Need help with cloning a hard drive IDE to SATA, URGENT

I have SATA HDs. It's the same for IDE and SATA.

If Method #2 works you can sort out the edits from Windows.

 

Could you post your boot.ini?

 

Here's a post that might give you some ideas on what to try. Post subject is "backup / restore to larger drive fails". It shows some ways to change your drive letters using freeware. It's complicated but they got good results at the end. If you know for a fact that the drive letters got change, thats what I would concentrate on repairing.
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=174958

 

thx, I will check it out, ill try the boot.ini today, since I just didnt manage to find any time yesterday, I did change the letters but nothing really worked tehre, so for now ill take on the boot.ini ....maby that will bring some results, ill report if it worked or not....hopefully it will, its almost 2 weeks that im trying to make it work, and im slowly loosing patience to it lol

 

finally some progress, it worked partially, Im able to boot into windows
here is what I did, so it might help others, but I also have more problems that I need help with(booting correctly), so please bare with my long (detailed) explanations.

ok this is what I did I used the cloned hd , I used the windows cd, and went to the repair console, then i used fixboot, fixmbr, and bootcfg, then i scanned, and added the found windows installation, now I do not know what to put in the "Enter load identifier:" and the "Enter OS Load Options:" entries
what should I put there?
I left it blank (just pressed enter) so it just skipped that, but im shoor it should not be done that way

OK now I was able to get a os boot choice screan (the one that asks you wif You want to boot withing safe mode, last good configuration, or start windows normally, and so forth)
I picked start windows normally, and it went into windows, the desktop loaded fine, now the problem is that only the C drive was recognized nothing else, so I reminded myselfe that that fixmbr might have screwed up some things, and also that Acronis's partitioning system is not standard(since when I was using fixmbr it stated"non standard or invalid master boot record")
so I used an old version of partition magic, and changed my D drive(where I keep all my installed programs) I just added 1 gig of memory to it(since I have 108 gigs of unallocated space) and then rebooted, and teh D drive as well as C were recognized in windows, and Im actually typing this using my new drive.
Now my question is to make the entire drive work fine
what should I do?
my boot.ini changed completely, before (old hd) it had "signature(some numbers)" in it instead of the "multi(number)"

here is what i have now:

"[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=""
signature(70a570a5)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect"

and now after reading a lot on this, I know that the last 3 lines are wrong, they should be only pointing to windows, not to "" ,so i did deleted
"disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="" signature(70a570a5)"
so only the regular windows would be there, but now it did not boot after this, so I had to go back and redo the fixboot, fixmbr, and bootcfg

Could someone please tell me now how can I boot without having the "pick boot os" screan every time I reboot my pc?

Now a SECOND problem is that in the registry i have in the SYSTEM subfolder 2 instances of MountedDevices, one is called "MountedDevices1" and the other is "MountedDevices" the first one has all teh values of my old hd(with all the partitions/drive letters I had), and the "MountedDevices" only has the C, and D drive , without the remaining 2 partitions(which I did not yet redo as I did with partition magic in dos).

What should I do? is this why previously my partitions were not visible?
I was thinking about deleting the "MountedDevices" since it only has the C, and D drive(the one thats only currently showing up), so if i would keep the other one the "renamed one" "MountedDevices1" and rename it to "MountedDevices" then everythign should be fine then, am I right? or mistaken?

Thank You for any comments.

 

max17,

Good news. For you, fixmbr and fixboot are irrelevant. Bootcfg did the trick.

See Method #2 in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314477 It tells you.

I think your boot.ini should be

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

Try that. If it doesn't work, bootcfg will get you back into Windows.

Leave the two entries for MountedDevices alone. They aren't a problem.

The cloning procedure messed up your boot.ini.

 

^ Thank You for all the help(and all others that helped me with their suggestions), I am now writing using my new drive, fully working, Thank You again for all the help.

I fixed the boot.ini shortly after I posted my previous reply, and it works fine, lol actually I learned a lot threw this "experience", lol now I can edit the boot.ini with my eyes closed

Yes it was the boot.ini issue all along, and also Acronis, since my other partitions were not recognized because they were partitioned using some non standard method, I used Partition magic, and all worked fine after using acronis to clone the drive.

lol it took me about 2 weeks to finally be able to use the cloned IDE to SATA drive...lol.

Thank You again.