I did?
I've sent this problem to Acronis tech support, but I'm also hoping that someone on this board has experience with my problem and can provide a quick solution.


Thank You
-Chuck Seal

 

Hello Chuck,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

The problem seems to be that you used sysprep without any parametres in contrast with the instructions provided at our site. I would recommend that you contact Microsoft Support Team in connection with this problem because there was nothing done with Acronis software yet.

As for the cloning procedure, could you please describe what are your old and new systems, especially your motherboards, hard drive controllers and hard drives.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

Thanks for your reply. I will try to work through Microsoft Support to get my original drive back the way it was. It looks like I screwed this this up, but the reason I did not specify any sysprep parameters was because the instructions on yout site did not seem to match my intent. The instructions state:

I plan on using the old drive as a backup drive on the same machine, which I took to mean the same thing as using both original and new hard disks in different computers simultaneously, which would imply not using the \nosidgen.


For the cloning. I am using only one computer with an Abit TH7II-RAID MB, Intel® 850 (ICH2) chipset for the HD controller (I upgraded to the latest BIOS from Abit before the cloning), the hard drives are both Western Digital (I don't have the exact model number here with me at work, but one is 100G the other is 250G)

 

Hi Chuck, I have no experience with SysPrep so I can not help you, but I wonder why you thought it was necessary to sysprep the system before the HD-upgrade? You are not cloning your current OS + configuration to a different computer, so there are no issues of duplicated Security ID's nor Computer Names. And you are not really changing the hardware either. It is still the same motherboard, the same graphics, the same network card, etc. So why SysPrep'ing??

 

Sysprep was made to prepare a *machine* and *seal* it so that a first time user can run the mini setup and work.

Your SIDs (security Identifiers) got changed in this process. Users in Windows aren't known by a user name, but by SID - new machine name with new SID? You get new "users" in documents and settings - this mechanism also is visible when using computers in windows domains. You can have local users and domain users with the same name, they will have different profile directories.

-nosidgen apparently blocks the SID renewing process.

Different SIDs on machines is very important when running inside windows domains, because the domain controller identifies the machine using SID. Clones have identical SIDs, things get messed up in networks. For you it's not important to erase/change SIDs, even when having 2 parallel installs.

Also remember, a nice "feature" of sysprep... you can run it *three times* then it's all over. It's for OEMs doing a master setup of a certain machine.

 

Thanks to some help from Microsoft and Google I've got my original HD back to the way it was before running sysprep. For anyone who has has a problem like mine after running sysprep, the following article helped me fix it Link .

MiniMax,
To answer your question, I don't know why sysprepping was required other than that's what Acronis Tech Support told me I had to do. After trying several times to get the clone to work without sysprep, I contacted tech support via 'support@acronis.com' and describe what I wanted (a migration of my old system drive to a new bigger one in the same chassis). I was referred to this link by Dennis Kurochkin of tech support: link and told to follow that procedure and try again (Ilya ref. Acronis #275211 to which I also provided my original system info and report files).

Like I stated in my original post I initially tried the cloning process without sysprepping. In fact, during the last attempt made before using the sysprep tool, I was very careful to not have the clone drive installed before booting and cloning from the rescue CD. Then after the clone operation completed I installed only the new cloned drive in the primary slot for the first windows boot (so windows never saw the cloned drive until the first boot. When I did this I got XP to boot the first time and logged into my account successfully. XP then said it detected new hardware (the new drive) and had to reboot, which I gather should be expected in a smooth clone process. Upon reboot I got esstentially the same behavior I describe above (quick blue screen and then safe mode only).

So bottom line: I've got my original drive back, but still can't clone it. Any help would be appreciated, but at this point I feel like I could have done a fresh install of XP on the new drive, re-installed all apps and copied over the old data in less time than I've been working on this.

Ilya, to add detail to my previous reply; my drives are:
Original - Western Digital WDC WD1000BB
New - Western Digital WDC WD2500JB
Also, I ran chkdsk on the new drive and it found no errors.

 

OK, I need some more help here from the community. I sent my latest clone results (see previous posts) to the tech support e-mail and I got this response (ref. Acronis #275211):

This does not make sense to me since the faq says to use -mini

I've told them I am not migrating to new hardware, but instead am trying to clone to a new drive to use in the same box. I'm starting to get the feeling that tech support is not even checking the report/sysinfo files I sent or reading my e-mails thoroughly.

Has anyone been able to clone an XP boot drive to a new (larger) drive and then replace the old boot drive with the new cloned one successfully? This shouldn't be this hard.

And here is another question I have for the Acronis team; The reason I bought this software was only to ease the process of upgrading my system drive. If I can't get this cloning to work can I get my money back?

 

Chuck, a couple of questions (please bear with me, if the info is already listed somewhere here):

• IDE/ATA controller or SATA?
• What else have you attached to the disk controller(s)?
  Optical drives?
• How are your devices distributed?
  How many on the primary controller?
  Secondary controller?
• How are they configured? Master, Slave?
• Where on the cable are they attached? Master at the end of the cable? Slave in the middle`?
• Have you trible-checked the jumpers on the drives?
  Western Digital drives are notorious for having a very unique way of wanting the jumpers to be set (or not set at all!).

