TI-11 Clone fails to boot

I have read several previous posts relating to wrong drive letters, but can't see how this relates to my problem...

Drive to be cloned has two partitions, 1st partition is a 3Gb FAT32 Recovery partition, the 2nd is a 72Gb NTFS (XP Home). The original drive boots up ok.

My rig on the bench runs XP Pro and has TI-11 installed on it. I am attaching the drive to be cloned to the second IDE interface, and the new drive is attached to a third IDE interface on a plug-in PCI card.

The cloned drive fails to boot when installed in the original PC, just sits doing nothing after the initial POST splash screen. I cannot see how that can be a drive letter problem. Checking the drive it appears to have all necessary files in place, and BOOT.INI shows partition (2).

Incidentally, this setup has worked fine with other drives, both XP and Vista. I have checked the new drive by putting a different operating system on it, and it boots up fine, and there are no detectable errors on the drive. I have made sure it is jumpered the same as the original. Also tried wiping the drive, FDISK /MBR etc., prior to cloning.

Where do I go from here?

 

Since you mention "original PC" that seems to imply that you're putting the cloned drive into a different pc than the one used for the clone source. In other words you're connecting the cloned drive to different hardware than the clone source. If so, this is the problem. The cloned drive does not have the correct drivers for the hardware it is connected to. You first have to create an Image (not Clone) and then restore that Image to the drive when connected in the box it will boot from. Also you have to use Universal Restore with True Image Workstation when restoring that Image. This gives you the option to install the correct drivers.

 

Apologies for not making myself clear...

I want the newly cloned drive to go back into exactly the same computer, so there's no change of hardware, other than a different model of hard drive! (They both Maxtors).

I have also just tried making an image (both partitions) in TI-11, and then restoring it. That didn't work either...

Whilst typing this, I've wiped the target drive for the umpteenth time, and just for the hell of it, I've bunged in an old XP Home disk and told it to do a brand new fresh install. So far so good - it's got 25 minutes to run...

However, that doesn't address the issue of why TI-11 seemingly can't clone that drive...

 

It's a drive letter problem. I know one when I see one. You only have to mention true image/windows xp/clone won't boot in the same sentence and it leaves no doubt what the problem is.

All the fixes you tried won't fix it. The only thing that will fix a drive letter problem is to manually change the drive letters in the registry or to do a clean reinstall of windows xp (not a repair installation). If you keep redoing the clone eventually it will work (but that is time comsuming).

My advice is to get a "boot corrector" it fixes the drive letters in 5 minutes and will get the drive to bootup. That's what I use and it works everytime. Incidently that clone you did is perfect except for the drive letters which are easy to fix.

Of course the problem can be something else, but until you rule out the drive letters, it's probably the drive letters.

 

I accept what you say about drive letters, and the need to run a "boot corrector". However, I cannot for the life of me understand how the entries in the Registry are being altered when that Registry is clearly not being run or activated! The clone and cloned disks are both being attached as secondary drives to the XP system which is running Acronis. I can see drive letters might get altered if I was cloning the drive that was running...

I made a clone of a drive with a similar scenario just over a week ago, i.e. FAT32 1st partition, NTFS 2nd partition, and this worked first time without all this hoo-ha! My laptop has FOUR individual working partitions each with a separate, and different, operating system. How come I can clone that without a hiccup?

As I said, I am not doubting what you say, I would just really appreciate understanding HOW and WHY it is happening!!

You mentioned manually altering drive letters in the Registry. So, can you kindly give me a few pointers on where to look - I'm quite happy to poke about and alter entries in there...

 

G0AOZ,

This must be so frustrating. It should work.

I'm a little confused. It's a desktop computer and you have 3 HDs installed? Is that correct? So the HD you are cloning is not the HD that contains the booted OS?


PS When you cloned your laptop, was there a single internal HD? Did you clone to an external HD?

 

Hi, thanks for replying.

Machine with the disk I want to clone is a Compaq Presario. It has an 80Gb IDE drive which is set to Cable select, and is the only drive on the motherboard's primary IDE interface.

My bench rig which I use for copying, cloning, etc., consists of the following:-

Mobo primary IDE i/face - 40Gb IDE, boots with XP Pro, and has TI-11 installed. No other drives attached to i/face.
Mobo Secondary IDE i/face - 80Gb IDE which is source drive to be cloned. No other drives attached to i/face.
Mobo add-in Promise PCI IDE card - 80Gb IDE which is target drive for clone. No other drives attached to i/face.

