Acronis True Image Vista Preparing Desktop

Hi all, hoping for some help here for a numpty on Acronis True Image, Vista64 Home Premium.

I want to upgrade my HD from a SCSI to a larger 500GB SATA2. I have created an image by following the wizard but now I get 'Preparing Desktop' and log onto the user when I boot the new disc using bios to specify. Then a after some time I get a blue screen. I can get into task manager using ctrl+alt+del, but I have no idea what I have done wrong, or not!

Can anyone help me please?
Thanks in advance..?
Chr15h

 

It sounds like the drive letter assignments are messed up. If you can start Explorer and the Registry Editor, try the fix in this post.

 

Many thanks for the reply!

I followed you instructions but i still am having problems.

I couldn't get into regedit. You are correct, the first (new) drive is D and the DVD/CD drive is E.

So i booted from the VistaCD and went in that way as you described but the letters in there are C & D & X. I would not have expected to see C

I deleted all but the default and rebooted anyway...still the same...'Preparing Desktop' then blue screen.

What i thought i would do was rerun Acronis True Image and when prompted to reboot, remove the original drive ( as has been suggested in other posts ) but my 15 days is now up and i cant do that either.

I really dont want to load my pc with Norton as i have never had any good experience with the hungry s/w so thought Acronis to be the answer.

Can you help further here, am i doing something incorrectly?

Chr15

 

When you booted the Vista DVD, did you load the hive from the Windows partition and look at its MountedDevices entry?

If you changed the one for the DVD boot-up, it wouldn't fix anything.

 

Thanks again MudCrab

Sorry, no idea what 'hive' is, but i booted the vista CD, loaded regedit from the cmd prompt and followed the instructions from the other posts to delete the drive letters.

Have i done this correctly?

Chr15

 

Dear MudCrab/God !

OK so I am a complete numpty and can’t even follow instructions.

I have, of course, followed you expert instruction correctly from the previous posts and managed to get it working…as you said it would!

I bow to your expertise and patents with the likes of me (not that I should put others in the same dudgeon as me)

Now I / you have got me working, can you tell me what I have done and why I had to do this?

Humbly

Chr15

 

I'm glad it's working for you now.

The problem is usually caused by one of two things. Either the new partition (the Windows partition) isn't Active when Vista boots which causes it to assign C: to a different partition or the old Windows has already seen the new partition and assigned it a drive letter (this is the most common reason). Since an assignment already exists, when you clone or image and restore, Windows keeps the assignment and you end up with it trying to use J: or some other letter instead of C:.

 

MudCrab

Thanks again for explaining this....however i have a further question. Why did i have to create another directory (if that is the correct term) in regedit using this 'hive'...so basically what did i do to correct it?

Thanks

Chr15

 

When you boot to the Vista DVD and run regedit, the Registry that's loaded is the Registry associated with the WinPE OS booted from the DVD. In order to make the necessary changes to the OS Registry you're trying to fix, you must load the hive file for that OS and make the changes to it.

If you multi-boot Vista, you can use this method to do repairs like this by booting into one Vista and loading the hive from the other one.

As for the actual fix, if you clear the MountedDevices key, Windows will reassign all drive letters. C: will be assigned to the Active partition (which is what you want). Otherwise, you can make the changes manually (by swapping or changing the letters, for example) to get the results you need.

 

MudCrab,

Thanks again!

dont sopose you know anything about.....

The RPC Server is unavailable. (0x800706BA) using a network harddrive and vista64 backup/restore aswell?

I am sure this is not the place to post this though!

Chr15