 

MiniMax,
Answers:

• IDE/ATA

• Two optical drives on the secondary cable (A plextor Combo and a Sony DVD Burner, don't know the model numbers at the moment). On the primary cable I have been using the Original - Western Digital WDC WD1000BB and
  New - Western Digital WDC WD2500JB

• I've got the two WD drives on the primary (100G on Primary and 250G in secondary) and the two optical drives on the secondary

• The hard drives are jumpered to "cable select"

 

Hello Chuck,

I have read your correspondence with Dennis. All the actions you performed are quite right. I am sorry for not noticing that you wanted to use the new drive in the same computer.

Could you please describe what exactly is happening when you boot with the new drive? If I am not mistaken you are able to boot normally into Windows, then it finds new hard drive and reboots. What is happening then? Does it boot into Safe mode automatically? Also please try to set jumpers on your new drive as Master and boot the computer after that (as MiniMax mentioned, Western Digital disks are very tricky in "jumpering").

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

Thanks for the reply Ilya. I'm going to be travelling for the next week. I'll try it again with the jumpers set to master and slave (instead of cable select) when I get back next week.

At this point I'm scared to use sysprep again without knowing exactly what this tool and its parameters do to my system and accounts, so I'll try it without and report back.

-Chuck Seal

 

I know this is no help, but I just want to state, that Acronis is totally WRONG to tell you to use Sysprep to clone to a new drive that will be used in the same computer.

I've done this before, and all you have to do is clone the old drive to the new, shut down and swap the drives around. I realize you probably did this and had some trouble, but for them to tell you to use sysprep is just poor communication or poor support... in this situation.

Sysprep is absolutely the WRONG tool for what you're trying to do. Don't use it, not even if Acronis tells you too. It's just not meant to do what you're trying to do.

Now, my advice, don't use cable select. Take a few extra minutes and jumper the drives for the spots their going to be in. If it's master and slave then jumper them that way. Clone the drives, then switch the jumpers so the new one is master and the old is slave. Even the drive manuals recommend against cable select unless absolutely necessary (at least my maxtor manual does). Cable select is probably what's causing your issues. Edit: i see that advice has finally been given already, and I agree.

Second piece of advice, after you do the clone, boot up with only the new drive installed (set to master, etc). Get everything back up and going the way you remember, then put the old drive back in if you want to use it as storage. If windows gets confused because the old drive still has a system partition on it, there are many ways to format that drive first.

Good luck

 

I like Cable Select and see no reason not to use it. Cable Select is not rocket science either - it is about having a correctly wired 80-pin cable, a correctly working connector on the motherboard, and a controller on the disk that can sense if pin #28 is connected to ground or not.

I would say, that if you have a cable, or a connector, or a disk that fails these 3 simple requirements, then you have to ask yourself: What else could be wrong with my system?

The only trick is to jumper the drives correctly (which IS close to rocket science), and put them in the right position on the cable.

(Budding rocket sciencetist powered by Western Digital drives are advised to start here before building their first rocket).

Weird. I could not be bothered to dig out the manual for my DM+9, but fortunately Maxtor has the manual available on-line, and I found no such warning. In fact, the manual points out, that Cable Select is the factory setting:

Good advice! When in doubt, when something is not working: simplify, simplify, simplify!

 

No, I agree cable select is not rocket science. In fact, it's the easiest thing to do to for people that don't want to switch jumpers around when moving drives. But I think in this case, better to jumper specifically to master or slave whatever the case may be. Take a few extra minutes to do this, and rule out cable select cause you problems.

And since I can't find the manual where I thought I remembered reading this I will withdraw my statement. Sorry! However, as I was building my current PC, this advice was plastered all over something I was reading - maybe it was the MSI web forum for my motherboard. Anyway, I still say avoid cable select and jumper the drives as they should be. But I can't provide any evidence....

Edit: I did find this though:
do not use cable select

 

And that piece of advice from Maxtor, my dear friends, is a load of b*llocks: Check out what the complete paragraph says:

The advice may have been good back in September 2001, when noone was using Ultra DMA drives, but as UDMA requires 80-pin cables which all(?) comes ready-wired for Cable Select.

PS: I didn't say that explicitely jumpering the drives was a bad idea when you have problems. Just that there is no reason not to use it in a normal, working setup.

 

Its 80 "wire" 40 "pin." All IDE cables are 40 pin (unless pin is blocked for backward compatability for 33)...the good ones have a grounding wire next to the 40 wires to reduce crosstalk and increase speed...thus 80 wire 40 pin IDE cable. I know you knew that, but it might throw some n00bs off.

And for the original question. If you were doing all this with a new hard drive, how come you didnt just use the software provided for for you on the manufacturers disk whilst reading the manual.