Major problem with booting after using DDS

I payed for and installed DDS yesterday with the intention of splitting my hard drive into two partitions and running XP on one and Vista on the other. My PC is a Dell Vostron laptop with Vista (32bit) business installed. I went through the resizing and partitioning wizard and was asked if I wanted to commit (so far so good) so I said yes. It then rebooted and went through it's work but at the end I just ended up with a blank screen. I assumed it just needed more time so left it alone. Two hours later it was still blank, so I tried to shut down, but the only way in the end was to remove the power and the battery. On reboot it just runs through the loading bios bit over and over. If you hit F12 you can try all the diagnostics, but nothing ultimately allows it to reboot the OS. Most of the time it's left with a black and white screen with the vista logo at the top and the following beneath ...

ACRONIS AUTOPART
ANALYSING PARTITIONS 100%
SETTING LETTERS 100%
SYNCRONISATION WITH OPERATING SYSTEM 100%
COMPLETED

So far I've tried resetting the factory installation (runs through process and says successful, but still has the same boot problem) I've tried the Acronis recovery disk (doesn't recognise any hard drive?) Reinstalling Vista (sees the partition and OS "no second partition was created obviously" but says it can't install on it?

So what now? Any ideas? I've emailed acronis, but still haven't heard from them a day later.

Ivan

 

I forgot to mention ... I also tried the Bootrec/fixmbr method. It says successful, but still ends up with the Cronis Autopart page described above.

 

ivannn:

I think your MBR is probably OK since you are able to start the initial loading phase of Vista, but you end up with the boot-time "hook" into the Acronis partitioning routine AUTOPART.

With your Vista DVD, go back to the recovery console and try to repair the boot sector, this time by using the "bootrec /fixboot" command.

I'm not sure where AUTOPART is hooked into the initial startup phase of Vista, but the following two posts may help if the above fix works but you still see the AUTOPART message displayed when booting Vista:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=199361
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=180410

I hope that one of these is helpful.

Whenever you do an operation with Disk Director that will affect the Vista system partition, you really MUST reboot into the recovery version of the program to do this while Vista is not running. Trying to do it from the Windows version of the program will often lead to problems like you are seeing. Acronis really needs to make this clear in their documentation, and to lock it out in software so that the program prompts you to shut down Windows and do the operation from the boot CD.

Please let us know if you are successful.

 

Thanks for that K0lo,

I actually got it to boot in the end by using the Dell factory reset method of Ctrl + F11.

Then I trawled through these pages to figure how to partition and install XP (I found DD in safe mode the easiest). However, after XP installed OSS would not recognised Vista, and worse, it wiped the Vista boot files. I then couldn't reinstall vista as the set up disc would not recognise any partitioned drives. In the end I found the only way to install Vista again was to remove the partitions format the drive, which obviously wiped XP. I'm now half way through reinstalling Vista, and wonder if it's worth the risk of trying DD and OSS again or writing them off as useless! The DD suit certainly isn't what it's advertised as. It's hardly foolproof, and may work with some operating systems ok, but I think Vista is too touchy for it. Acronis should make there instructions a lot clearer and add some warnings about some of these issues. Whilst I did back up my data, I have lost a lot of program licences, settings ect. I know I should have made a backup image of my hard drive first, but I was thinking Acronis had it down to a fine art and all would be ok .. More fool me!

I won't be spending money with them again!

Ivan

 

Hi Ivan,

The easier way to dual-boot between Windows XP and Vista, is to let Vista Control the boot process.

Install Windows XP first, which is usually installed on the first or C:\ partition, but you can always in Windows XP on a different partition.

After the XP is working fine, you boot up with the Windows Vista CD and do a Custom Install of Windows Vista. Do not allow Vista to choose its partition, but you choose the partition to install Vista on.

However, after you install Windows Vista on the second partition, Windows Vista will be still be running as C:\, drawing on the experiences with Windows Vista Ultimate RC2, even though I had installed Vista on the G:\ partition.

This is the only way to effectly dual-boot, allowing both operating systems to see each other.