Cannot boot after restore

I have a system running windows server 2003 and Sequel Server 2005. It has two 300Gbyte harddrives that are mirrored. They are each partitioned into a 20G C: drive and a 260G D: drive. I have Acronis True Image Echo server with Universal restore build 8,203.

I wish to do a full backup of both drives to a USB HD that I can restore, in an emergency, to a unused system with a single 300Gbyte HD.

I will run my business in a stand-alone mode on that system until I can replicate the necessary hardware environment.

I have performed the backups and verified them by mounting and reading individual files but when I restore the backup to my new test machine I cannot get the new machine to boot into Windows. The reboot process does not get to a splash screen, it just keeps rebooting. I can boot from the rescue CD into Acronis but not into Windows. I can do the restore but not reboot.

Can anyone shed any light on why this is occurring and how to correct it?

 

Sounds too much like a partition ID drive letter problem. That's where I would start my troubleshooting. Even though most of these problems happen with windows xp, server 2003 has the similar "guts" that xp has and will suffer the same problems when restored. I encountered the same symptoms you have before, "windows rebooting endlessly at the splashscreen" resetting the "partition ID" fixed it.

To repair drive letters
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=210322

If you have just one OS on the hard drive, a bartpe with the xml plugin can probably fix your problem. This is usually a quick 5 minute fix, bootup with the bartpe reset the hard drive ID, reboot.

Also you can get a "boot corrector" to check your drive letters, it will tell you right away if you have a drive letter problem and fix the problem. The "boot corrector" is now available as a free 47mb download. It's inside the Rescue Kit 9.0 Express ISO.

 

Hello all,

Thank you for using Acronis Corporate Products

sstenehj, also you can try to boot into Windows Safe Mode and delete the unnecessary RAID drivers.

Thank you.

--
Oleg Lee

 

OK. I created the BartPE disk and tried to boot from that. Unfortunately, my new computer has USB keyboard and USB mouse. When the BartPE Splash window comes up neither the keyboard or Mouse are recognized. The computer is a Dell Optiflex Gx-280 without DIN type connections.

 

My first problem is that I can't boot, at all. I tried BartPE but it doesn't recognize my USB Mouse and Keyboard.

It's always sumptin....

 

WHich drivers would those be?

 

Unless the new test machine has identical hardware to the system where the image was created, this is not an unusual problem. You are trying to use all the hardware drives for the old computer on this new one. That leads to problems such as rebooting.

If all your data files are on the D: partition, you should be able to restore that without a problem since it's just data and not the operating system and drivers.

You could do a clean instal of the operating system on the new machine which would allow you to install the correct drivers. Of course, then you'd have to install all your programs on that machine also, but you'd have a good, clean new machine on which the D: data could be installed.

If that's too much work, you could try a repair installation of the operating system on the new computer. That might work by installing the needed drivers.

However, it won't be a quick solution to a failed main system if you need to have both the C and D partitions current on the replacement system immediately.

 

Hello sstenehj,

Thank you for using Acronis Corporate Products

You have recovered the system from the mirrored RAID to a single hard drive. The unnecessary RAID drives should be removed.

sstenehj, contact us here and place a request, we will find the reason for the AUR malfunction.

Thank you.

--
Oleg Lee