In hot excrement with a restore that won't let me boot

Hi Good Peoples,

I read Grovers restoring pdf article and did some searches on some other threads but they did not answer my issue. "Huston we have a problem" and I hope someone can help me with so that I get out of the poo.

I bought a new Pressrio B1900 Laptop less than a week ago and the disk crashed two days ago and the machine was replaced.

Luckily, I had backed up the C: drive using True Image 9.0 (to an external drive) and thought all I would need to do was to recover the C: drive. I did exactly that and after taking about 9 hours, when I rebotted the machine all I got was a flashing cursor.

When I reinserted and started from the Boot Disk, the Restore Data Wizard shows the files have been copied across but it wont boot. From memory, when I did the restore, I told the program to make the C: drive the boot drive. Could that be the problem?

Checking into this further, I see from the files that have been backed up, for some reason, I am missing the Autoexec.bat file and the config.sys file (as well as possibly some others.)

Any ideas on what I have to do to fix it please? (I have an XP SP1 Disk.)

 

Not an expert, they may get up much later. In the meantime, there will be nothing negative to try the following:

1. Open up the Acronis menu with the Rescue CD
2. Select Restore
3. Select "Operations">Mount
4. Mount the disk where the boot files are located (normally C but don't look at the drive letter just the size of the image (for the proper backup)
5. At the bottom of directories you will see some files but the ones that you want are hidden. So click on Folder>Tools>View and make the hidden files viewable.
6. Copy the following to a floppy disk:

boot.ini
NTDETECT.COM
ntldr

7. Select "Operations">Unmount
8. remove CD and shutdown
9. Insert floppy in floppy drive
10. Start computer
11. Windows should open

If Windows does not start by itself (without the floppy), you may need to edit boot.ini. It probably has *(2)* for partition instead of *(1)* on the first line.

 

If I understand this correctly, you Restored an Image made from the first laptop to the second laptop. TI sees this as restoring to a different system and requires the use of Universal Restore.
However, this workaround might get you out of the jam.
You need to do a Repair install of Windows. But when going through a Windows install there are several instances where a Repair can be initiated. The one you want is the one that appears after the EULA screen. So ignore all screens that have a Recovery or Repair option until you get to the EULA screen. Then the next Repair option that comes up, use that. You may have to have your Product ID handy.
If that doesn't work, you may have to use the factory restore CDs and start afresh. If there is data you need to save, a BartPE cd will let you get at it to copy to an external drive or flash drive.

 

TORB,

Sorry to hear you are up the creek. My desktop used to do this (flashing cursor) and it was the motherboard. I assume your new laptop started up correctly when it arrived?

 

Brian.... Hi,

Yep, the laptop booted up fine when it came from Hardly Normal.

Ralphie,

I tried doing the restore trick when past the EULA but that did not work either.

mfabien,

Those files are in the root directory already. The problem is that the Autoexec.bat file and config.sys file are missing and without those, it is not going to boot. I have also checked the boot.ini file and it is set to 1.

How do I get the Autoexec.bat file and config.sys file: any ideas please?

 

I don't have those files in any of my WinXP computers (NTFS).

 

I have them in both a laptop and desktop but they have nothing in them - 0 bytes.

 

Autoexec.bat and config.sys are not used by Windows XP. The file that XP boots from is ntldr.

 

TORB,

Out of interest, did you restore your MBR and Track 0 when you restored the image? Partition image or whole drive?

 

Hi Brian,

NFI about track 0, so I guess I didn't do it. It was so many headaches ago, I have forgotten, but I think doing the MBR restore from DOS was the first thing I tried.

I gave up and used the recovery disks to ste the system back to factory specs and am now retrying the restore. This time I chose the whole C Drive, made it the active partition and left the rest at the standard defaults. Hopefully it will work or I will have even less hair (if that is possible.)

 

Ric, I don't think your problem has anything to do with the MBR and I hope the current attempt works. A mystery.

 

As far as i know the autoexec and configs don't have anything to do with booting an xp install, as said before the files you need on the c: are ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini.

can you check if these are on the c:


Have you ever run the xp recovery console?

i would be looking at running the recovery console, copying over the files if needed, and then in the recovery console running the commands fixmbr, fixboot, and bootcfg

 

Hi Good Peoples,

Thanks for all your suggestions and help.

The last restore worked.

 

Do you know why it worked? What did you do different from the first time?