unable to migrate windows xp installation to new hard drive

Problem: unable to migrate windows xp installation from scsi hard drive to eide hard drive using Acronis True Image 11 Software. Cannot boot destination hard drive. Every attempt results in error 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…”
I have a Seagate cheetah scsi hard drive with a tekram scis controller card in an Abit AV8 mobo (Via chipset 8327) AMD processor that I am trying to replace with an eide hard drive. I have tried several destination hard drives and the process does not workl. I have confirmed that the destination hard drives can do a fresh install of windows xp so I know it is NOT a hardware issue.
I have been careful to disconnect the original boot hard drive and to reorder the sequence of boot devices in the BIOS so the destination hard drive is the top of the list. I have tried cloning the disk; I have tried a full backup/restore. I have tried restoring from inside of windows as well as on bootup. I have tried third party boot corrector software that confirms that there is no drive letter mixup in the registry and that recognizes the presence of an xp installation and boot sector in the new harddrive. I am getting desperate. I have already experienced DATA LOSS as a result of this Acronis Software. One attempt to restore from inside windows using an acronis backup file stored on a third storage disk led to the loss of ALL of the data on the source disk… Any suggestions on how to get the new hard drive to boot? Thanks!!!

 

You'll probably have to boot from the XP CD and do a Repair Install since the hardware is too different. Going from a SCSI drive to an IDE drive uses different controllers and different drivers. These drivers are not installed and so Windows can't find the drive.

 

Will repair install preserve the oriingal os installation and applications?

 

It is supposed to. However, you will have to reinstall any Service Packs and Windows updates that were installed after your CD was made. For example, if your XP CD is an original XP CD or a Service Pack 1 CD then you'd need to install SP2 and any following updates after the Repair Install. If you XP CD is an SP2 CD, then you'll just need to install the post-SP2 updates from Windows Update.

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One other option you could try (since you have a good image), would be to make sure the IDE drivers are installed for your chipset (while booted to the SCSI drive). Once the drivers are installed, shutdown and connect an IDE drive (can be the one you're restoring to if you want). Then restart the computer. Windows should detect the IDE drive and automatically install the drivers for it. It should be visible in Windows Disk Management.

Now that the drivers are installed, create a new TI image of the SCSI drive (don't erase your current image, keep it). Then try restoring the new image file to the IDE drive. Disconnect the SCSI drive and card and see if the IDE drive will boot.

It may not work, but sometimes just having Windows have the drivers installed and having it know that an IDE drive exists will let it adjust to the change.

 

Thanks for the suggestions!!! I will probably try the repair install since the image of the scsi drive was made with eide slave drives present...two quick questions... when I re-attach the original scsi drive and look at the [operating systems] portion of boot.ini file it looks like it points to the os existing on a disk(1) but when I actually boot into the os the drive is referenced as disk(0)....could the scsi drive boot with an invalid boot.ini path? The second and related question...when I examine the boot ini the path does NOT contain multi(0) as the first element of the path statement...is that first element only necessary with multiple os systems?
Thanks!!!

 

The SCSI drive was obviously setup and booting correctly since you were using it. Whether or not TI properly set the boot.ini file on the IDE drive after the restore is another matter.

Here is an example of a normal XP IDE boot.ini file with the Windows partition being the first partition on the drive:

Code:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
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

If you have only the IDE drive connected then it should be like this and it should be disk(0).

If it looks differently, you might try editing the file and seeing if you get any better results.

 

I don't have this switch /NoExecute=OptIn
Any idea what it is for?

Back tp your earlier suggestion...now that I recall I did do a windows repair install, got prompted for a number of the mobo drivers like the sound and modem (oddly) and ended up with an os absent of all of my apps...

 

/NOEXECUTE

This option is only available on 32-bit versions of Windows when running on processors supporting no-execute protection. It enables no-execute protection (also known as Data Execution Protection - DEP), which results in the Memory Manager marking pages containing data as no-execute so that they cannot be executed as code. This can be useful for preventing malicious code from exploiting buffer overflow bugs with unexpected program input in order to execute arbitrary code. No-execute protection is always enabled on 64-bit versions of Windows on processors that support no-execute protection. There are several options you can specify with this switch:

• /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN Enables DEP for core system images and those specified in the DEP configuration dialog.
• /NOEXECUTE=OPTOUT Enables DEP for all images except those specified in the DEP configuration dialog.
• /NOEXECUTE=ALWAYSON Enables DEP on all images.
• /NOEXECUTE=ALWAYSOFF Disables DEP.

Are you sure it was a Repair Install and not a Reinstall? In any case, since you are "testing" on your restored drive, you don't have anything to loose by trying.

 

Well I finally figured out the problem!!!!...after scouring Microsoft's website I came across a technical bulletin dealing with the syntax of the boot.ini file...
It seems that the image of the scsi hard drive had a boot.ini that was missing an operator in the boot path namely "multi(0)". Apparently scsi drives don't need this operator because they boot from their own scsi card. The multi(0) is REQUIRED for the eide drive to look to the system BIOS for info to boot. Also there was a faulty signature statement preceding the boot path. I just deleted it and rebooted and voila...all is well. Would have been nice if Acronis tech support would have picked up on this...I was quite clear to them that I had xp on a scsi hard drive that I was trying to migrate to an EIDE...anyway I post this for anyone else who might run across a similar problem. Thanks for all of the suggestions!!!