XP won't boot after Restore - TI10

I have a single OS boot, containing XP Pro only.

I just purchased a new SATA HDD and wanted to clone my old drive onto my new one. My old drive is a PATA HDD.

The cloning process completed successfully without any error, but now, i can't boot to my new hard drive. It goes through BIOS and then just halts there and does nothing.

I used my XP cd to boot into the recovery console, and that manages to find the Win installation.

I tried bootcfg /add at first, but that didn't solve it.

I then tried fixboot, and that was useless too.

Tried fixmbr, and no change once more. I tried the AutoFixMBD cd suggested in the "ReadFirst" post but that didn't work either.

On a weirder side note, i can't even seem to boot on my original drive anymore either..... but if i can get the new one to work, that'll be fine.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

 

It sounds like you didn't disconnect the original drive before rebooting the machine. See this thread for some help Multi-Booting with Windows in an Extended Partition. Windows get confused if you leave both drives connected and reboot that way.

 

Thanks thomasjk, i read that link and tried method 1 and 3. Neither seem to produce any change. I did notice though that in th Recovery Console, my install dir is preceeded by C:\. Even if i would try to re-inst WinXP, it tells me there's already an installation present... just that i can't boot to it.

 

Try doing a Repair Install of Windows. The Repair option you want though, (there are a few in different windows that are presented) is the one that comes up right after the EULA where you have to press F8 to agree. So in all windows previous to the EULA do as if you're installing Windows. This includes ignoring the F2 to go into the recovery console.

 

I've tried some other things in the meanwhile, but no matter what i do, it comes down to i see the install dir, and the boot settings, but i keep getting a error "Problem loading operating system" (which is mobo generated i think)

So i guess i don't have much choice but to do a repair, though i'm not sure i want to unless i have no other choice at all!

Anyone else have ideas?

 

Is the SATA controller new? If so, did you load the drivers for it?

If the SATA is on the motherboard, the drivers should have been loaded when WinXP was installed, but if it was added after you made the image, then the drivers are not on XP in the image.

 

Before the whole cloning process, i did bootup to XP with the new drive plugged in, so i do imagine that all the proper drivers were installed

BUT, mayber this isn't TI related at all... I went ahead and formatted the new drive, to start fresh, and then just get all the files i needed and such; but now, even with a fresh partition, and a fresh WinXP install (the dos part) it still gives me that bloody error and won't continue...

FYI, my mobo is an ASUS Crosshair, my old drive is a Maxtor 1000GB and my new drive is a Western Digital 250GB.

 

Yes, that should have installed everything needed. Especially if you accessed the drive and partitioned and formatted it. It had to be properly installed.

Well, that's very suspicious.

If you reinstall the old PATA boot drive which used to support this drive what happens?

 

With the old PATA drive back in, it all works like a charm, no problem at all!!

I'm just clueless as to why i'm having problems with all of this, i've never had troubles like that.

Here's a weird thought, could it be that my mobo doesn't like the WD HDD?

 

Is the BIOS set to the correct port to boot from the SATA drive?

Try a different SATA port?

 

I'm pretty sure it picks the 1st available SATA HDD detected.

But just in case, i did set SATA1 as my second boot device (first being my CD-ROM, which is in SATA6)

 

with windows xp, you always need to rule out the drive letters first.
Use the demo of "paragon justboot corrector" to boot up the computer.
Check your drive letters , look at your boot.ini file.
A restoration of windows xp especially on a single hard drive system is easy to troubleshoot and get back up. below are the 3 things to eliminate.
1. drive letter changes
2. boot.ini file errors
3. MBR problems (usually only on dual boot systems.)

Repair installations of windows won't fix a drive letter problem, or MBR problem.
Don't worry about whether windows saw the new hard drive, if it did the damage is done(all you have to do is fix the drive letters afterwards if needed.)

It has never took me more than 30 minutes to repair a non-booting windows xp restoration. My expierence has shown me that all restored hard drives can be fixed. As long as you didn't get error's during the restoration process, you have a good clone, you just need to fix some minor discrepancy's.

I've done a couple of IDE to SATA restores, with no problems. If the bios can recognize the drives, your drives are good. If your not getting input/output errors and your cdrom can bootup from a boot cd usually your motherboard is good.

demo here
http://www.justboot.us/boot_corrector.htm

 

Does this help? It implies you need to manually install the SATA drivers to the IDE OS before cloning.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=294

 

OK, well i followed the link, and it's pretty much what i've been doing. And in case, i went back to the store and got another HDD, same brand and size, but different disk.

The only difference is that this time, i used Ghost2k3 (sorry, my bad, it's what we use at work :S ) and it all seems to work fine for now. The only issue left are my drive letters... it seems to pick up my other IDE as C and put my new SATA as D; even if my SATA is set to #1 in BIOS.

So once i figure how to change drive letters within Recovery Console or DOS, hopefully all will be fine and working.

But even with my SATA drive only in there, i get a the "Boot disk failiure. Insert system disk and press enter." error, and apparently running bootcfg (which see the install dir) won't help it load.

 

Is this from Windows? You shouldn't have both HDs installed in your computer until the SATA HD has booted on its own for the first time.

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

You need to fix this in the BIOS.

 

Ah ok, i didn't know that, and i did unplug it after, and then i got this error.

How so?

My boot order is:
1. CD-Rom
2. HDD

and the only disk plugged in now is my SATA drive.

And for the record, i feel very very n00bish at this point... heh... ^^;

I've done some reading and, turns out that my installation partition wasn't set as active. Now that's done but more errors inssue... (godammit)

Now i'm at "Error loading operating system"

 

This is a difficult problem but is usually BIOS related. Sorry, I can't assist you to setup your BIOS. Hopefully someone has a similar BIOS.

 

Alright. Thanks a bunch though, it's all really appreciated!!