NEW CLONED DISKS WON'T boot!

I have spent over 4 Hrs. using Acronis 10 to clone 3 disks and none of them will boot.

I tried 2-SATA and 1-IDE drive.
After each cloning Acronis indicates process has been successful.

I have made sure that the IDE drive was set as "MASTER".

After disabling my old drive and installing any one of the cloned drives they all exhibit the same problem when I attempt to boot them. The boot gets to the Windows Logo momentarily , but immediately puts me into the window for selecting "safe mode" or "boot normally." Selecting either one puts me right back to the same window.

I have an Intel P4 system, XP OS, 2GB Memory, NVDIA GT6600 with 256MB memory.

I am cloning my drives using an ide\SATA to USB adapter externally.

Can I get some ideas\suggestions what may be the problem before we give-up on TRUE IMAGE 10.0?

 

jmig,

For inexplicable reasons, sometimes cloning to an external HD doesn't work.

Could you try this ....

Install the new IDE HD as a slave, perform the clone process and when finished, shutdown, remove the old HD from the computer and set the new HD as Master. Does it boot?

 

Re: NEW CLONED DISKS WON'T boot! BRIAN!

First, BRIAN thanks for the response!

What a bummer!
The convenience of cloning externally is really important to us for productivity reasons.

After a spending all that time, a small note in the HELP section, explaining this would have saved a lot of time!

Anyway, I may try your suggestion in the morning or my guys may decide if we can't clone externally we move on to something else.

Thanks again for the input and if I try the cloning internally I'll post the results!

 

Other things to consider:
If you are using front usb ports, try using the ones at the back.
If you are using the Clone feature from within windows, try making the bootable Rescue CD, boot with it and use the Clone feature from it.
I know you want to use the Clone feature, but try making a Backup Image to the external, then use the Recover feature to restore that image to an internal drive.

 

Ralphie:

If we have to go through all the machinations you suggest, why use the program? Some of the features we wanted were what we would have to give up to use it, if it even worked.
Really appreciate the response, but the program is not as advertised!

PS: We did use USB Ports on back of compter!

 

Tried your suggestion! Drive won't boot. Exact same result as when cloned externally. BIO checked out okay, drive shows up as primary, and boot sequence is correct. Can't get by Windows Logo and always end up back at "Safe Mode or "Normal Boot" screen!

Really, Really, Really disappointed in True Image 10.0! Looks like we wasted our money on 9.0 and the 10.0 upgrade!

 

jmig,

I hesitated to suggest this last night as it is not really typical of a drive letter problem but it does have half the characteristics. Could you try Method 3#. It will only take you a minute.

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm#method3


You must use a Win 98 floppy. If you don't have one get this Win98 OEM.

http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm It's a self extracting file. Double click and it will extract to a blank floppy.

Boot to the floppy and type fdisk /mbr at the A:\ prompt. (don't omit the space between the k and / ) You won't see anything happen. It just goes back to the A:\ prompt. Remove the floppy and see if the HD boots.

 

BRIAN,

Just finished with floppy boot and fdisk /mbr command!

No luck! Same result!

 

Look at this article Reparing Windws XP in Eight Steps. It may be of help.

 

jmig,

Damn.

We should get together. I did a lot of tests on cloning with TI and couldn't get it to fail. You can't get it to work. I mean this in a nice way.

 

Brian,

First let me say, I really appreciate your effort and help!

But it seems to me the "BIG" issue is, in reading the POSTS there is an awful lot of problems and loads of tweaks and fixes people need to do to get TI to work.

My point being, we bought this as a productivity tool, and it's anything but that! It would seem to me that on straight forward standard Intel platforms it should work like a charm each time and everytime as advertised. If not, we can't afford to use it!

Brian, if you have anymore suggestions I'l be glad to try them. I will have to do them myself because the rest of the team has moved on and away from TI!

Thanks again !

John

 

John, no more suggestions. TI does seem to be very hardware specific. It either works well or is a pain in the arse.

 

John, there is one suggestion. Try CopyWipe for DOS as a clone tool. It's free and it works.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/copywipe.html

 

Thanks Brian,

I'll give it a try!

John