ATI 11 Locked C Drive After Clone!!!!

HELP! I was running a clone of my HD last night which completed successfully to my USB backup drive. I am running XP SP2 latest patches.

I tried to bootup today and it only gives me a blinking cursor after the boot process for the bios completes.

I tried using the XP disk for a recovery install, and the data seems to intact still (was able to login in the dos mode, and my partitions are reporting correctly). However it would not complete an XP repair install because the volume was locked.

I am assuming something went wrong with the cloning process and the volume is still locked. Is there a way to unlock the volume?

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. I am local in Mass if a telephone call would help.

 

thatguy01752,

Is it a laptop? What brand is your computer?

Are you referring to your old or new HD when you say it won't boot.

 

1.) Make sure that the "external drive" is not plugged in when you bootup.

2.) Have you tried installing the external drive (that you cloned) inside your computer and see if that will bootup?
If you do that, make sure you disconnect the "source drive" first. Windows xp is easy to fix, I wouldn't attempt to do a repair install, that will only make it worse.

3.) One thing about a clone operation is that in a worst case scenario it can delete the source drive partition (if the wrong box is checked). Something else that might have happened is the drive letters might have got rearranged on the source drive, if you booted up with 2 C: drive partitions.

At least you have a "clone" of your drive on the external drive in case you can't recover your primary. My advice to anyone who has a windows xp that won't boot up is to check the drive letters.

Hopefully the below demo bootcd can bootup your computer so you can check the driive letters.
http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/downloads/JustBoot_Boot_Corrector_38938_p/

 

Thanks for the replies everyone. The external drive is one of those I/O magic USB drives.

This is a desktop computer, but it's a mutt. The mobo is an intel D865GBF and the internal HD is Seagate ATA 100 IDE 160 GB. No signs of HD failure before this (no bad sector reports).

I have tried booting without the external drive attached, but I will try the DL (if I can get past the work firewall).

Thanks everyone, I'll let you know how it turns out.

 

Can you do "fixboot" from the Recovery Console?

 

I was afraid to mess with that option. The problem of having a stable OS means you play with those commands once every five years. I did get a copy of the jbbc program - I'll have to give it a shot tonight.

Thanks to everyone on this thread for jumping in - great board.

 

thatguy01752,

As you can tell by the number of replies, the answer is not obvious. It's definitely not a drive letter issue but I'm happy for you to confirm that yourself. This page from TeraByte relates to BING but if you don't get a quick answer I'd run fixboot from the Recovery Console (it can't do any harm) and if that doesn't work and you are desperate, try the BING "solution".

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=176

You problem should not occur. The primary OS being "damaged" by the cloning software.

 

okay - tried fixboot and that did not work. I do have the blinking cursor described in the BING link. I have downloaded the program, but I have not idea how to use it from the instructions. I am booted into the BING OS via a floppy. What should I do now?

 

Yes, only use the floppy.

At the BING desktop, click Settings. Confirm there is a tick in "Use HD0 in BPB." Click OK.

Click Partition Work. Dot in HD0. Select your OS Partition. Properties. Does it offer to correct anything?

Also have a look at this. You have to scroll to the bottom for replies.

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Hardware/Laptops_Notebooks/Q_22079840.html

 

Also in BING. Click Partition Work, select your OS partition, click View MBR. Is the OS "Active?"

 

Okay - in Work with Partitions it sses my OS partition, but doesn't offer to fix anything, and the View MBR only shows the boot it EMBRM partition as active.

Okay - some good news - the data on the USB drive that was cloned is ok. The bad news is I can't figure out how to boot from a USB drive in the bios.

 

Good. That is definitely an error. (But you shouldn't have an EMBR partition unless you installed BING. Which you didn't have to do but it doesn't matter.)

Go back to the View MBR window. Select your OS partition and click Set Active, Apply.

Does that make a difference?

 

Net/Net, I managed to "fix" it. When I checked the data on my internal drive, it was gone - it was nothing but free space. I don't know if fixboot removed it, but there was only one partition and there wasn't anything on it.

Fortunately, I had my cloned copy on the usb drive, which was perfect. I simply cloned the usb drive back on to the internal HD. The only problem was my BIOS is four years old and doesn't boot from a usb drive, so I had to rip out the internal and put it into an enclosure to make the transfer.

I think after this I had better look into a RAID solution for my next machine.

Thanks for everyone's help on this, especially Brian K; I really appreciated the quick responses from everyone. I will be sure to recommend this board to everyone who has an issue!

 

thatguy01752,

Thanks for the feedback. It's appreciated.

Weird. Do you think the internal HD was empty all along? I thought you saw an OS partition when you were using BING? No? I'd appreciate others to comment here but fixboot only acts on the first sector in the OS partition. It doesn't act on the partition table so it can't delete partitions.

Acronis TI is known to delete all partitions on the primary HD at times. Just like your situation. This can actually be chosen in the clone menu.

I'm really pleased you are up and running again.

 

You're doing quite well without any assistance. As you said above
"As you can tell by the number of replies, the answer is not obvious."
I have no suggestions for the fix--maybe some suggestions for prevention.

thatguy01752,
The proverbial horse is already of the barn--so to speak....
Many of us find the best way to clone is to use the Rescue CD and place the new disk in the final intended position while putting the original in another location--either internal or external. And if you want to be safer, you create a full disk backup and restore the backup--rather than cloning.

Nevertheless, here is a temporary link to a copy of my cloning guide. This is work in progress but you may find it informative.

Glad you recovered and did not lose any of your data.
GroverH

 

I had many problems gettting my WindowsXP laptop to make True Image 11 to clone a hard

drive as it states it will. Tried several times and have just got it to work by

following below:

-Create boot disk by using Acronis True Image 11 and left in CD drive.
-Shut down laptop and external drive case.
-Took existing drive to clone out of laptop and plugged into a USB drive enclosure.
-Put new drive into laptop.
-Booted up laptop by using F12 upon boot up to use CD drive with acronis disk.
-Used Acronis (carefully) to clone the external USB drive to destination drive now in

laptop. NOTE: tried all of this with drives in other positions did not

work. like Tech support said it would.
-When True Image is complete shut down and turn off external drive.
-Reboot normally using newly cloned hard drive that was placed in laptop.


This may not be your problem but blinking cursor was what happened after I thought I

had cloned my hard drive by following program and tech support instructions.