Restored image boot problem

I have a Dell Dimension 4700 desktop with a single Maxtor Diamondmax 9 160Gig SATA drive. I purchased a Maxtor Diamondmax 10 160Gig Sata 2 drive as a backup. I decided to use TI 9 to backup my main drive's C: partition and restore it to my new drive, thus simulating the loss of the main drive and testing the recovery procedure.

I used the BIOS setup to disable the main drive and enable the virgin drive. I changed the boot sequence to my internal CD drive and booted with the Acronis rescue disk.

I successfully made an image of my C: drive to a third (USB) drive and verified. I then restored the MBR and track 0 and the image to the new drive. All operations were successful.

I then changed the boot sequence to boot from the new drive. The result was a boot failure with the following message:

"Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem. Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware."

Not being a computer technical whiz I am now lost. The only thing I did not do was to install the new disk using Maxtor's "Maxblast4" software. I assumed TI 9 would look after initialising the drive and it appears to have done so.

Any help greatly appreciated.

 

ok I'll answer my own question as I've solved the mystery.

Dell computers have 3 partitions, the system partition being no.2. I only archived and restored the system partition. When I booted, boot.ini went looking for partition 2 but there was only one.

I assume the computer would operate normally if the 2 extra partitions were not there (assuming the boot.ini file was modified.)

 

Hello Fred,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please accept our apologies for the delay with the response.

We are really glad to hear that you managed to solve the problem on your own.

If you have any further experience to share, please feel to post it on this forum.

Thank you.
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Alexey Popov