nForce3 Restore Problem

MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum nForce3 mobo.
NVidia RAID array.
Windows XP Pro
2 Maxtor 80G IDE-133 drives
1 Maxtor 60G SATA drive

I have read some of the posts and it seems that nForce3 is not compatible with Acronis TI. I wish that I had known that at the time I created my backup and before I tried to restore my backup on my raid array.

This is what I had originally:
Win XP Pro
OS installed on 2 Maxtor 80G IDE-133 drives in Raid 0 stripe configuration
Secondary master Maxtor 60 G SATA drive.
I had created and saved an image of my Raid 0 configuration on my SATA drive.

My son downloaded some games and who knows what else and the computer had some stability problems, so I tried to restore my working image. When I tried to do it, Acronis TI would not recognize my raid drives that I wanted to restore the image to. I came here, read the forums and found that I couldn't do it with my nForce3 RAID setup -- again, this sure would have been nice to know ahead of time!

I decided that the RAID 0 was a luxury that I could live without so to get my system working again, I decided to un-RAID these two drives and try to install the image to a single drive. This is what I did:
1. I changed my BIOS settings, deleted the RAID configuration and reformated the two IDE drives.
2. Used my Acronis CD to create an image of my SATA drive (only had the saved Acronis images) on each of my 2 IDE drives.
3. Reformated my SATA drive and restored the image from one of my IDE drives onto my SATA drive and set it active.
4. I unplugged both of my IDE drives so there would be no confusion about the active drive when XP started up.
5. Started windows. The first windows black background with the Windows XP Pro logo displayed fine, the little progress bar was moving and about 20 seconds later the 2nd windows XP Pro screen appeared (the one with the blue background). So far, everything looked normal. This usually takes about 20 seconds before my XP desktop is displayed. It never gets past this screen. The computer is not frozen (mouse and keyboard respond) but it just sits at this screen forever (I left it there for about 1 hour).
6. Thought this might be a SATA problem, so decided to try to restore to one of my IDE drives. I followed the same steps above and got the same result -- stuck on the 2nd windows XP screen.

What do I need to do to get this to work. I really do not want to start from scratch. It appears that my original image was OK but it just will not boot up when restored. I would like to make the SATA drive my boot drive, so that is my first preferences, but if that can't work, I would settle for one of the IDE drives being my boot drive.

Sorry this is so long, but I wanted to make sure I explained everything that I have tried so far.

thanks,
Murray

 

Three options:

1) Here's what I would do. My recommendation is to do a Windows XP Repair Installation on the restored drive. Follow the instructions at the following web link:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315341

Use method 2. When you're done, you will need to reinstall all critical updates and hotfixes using Windows Update, unless your XP CD has all of those slipstreamed.

But when it's done, you should have almost everything back to normal. If you use Outlook Express, for some reason the outlook express settings, messages, etc may get lost. Don't know what to do about that except try to retreive them from the Image using Image explorer.

Before and during the repair install, leave your network connection disconnected until you get a software firewall running (unless you are behind a hardware firewall like a router). Otherwise, you will get a bug if you try to connect to the internet with an unpatched Windows XP installation and no firewall.

Other than that, the repair install has worked fine for me in the past. However, research and use at your own risk!!!!

2) Another option, just do a clean new fresh XP installation, and use TI Image Explorer to recover your data from the image. Reinstall software apps manually.

3) Finally, there have been mixed reports that using the "Safe" version of the Rescue CD, that you may be able to restore your image from the SATA drive to the RAID'd drives. In other words, re-RAID the drives as they were before, use another computer to generate the Safe TI Boot CD, and then use it to try and restore the image from the SATA drive to the RAID'd drives. Make sure you have the latest BIOS for your motherboard first.

Good luck, whatever you decide!

 

There is a fourth option.... Wait until Acronis releases the BartPE plug-in for True Image!! Come on Acronis, what's taking so long for this, it would really help a lot of people out!!

The BartPE is a Windows 32 boot CD. You can load your own drivers. So you would create the BartPE CD with the TI Plug-in, boot it and press F6 to load your motherboard specific RAID drivers. Then you run TI from the BartPE environment and theoretically, you're back in business.

Acronis has been working on it for a couple of months, but no word yet on the expected release date.

This thing is really overdue, IMHO!!

 

All of my above suggestions assume you have enough sense to keep the original Image of your RAIDed drives safe and sound, so that no matter what happens, you will be no worse off than you are right now.

By the way, if you manage to get your original RAID configuration restored, use TI for windows to clone the RAIDed drives to the SATA drive. You may need to then go into the BIOS and set the SATA drive as the primary drive, and it should boot just fine from the SATA drive, if that's your preference....