Restore an XP image to another partition on same HD

Hi folks,
new here, first let me say hello to you all !
I have a very specific problem that might have more to do with XP than Acronis, but I'm pretty sure somebody here can help me get this sorted.

Situation :
new PC, 3 primary partitions on 1st HD
Tools :
TI Home 10, Disk Director Suite 10, latest builds, XP Pro SP2
Job :
Make ONE optimised install of XP and clone it to the other partitions to create a multiboot system, hiding the unused primary partitions
Problem :
Whenever I restore a (working) image to a different partition I get a BSOD while booting, and having to do a repair install every time somehow makes the whole concept of imaging pretty useless.

I'm not new to this, I've been doing this for years with great success using Partition Magic, Ghost and 95, 98 or 2000 Pro.
I know my way around partitions, boot.ini and such quite well, but here I must admit I'm clueless.

Any help of the experts would be very much appreciated !

Cheers, Cooper

 

anybody sure must have experienced this ?
Cheers, Cooper

 

bump.

 

I can't tell you how to reconfigure the boot process, but I think the following would accomplish what you want.
Install WinXP as a fresh install on the partition/s that you want to boot to. When you know that partition would boot correctly, restore your image to that partition but do NOT restore the boot partition.

Bill

 

Hello Bill,
thanks for taking the time to answer !
If I understand you correctly you suggest to do an extra install on every partition I want to be able to boot from later.
That's what I've been doing since I started using XP.
Actually choosing the boot partition is easy, using OS Selector or Boot Magic, no secrets there.
Those "start images" are getting old though, having gone through several fundamental HW changes in the meantime.
Since a basic XP install takes me anywhere between 8 and 15 hrs (it's an audio / video workstation with tons of software suffering from various paranoid copy protection mechanisms, that's why) and I need several variations building on that basic install I want to do ONE single basic install and distribute it to 3 primary partitions.
This used to work great up to W2k, so I'm pretty sure the problem has got to do with XP's activation cr*p.
Using one legal copy of XP for multiboot is officially allowed by MS, so no problem there.
If I have to activate each install separately, so be it, no problem.
But the images only work on the original partition, that's the catch.
Two and a half free beers for the person teaching me how to pull this off successfully !
Have a nice day,
Cooper

 

Agent Cooper,

I think you have the correct approach and I'm not sure why it's not working. I've used your approach and had 8 copies of WinXP working on the one HD. Three in primary partitions and 5 in logical drives. Whenever one OS was active, the other seven were hidden. That's what you desire. I used TI to restore my single image to each partition and later adjusted each boot.ini. I used BING as the boot manager.

The BSOD is worrying. I didn't see that. Do you have a boot manager installed in your WinXP? Boot managers should be installed after all images have been restored. Any BIOS issues? Latest BIOS?