Can't restore image to HP laptop

My hard drive died on my HP pavillion. New drive installed and loaded with Vista. I am trying to restore a complete image of my old C drive. When I boot to True Image 10 CD and try to restore, it gives an error E000101F4 and says "...True Image Home has not found any hard disk drives."

When I boot Vista and run Acronis, I am able to step through all of the steps to restore from the image from my network drive, the restore process starts, it seems like it is working fine for a few minutes, then it says it requires reboot. I tell it to reboot and it starts up in native mode ("Starting Acronis Loader"...then "Loading," then a screen that shows it is resuming the task) for a few seconds, then reboots again into Vista. Some line of DOS-looking text flashes by just before and after the Acronis loader, but it is too fast to read. After it reboots into Vista, it never finishes anything.

I found a post on the knowledge base about a problem/conflict with HP Backup and Recovery, but I cannot find that installed anywhere on my system. Just in case, I deleted the pre-installed HP recovery partition. I also turned off the UAC. There are no usernames or passwords to start this machine or access the network drive. PLEASE HELP!

 

Are you using the latest build of TI 10 (4,942)?

Have you tried the Safe Mode version of TI 10?

Another option is to install TI 2009 (you can use the trial version), create a CD and see if it can see your drives.

 

Installed TI10 latest build and no help there.

Downloaded TI 2009 and the install crashed in the middle. Tried to remove TI 10 with windows uninstall, and reinstall 2009 with no luck. Install utility still crashes and TI 10 still shows up in programs.

I downloaded the acronis cleanup utility and it won't run. I get an immediate error with "non 7-zip archive" message and an OK button.

I am trying to reinstall TI 10 to try and properly remove it prior to reinstalling 2009, but after 8 hours last night and today at this process, I'm doubtful any of this is going to work.

Not sure how to boot TI 10 in safe mode as you recommend...help!

 

Are you sure you're running the Cleanup Utility as a normal program? I don't see why you're getting a "7-zip" error message. Did you try and redownload the file? (Acronis Clean Up Utility)

To use TI Safe Mode, you need to have included it on the TI CD when you created it. If you didn't, make another TI CD and include it.

You may need to do a manual uninstall of TI if the Cleanup Utility won't work.
TI 10 instructions can be found here.
TI 2009 instructions can be found here.

 

Thanks. After a couple of windows restores and another failed 2009 install, the 2009 repair option finally worked and 2009 ran. It is now restoring the image and in 10 hours (time to open the wallet and get that gigabit switch) we will know if it works.

One quick other question: I am restoring the C: drive partition as the active partition. Not clear on whether I also need to restore the master boot record. Advice?

Thanks for your help and prompt replies!

 

I think you should be okay with restoring just the C: partition (as Active) if the MBR was okay on the destination drive. If you later find out there is an MBR problem, just restore the MBR from the backup image (it will only take a few seconds).