Newbie needs HELP with cloning issue

I have successfully cloned my 80gb hd to 250gb using Acronis 9.0 full store bought program. But when I take out the 80gb and install the 250gb as master when I boot up I get the message "Operating System Missing".
I understood that cloning copied everything. Am I wrong?
Does this have anything to do with the MBR that I have read about in other posts? What is an MBR?
If this helps, my system does recognize the 250gb as master. Is Imaging a better solution?
I am cloning the original hd of a Sony Vaio PCV-RZ 32G if it makes any difference?

 

I have this exact same problem! Let me know if you find a solution.

 

I have the same problem too... Used ATI v9.0.2337, which said it successfully cloned the drive. The new drive says "Missing operating System", and the original drive is now dead...

 

There are several causes for this error, one of which is trying to boot from a partition which is not set "active".

Do you have a Partition Magic or Acronis DDS boot disc so you could check whether the partition is active? Set it active. You can also do this with pqboot.exe from a dos floppy. It's worth trying.

 

Yep, it's set active; confirmed using Disk Director. Thanks for the suggestion.

Looking through the forum, this seems to be a very common problem with disc cloning. I can't help feeling that this feature is not ready for prime time...

I can see all my data from the Acronis boot CD, including all my Windows files. Everything's there, yet "Missing operating system" at boot... I'd really rather not have to rebuild the whole box...

 

firebrand,

Thanks for letting us know.

My list for Missing operating System includes

OS not active
No MBR
non bootable floppy in drive
HD failure
HD not recognized in the BIOS.

Could you try fdisk /mbr from a Win98 boot floppy. This will write a generic MBR and help in the rare case of "no MBR".

If you look through the forum, creating clones is where people have the most trouble. Even when adding a new HD, I create a partition image of the old C: drive and restore the image to the new HD. Even though I've never experienced a clone failure (except when I've deliberately made the process fail in testing) I prefer image/ restore.

 

If fdisk /mbr doesn't work then try this boot disk.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305595/

You will need to create the floppy on another computer and the boot.ini must match yours. ie Same WinXP (Home/Pro), same partition number.

 

Thanks for the suggestions - I will try this evening.

 

I gave the suggestions above a try.

fdisk /mbr with a Windows 98 boot floppy: no difference.

I created a boot floppy per the KB above. Identical default= and [operating system] lines

[operating system]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /noexecute=OptIn

Booting from this floppy, I got the message:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<Windows root>\System32\hal.dll
Please reinstall a copy of the above file.​

I used ERD Commander to replace hal.dll from my working PC. Old (corrupt?) file was 103 KB, 8/3/04; new one was 131 KB, 8/4/04 - one day difference(?!).

Booted again, same message re hal.dll. So there could be a problem with this file; or possibly this is the first OS file it looks for, and it's looking in the wrong place?

Thanks for your help, BrianK - much appreciated. But color me stumped :-}

 

firebrand,

We are clutching at straws now.

"Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:<Windows root>\System32\hal.dll" is a well known boot.ini problem

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=130

From the boot floppy that you made, could you edit boot.ini to show partition(2) Edit the two lines. If that doesn't work then edit again to show partition(3)

I'll keep my fingers crossed for you.

PS Using ERD Commander, can you view the boot.ini on your HD?

 

Something to check that I noticed several times when making images with various software, check your boot.ini file.

It should look something like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons

Check to see if on the third line, your boot.ini does in fact say multi and NOT scsi. Between having to use the fdisk /mbr and correcting that line, that combination has generally gotten me back into a properly working Windows XP system.

Something else to do, is try to make a Windows XP boot disk, to see if it is in fact your bootup environment. Check out this MS kb article for how to do it:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/301680/

Be sure that you use the boot.ini setup that I posted earlier and not the scsi example that they show in the kb article unless you are in fact using a scsi disk.

 

Hello all,

Thank you for using Acronis Backup Software

Please note that HDD is a critical for booting device and in order to avoid any compatibility issues it is the better choice to use the identical HDDs for Cloning/Restoring images.

To recover MBR of Windows XP please boot the computer from a Windows XP Installation CD, start Recovery Console and run fixmbr command.

You can also make an image of the working drive and then recover an MBR separately onto the clone of it.

Thank you
--
Alexander Gladkov

 

Just went through and re-read the previous replies. Something else to look at is, make sure that your installation is in fact in the Windows directory as opposed to WINNT. I've seen some OEM installations that still used the WINNT directory on Windows XP builds.