installed Acronis+took no action= winlogon.exe missing or corrupt

Hello all,
This is my first post here and ill try to be a descriptive as possible.

My Current set up is a PC running Vista Ultimate 32-bit
My Primary drive is a 200GB Segate SATA drive
I have 2 IDE 160 GB drives that are NOT in any kind of RAID config and had NO data on them.

I recently decided that i wanted to clone or back up my primary drive to one of the secondary drives that i have (i dont have 160GB worth of data on the primary so i figured it would fit on the smaller drive for now).

First i tried Norton Ghost 14 (dont flame me plz ...lol) and when i booted from the back up it did not load my profile correctly and was missing files so i went back to my Primary drive and wiped out the failed attempt and reformatted the back up HD.

Now i tried Acronis by suggestion from a friend. I installed the program with no problems. and choose the "Clone HD" option. When i get to the screen that shows my Hard Drives my SATA is not listed (which didnt make sense since i was obviously using it at that moment). So i went into the "Back Up Files" option and still my SATA is not listed. I come to these forums and do some searching but it was getting late and i couldnt find a solution to my problem so i just shut down for the night.

Notice that I DID NOT do any back up operation or any coning operation as my drive was not seen. I simply shut down.

This morning I turn on my PC and now im getting a "winload.exe is missing or corrupt".

I boot to my Vista DVD and try to do a repair or possibly system restore and of course.. Vista is not seeing my SATA drive either and only sees my IDE drives. previously i did not have to install any third party drivers when i initially installed Vista.

Can any one offer help and suggestions as to how i can get my PC back up and running?

BTW i am a PC Hardware Technician so feel free to use tech speak.

THANKS IN ADVANCE

 

Crossova:

Just guessing here, but if you tried booting your Ghost clone when your primary hard disk was also attached, Vista probably made changes to the primary. Windows usually does not like to have two identical drives with the same disk ID attached.

Have you tried disconnecting your IDE drives and then attempting to repair your SATA drive?

Does your BIOS have an IDE compatibility mode? If so, try that setting to get the Vista repair disk to recognize the SATA drive. After repairing and rebooting into Vista to check, change the setting back to AHCI (or whatever it used to be).

Your original problem with the profile not loading was caused by having two identical disks attached when booting. Your Ghost clone is probably OK. Try it again but first disconnect the primary SATA disk before booting to it.

 

Thanks for the advice. Ill try some of thoes initial steps but as mentioned before the hard drive that i tried ghosting to in the begnining is now reformatted and blank. after i erased that failed attempt i was able to log in to windows as normal and it wasnt until i installed Acronis True Image that i got this error message when booting up this morning. i may just have to install Windows on another hard drive and transfer as much info as possible from my 200GB and then just start from scratch

 

Crossova,

I can't be of direct help but just a comment on Ghost 14 as it relates to WinXP. I haven't tried it with Vista.

Cloning with Ghost is different from cloning with True Image. Ghost does partition clones, not whole HD clones. You must clone into unallocated space. If you clone into a partition the clone will not boot due to drive letter issues. After the clone, follow Mark's instructions regarding removing the old HD.

 

Thank you both fro your suggestions. however my main issue now is that windows doesn't even see my hard drive. I have the drivers and im trying to install them in windows set up so that I can do a repair but no dice . any ideas as to why?

 

There are a number of suggestions in this Microsoft article. I looked at a few articles on Google with similar symptoms to your problem and the most common reason was a disk formatted as a dynamic volume. Second most common was the BIOS disk order was incorrect; boot volume for Vista should be the first BIOS hard disk.

Although most of these articles deal with problems seeing the disk when installing Vista, I assume that they are applicable when trying to see the disk to repair Vista.

Article 1
Article 2, see post #6

 

Thanks so much for all your guys help and t you for these articles. I'll take a look at them tomorrow when I get to work. (ive been posting from my PPC phone this whole time). My main drive was infact a Dynamic Disk. and I can't see it when I tried to repair or reinstall vista on the drive. I've come to terms with possibly losing whatever was on the drive. I just don't to have to buy a new HD unnecessarily when this one is phsically sound ( passed seagates long and short diagnostics test).

Thanks again. I will keep you all updated.

 

Hello Crossova,

Thank you for using Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for delayed response.

Please be aware that Acronis True Image 11 Home does not support dynamic disks. However, installing it on a computer with those should not cause booting problems, and there are no cases of that reported before.

Could you please clarify if you booted with both drives connected after initial clone? Did you reboot your computer after formatting the clone before installing Acronis True Image? Did you reboot your computer after installing Acronis True Image?

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

 

After the initial clone i did in fact boot with both drives connected. The profile did not load correctly as a result and i turned off my PC and disconnected the cloned drive and booted into my normal boot drive with no problems and reformatted the clone drive and continued to use my PC as normal.

The next day i installed Acronis on my PC and (because it does not support Dynamic Disks) was unable to make any back ups so i turned off my PC for the night and the next morning i get Winload.exe errors. So while i did not reboot after installing it and running the program i didnt make any other system changes either

However i think the problem is deeper than what these forums can help me with. i can now no longer install windows (XP or Vista) on that secondary Hard Drive that i initially used as a clone (the 160GB) I get errors that files are missing when the PC reboots from installing files from the DVD and tries to go in the Windows Setup to complete the install. and this happens with both XP and Vista. I think im going to have to try and use another Hard Drive. Its begining to sound more like a hardware issue than anything else right now. It could just be that my drives were failing at the time that i was trying to make the back ups.... go figure.

Sorry for the delay in responce, ive been on/am still on vacation and have limited access to a PC.


Thank You all for your help. any further suggestions are gladly welcome.

 

Ok, First i would like to say thank you all for your help. in the end i had to wipe the main drive (200GB) completely and start from scratch. i couldnt do anything with it because it had been converted to a Dynamic Disk (Erd Commander and Hirens Boot cd couldnt help me )

the reason i could not install Windows on the 160GB drive i had is probably because i used a third party program to erase that drive called KillDisk (or something to that effect) which, while successfully erasing the drive, made it somewhat useless because i could not install Windows on it anymore (though i can use it for storage...strange)

So i am now manually restoring files and programs from some older backups that i had which will do for now.

I would just like to clear up for anyone that may have been following this thread who may have had similar issues with any of these symptoms, that Acronis DID NOT cause the issue with my PC. I am attributing my problems to my Hard Drive being a Dynamic Disk and the programs that i used did not support this type of disk.

Apparently the Winload.exe errors come from me booting up with my cloned drive and original drive both connected at the same time.

Thank You all once again for helping with this issue.