Restored Backup Won't Run

Hi, this is my first use of Acronis True Image
The primary has 9g on C: with 5g used
The secondary has 7g on C: so there appears to be plenty of room to make an image.
NTFS on the C: drive on the primary and Fat32 still on the D: drive
The secondary has NTFS on C: & D:

On the primary I made a C: partition image onto the D: drive then transferred it to second hard drive in mobile rack then removed primary drive from computer and using the CD boot I restored the image from the D: to the C: on the secondary.
First time with XP PRO. I have done this procedure dozens of times using Norton Ghost in Win98 with these same hard drives. I am just using the default settings to create and restore image but I did not create or use a secure zone.

The image says it is successful but when I start it again it only gets to the first blue XP screen and stops loading. It looks like the image is exactly the same as the original in Explorer.
Any ideas what the problem is?
Thanks Meta

Added Thurs Sept 08
Would the fact that I have XP Pro without any Service Packs installed have anything to do with this?

 

I'm having exactly the same problem with XP Pro with Service Pack 2 and all updates installed.

With the old HD in place as slave, the new system will boot successfully, but 'stand alone', it stops at the blue screen, (the Welcome Screen without the 'welcome', at the point where you would expect to see the password prompt), with just the small WinXP logo on screen. The mouse cursor will move, but no other functions work.

Thinking it might be a firewall (Zone Alarm Pro, latest version) or antivirus program (AVG) which is causing the lock up, I've tried disabling them and as many other functions as possible with Startup Cop before starting the image copy, but to no avail.

 

Hello Meta and TomG,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please do the following:

- Prepare Windows using Microsoft System Preparation Tool (Sysprep) as it is described in this FAQ article;

- Create an image of the prepared Windows;

- Restore this image to the desired location;

- Try to boot as usual;

- If it does not boot then please do the following (depending of the operating system you use):

- Boot the computer from Windows 95/98/ME Startup Disk and run "fdisk /mbr" command;

- Boot the computer from Windows 2000/XP Installation CD and run "fixmbr" command in Recovery Console;

- In case it still does not boot, perform Windows Repair Installation as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

Please keep only one hard drive connected, since keeping both source and destination hard drives connected might cause boot problems, because of the Windows XP drive letter assignment rules.

Please inform me about the results.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov

 

The problem could well be due to Windows 2K/XP drive letter retention. Running fixmbr on a Win 2K/XP system doesn't overwrite the 4 bytes containing the DiskID. Therefore, boot from a Windows 98 Startup Disk and issue the command "fdisk /mbr" (without the quotes). This will overwrite the DiskID bytes on the boot drive and force Windows 2K/XP to reassign the correct drive letter. This is known as the "Kawecki Trick", full details of which are contained in this <Dan Goodell article>.

Regards

 

After spending a couple of days with the same problem here is the method that I found to fix this.

This applies to at least XP with sp2 and maybe others.

If you try to restore a backup or copy a partition to another drive and upon trying to boot the drive it hangs at the two tone blue screen. Mouse moves, but windows will not finish loading.

First be sure your getting at least to the two tone blue screen for xp.

Next, if you have run windows xp repair and tried the fix/mbr and still no change then try this.

Run the fix/mbr again and see if it tells you that there was a problem and it was fixed again. If it does, then the xp fix/mbr is NOT fixing the mbr.

I then tried using my original hd install disk which is a WD , just be careful not to do the wrong things.

Just have your drive install disk fix or rewrite the MBR and bang mine works fine. Windows booted as it should and everythig is good.

For what ever reason, the XP fix/mbr does not always work.

I spent several hours looking for a fix for this problem and really never found any one good fix.

This worked for me and hopefully it will for you.