From this you can see that the operating system on the Compaq drive (on the secondary i/face), is NOT being run - it is merely a "passive" drive in the machine.

I have, in fact, just found a drive I cloned last week for a Dell, (using Acronis!) with exactly the same scenario, i.e. 1st partition FAT32, 2nd patition NTFS. I have looked at the partitions on that drive and they are pretty much the same as the ones on the Compaq drive, give or take a few Mb's. No partitions are hidden, and both show second partition as the Active one. If I attach this Dell clone to the primary IDE i/face on my bench rig, and disconnect all other drives, it will actually start to boot up! This will not even start to work on the Compaq motherboard. Ok ok, so the Compaq has a completely different chipset, but you'd still expect it to reach the XP Home Normal/Safe Mode boot menu...

This is leading me to suspect that possibly something in the Compaq BIOS is preventing a cloned drive from booting, rather than perhaps a fault on the drive or it's cloned partitions.

What say you...?

 

Sorry, didn't answer your question about the laptop! Yes, all on a single drive. I have in fact got 6 operating systems (7 if you count MS-DOS v6.22) which can be selected on that laptop!

!st Partition is MS-DOS v6.22 with triple boot to WINv3.11, WIN95 and NT4.
2nd Partition is XP Pro.
3rd Partition is W2K Pro.
4th Partition is WIN98.

The appropriate operating system is selected in MRBOOTER Boot Manager. It means I have a full set of working files for a number of different systems when I go visit anyone...

 

G0AOZ,
I can certainly appreciate your frustrations.

Try booting the bench computer using an Acronis True Image Emergency Boot CD and going into the Acronis GUI instead of using the Windows environment.

Then pick the Clone function, select the image drive and target drive, and then execute the clone operation.

When that operation is complete, exit the Acronis GUI and turn off the computer.

Disconnect / remove the target drive, installl it into the Presario laptop, and boot up.

If this does not bring cloning joy, I say shoot it.

.

 

G0AOZ,

Multiple OS including DOS. A man after my own heart.

I must say that I've never seen anyone clone the way you are attempting. It sounds OK but as it's not conventional that may be the issue. From Windows, every-one here clones the primary HD, the one that's running Windows, to a secondary HD. As you did with the laptop.

I still can't understand where the 80 GB Source HD fits in. Was it the primary HD at some stage?

As FreemanW mentioned, cloning from the TI CD seems to be more reliable but I've never had a TI clone failure from Windows. But it's obviously hardware dependent.

 

Sheeze, one more detail. Make sure to set the jumpers on both drives to CS (Cable Select); unless directed to do otherwise by drive mfgr.

 

G0AOZ,

I think I'm starting to catch on. The source HD isn't from the Compaq. It's the primary HD from another computer. Is that correct? (I just read your initial post again and you clearly state this. Sorry)

If so, we are getting somewhere. We need to know the CHS geometry of the "final resting place" of the cloned HD and the CHS geometry of the Compaq. Typically, Compaqs have 240 head geometry and a HD from a Dell which has 255 head geometry will not boot in a Compaq. If you clone or restore a HD in a Compaq, it won't boot in a Dell for the same reason. CHS geometry is determined by the BIOS.

I use pqedit32.exe to determine geometry but you may have a favourite.


ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/PTEDIT32.zip

Please let us know the head and sector numbers from ptedit32.exe? Both should have 63 sectors per track but the heads will probably differ.

PS.. I'm still only half way there. The "final resting spot" is the Compaq. I had it back the front but the logic still applies.



..

 

Thanks both.

Yes, both (clone) source and target drives are jumpered CS.

Brian, I suspect you're on the right track querying the CHS geometry!

Original Compaq HDD:- C=10587, H=240, S=63
New cloned hard disk:- C=41349, H=60, S=63

Being only a recent user of Acronis, I'm not yet fully "au fait" with all its facilities yet, but have just made myself a boot recovery CD. Booted up the Compaq using that CD, and successfully cloned old drive to new.

I'm sure I've seen Compaqs in here previously and made clones using other software, but never had this trouble before!

Anyhow, problem solved, thank you all for your help.

 

A quote from Dan Goodell regarding "final resting place." It mentions images but applies to clones as well.

As usual, your drive letter explanation for almost every True Image problem is just plain misleading.