System freezes before loading WinXP on cloned drive

I cloned the contents of my primary (and failing) Seagate 150gb drive (including Windows XP install) to my new Western Digital 250gb drive using True Image, yet upon booting with the new drive my system hangs right before loading the OS. I believe this has something to do with the MBR, but I just can't figure out how to fix this.

Currently the Seagate drive with the working Windows installation is "C" and the WD drive is "F". I also have an 300gb Seagate drive on "D".

How can I get XP to recognize the newer WD drive as the C: drive so that it boots correctly?

I tried booting with the Acronis utility that allows you to modify the MBR, but when I try to edit it, I get the message: "No Commands for Booting Operating System." I also tried loading the Recovery Console with my XP CD, but my system froze and I got a blue screen with some "ACPI" error. I think that's BIOS-related.

It's very critical that I save the contents of my older drive, which is failing but seems to be error-free and good for at least a few more weeks (if the Hard Drive Gods can be gracious enough).

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

 

Well, at least when I've cloned system drives, I've done the following...

• Configured the clone job and allowed TI to restart and initiated the cloning procedure with C: as master and the clone to be as slave.
• Performed the clone and allowed a restart from the original C: drive without changing anything.
• On restart, I allow the system to come up then I shutdown the PC, pull the original C: drive and replace it with the clone (I usually have the drives set to CS) as master.
• Restart with the new drive booting.

That has always worked absolutely fine.

Blue

 

Hi there. I should have mentioned that all of my drives are SATA, so there is no slave/master configuration business. Thanks for the suggestion though!

 

Have a look at this link. Kawecki's trick is an easy one to try if you have the W95/98 startup/recovery diskette.

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

Are you sure your SATA disk itself is bad. I've had 2 bad SATA cables and apparently SATA cables are a top support issue. Mine showed up in the event logger and the specific recommendation as to change the cable. Both duds had COMAX stamped on the connector end.

 

Hi there. I tried the Kawecki technique (booting with a Win98 Startup Disk and then using the "fdisk /mbr" command) to no avail. My system still freezes on a blank screen with a blinking "_" right before loading the Windows startup screen.

I tried the following configurations in terms of the physical setup of my SATA drives:

-Leaving the drives as-is, but changing the boot priority in the BIOS.
-Detaching the old hard drive's SATA cable and having the new hard drive detected as the boot drive.
-Switching the cables from the SATA ports on my motherboard (SATA1 to SATA3) and booting.

The reason why I think my old (three months old!) Seagate drive is failing is because of the scary sounds it's making, and that yesterday things started to load really slowly. I read somewhere this isn't uncommon for Seagate drives. At least I can still get a replacement or a refund.


I have to say, I REALLY appreciate the suggestions I've been getting. Unlike before, I'm actually getting quite confident that a solution will be found. Thanks guys.

 

Noises generally aren't good and certainly aren't the cable unless it is wrapped around the platters

Have a look at the Acronis reply in this post even though the symptom isn't exactly yours it does deal with a boot issue. It is #8 in the thread.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=130609

 

Hello heatmiser,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are very sorry for the delay with the response.

First of all, please make sure that you use the latest build (3567) of Acronis True Image 9.0 Home which is available at: http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/support/updates/

You can find the full version name and build number by going to Help -> About... menu in the main program window.

To get access to updates you should create an account at:
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/my/
then log in and use your serial number to register your software.

Please uninstall any previously installed build by following Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs -> Acronis True Image, prior to installing build 3567.

Note that you should create new Bootable Rescue CD after installing the update.

Then please do the following:

- Check each partition of the source hard drive by Windows utility: use Windows menu Start\Run, then enter the command "chkdsk c: /r" "chkdsk d: /r" for every partition of this hard drive;

Note that you will need to reboot your computer in order to scan the system partition.

- Right after checking the hard drive boot your computer from Bootable Rescue CD created with the latest build (3567) of Acronis True Image 9.0 Home and perform the disk cloning operation once more;

- After the disk cloning process is finished turn off your computer and completely unplug the source hard drive;

- Install destination hard drive in place of the original disk;

- Try to boot into Windows and see the result;

- If windows boots normally then you can turn off the computer and connect the original disk;

Please be aware that keeping both (identical) hard drives connected on Windows first boot may cause different boot or drive letter assignment problems. We therefore recommend that you connect both hard drives only after Windows successful boot from one of these drives connected separately.

If the problem still persists then please unplug the destination hard drive and create Acronis Report in the way described below:

- Download and run Acronis Report Utility;
- Select the "Create Bootable Floppy" option;
- Insert a blank floppy disk in the A: drive and proceed with creation of the bootable floppy;
- Boot the computer from the beforehand create diskette and wait for report creation process to finish;
- Collect the report file from the floppy and rename it to report_source.txt

Then please swap the hard drives (unplug the source disk and install the destination hard drive in it's place) and create Acronis Report once more. Rename the report collected to report_destination.txt

Please submit a request for technical support. Provide the reports collected in your request along with the step-by-step description of the actions taken before the problem appears and the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with the solution.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov