Restored partition fails to boot

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by Underscore, Oct 17, 2006.

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  1. Underscore

    Underscore Registered Member

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    Last night I tried to roll back my system partition to a back-up done a month ago. Although it claims to have been successful, the PC now gets part way through booting and then shuts down.

    More details:
    • I'm running win2k, fully patched
    • I'm using, IIRC, a recent (hopefully the most recent) build of TI8
    • The hard drive has two NTFS partitions (the system partition being the one that I am trying to restore)
    • It is also multiboot, having Ubuntu and Xubuntu installed
    • The image is incremental, with 4 .tibs, which exist on a DVD/RW
    • The image validates fine
    • The image restores fine (onto the partition from which it was made, without resizing or changing any of the defaults)
    • Grub works fine, Windows starts booting and gets to end of the full-screen, 640x480 start-up screen when, instead of switching to next start-up/login screen, the PC simply shuts down
    • This happens even for a safe-mode boot
    • The only hardware change in the meantime has been the addition of a firewire card
    • Help!

    Thanks in advance for any help,

    _
     
  2. foghorne

    foghorne Registered Member

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    Hi Underscore,

    did you reinstall the MBR ?

    F.
     
  3. Underscore

    Underscore Registered Member

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    Hi foghorne,

    Basically, I don't know! I've never been offered the option to include or exclude it - either from the image or when restoring it. However, Grub runs up fine and wondows than starts to boot so I guess that the MBR is good...

    Thanks,

    _
     
  4. jaycee

    jaycee Registered Member

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    Did you try plugging out the Firewire card?

    I would suspect it to make drivers problems, but it is weird....
     
  5. bVolk

    bVolk Registered Member

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    Are you restoring the system partition to a different partitioning layout of the one existent when the image of the system partition has been created? (say, you only had C: when the image was created, but now you have C: and D: on the drive).

    The Windows installation is aware of the other partitions present, so you should restore it to the same disk layout. Or, you should restore an entire disk image of that time if you still have one. In this case the data in the Windows system files would match the actual layout restored.
     
  6. Underscore

    Underscore Registered Member

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    No, I didn't try this since it is a major hassle (due to where the PC is) and, being an AHCI card, I didn't even need to do anything to install it under windows - not even a "found new hardware wizard" - it was just there.

    I may resort to giving it a go but I don't reckon that there will be much chance of success.

    Cheers,

    _
     
  7. Underscore

    Underscore Registered Member

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    No, the partition layout is unchanged from when the final image was produced. I have installed Xubuntu since the first image in the set but the incremental images produced since will ensure the correct windows config files are restored, right?

    Thanks,

    _
     
  8. bVolk

    bVolk Registered Member

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    Yes, they should.

    If there is a possibility of mismatch between the MBR version (pre/after bootloader installed) and the restored Windows installation, consider this. In TI8, if you restore with the tickbox next to Disk 1 checked, the MBR will be restored too. If only the partition(s) are checked, but not Disk 1, the MBR is not restored.
     
  9. Underscore

    Underscore Registered Member

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    OK, well the archive was just of my system partition (I have other back-up strategies for the other partitions) so I guess that the MBR was left alone.

    Anyway, I've now given up on that image - fortunately I had another image which wasn't too far from the one I wanted so I restored that one (which worked - phew!) and worked from there. However, this has somewhat shaken my faith in TI - having saved my bacon twice before, I rely on it to haul me out of sticky situations, like a HDD dying and windows barffing on installing a driver - but now I'm not sure if TI is sufficient to do that any more...

    Thanks all for your help,

    _
     
  10. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Underscore,

    This is probably a partition signature problem. If it happens again, clearing the DiskID with fdisk /mbr should allow WinXP to boot but it will disable your boot manager. I'm not sure why this should have happened to you. It's common with cloning but not with image restoration.

    http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm
     
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