XP2 restore works, can't boot drive

My Dell laptop's hard disk died; Dell sent me another drive. which I partitioned and formatted. (The old drive was 37.22GB; the new one is 55.89GB, which I set up as a single 55GB partition.)

Then I tried using True Image 7.0 to restore my image of a Windows XP Service Pack 2 drive.

I restored to the only partition shown on a drive, chose Active not Primary, transferred all the data, but the drive wouldn't boot. I tried this twice, both times with the same results.

I get message, "Windows could not start because of disk hardware configuration problem. Could not read from selected bootdisk. Check booth path and disk hardware."

Can you suggest what I should do now? I'm hoping Dell can help me tomorrow, but I think I have a better chance here...

Thanks,

 

I believe that with a single partition it has to be primary and active

see screen shot

 

Hi, Felix

Welcomed to Wilders and Acronis Forums.

Should be set for Primary.

Take Care,
TheQuest

 

Thanks for the great, quick replies...OK, so not seeing any way to switch from Active to Primary, I attempted to do the whole thing again, but now the "primary" option button is grayed out, can no longer be selected. Do I have to reformat the drive to start over?

 

I just tried again, and this time I notice that when it's "analyzing" the C (destination) drive, it shows under the "Flags" column, "Pri,Active" -- so maybe when I selected Active, it also made it primary already? If so, then either that's not the problem, or maybe I do need to go back and reformat the drive, this time choosing Primary?

 

Hi, bigc73542

Sorry must have been typing my post as you was posting at the same time.

Take Care,
TheQuest

 

Hi, Felix

You should not need to reformat, Ti should ask if you would like to delete the Partition and data before you do the restore. [you have to say Yes or it can not do the restore] and if you was to reformat Ti would sill have to delete the Partition as if has to restore to unallocated space.

But on a personal note of choice, I always do a low level format [0000] before I do a restore.

Take Care,
TheQuest

 

Felix,

On my Dell laptop's drive, two partitions are installed by Dell: a small FAT partition which contains diagnostic software and the primary "C:" drive. The "boot.ini" file reflects this in that it boots from the second partition, not the first. This could be your problem. When I imaged my drive, I copied both partitions. When I restored to a new HDD, I had no problem.

 

If your drive was set up as John described, all may not be lost if you did not image the small FAT partition.

Try reading the image file as a virtual drive on another PC. In the root directory should be a file named "boot.ini" as John mentioned. This is just a text file that can be edited with any text editor. In the [operating system] section, there should be lines that look like this:

"multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect"

WinXP will boot from the top most line so if that is pointing to the small FAT partition, move that line below the next line which should be pointing to your partition with your WinXP system. Then save the file.

Hopefully when you reboot, WinXP will come up.
Might be worth a shot if all else fails,
Skyhawk

 

Hello Felix,

Thank you for your interest in Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/products/trueimage/).

First of all, let's make it clear. if you select Primary - it will be Primary, if you select Active - it will be Primary and Active.

Please contact support@acronis.com regarding this problem and provide us with the following information:

1) Did you make an image of the whole entire drive or only one partition?

2) Could you please do the following?

- Download Acronis Report utility from http://www.acronis.com/files/support/AcronisReport.exe;
- Run Acronis Report and select the "Create bootable floppy" option;
- Insert a blank floppy disk in the floppy drive and proceed with creating the bootable diskette;
- Boot the computer under consideration from this diskette and wait for report creation process to complete;
- Send us the report.txt file from the floppy disk.

This would provide us with detailed information on the hard disk partition structure.

Thank you.

--
Best regards,
Andrew Berezovsky

 

I have a couple of questions which have arisen from this thread:

1. It has been said that one can mount, as a virtual drive on another PC, the TI image and then edit the boot.ini file. Is this the same as using the TI "explore" option? If not, what does this operation entail? In any event, once the boot.ini file is edited, how does TI save it back into the image file for later restoration on the original PC?

2. I have a system setup for dual boot using PartitionMagic 8.01 (performed by a friend, win xp pro and win98se). If I want to delete the win98se, the instructions say to uninstall BootMagic (the PM boot manager) before deleting the partition and resizing and moving the other partition. Does this PM process automatically create the proper boot.ini file for the remaining XP partition? Does the above still apply if instead of a win98se partition, I had a second XP partition that I wanted to remove?

3. If I later want to use TI to restore the deleted win98se partition (or second XP partition), is the appropriate boot.ini file automatically created?

I would appreciate any help I can get in understanding what is involved here.

Thanks,
Harvey

 

Hello Harvey,

Thank you for your interest in Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/products/trueimage/).

"It has been said that one can mount, as a virtual drive on another PC, the TI image and then edit the boot.ini file. Is this the same as using the TI "explore" option? If not, what does this operation entail? In any event, once the boot.ini file is edited, how does TI save it back into the image file for later restoration on the original PC?" - there is no any opportunity to modify any file in the image.

Regarding the operating system deletion and boot.ini files... Every such action requires very carefull investigation. Please contact support@acronis.com if you have definite problem/intention and we will try to do our best in order to help you.

Thank you.

--
Best regards,
Andrew Berezovsky

 

Thanks Andrew. I'm not ready to try anything yet. Just wanted to get a better understanding of what was involved and how to properly prepare the partitions.

Specifically, the win98se partition is the first followed by a FAT32 data partition and then the XP partition. My intent was to (using PM) delete the first two partitions and then make the XP partition the first (and only) one. That was when I saw this thread with its references to the boot.ini file. It made me wonder if the boot.ini file in the XP partition would be automatically modified as required. It also made me wonder what would happen if I instead used TI to load an old (from the dual boot image), saved partition image to the newly created partition on the disk. Would that work properly, or would there be issue due to an improperly configured boot.ini file?

Thanks,
Harvey

 

Acronis has confirmed that it is not possible to modify any file in the image. Sorry for thinking that it might work. That being the case, how about if you install the restored drive in another working PC and then try to modify the boot.ini file there?

Just another untested idea,
Skyhawk