TI v11 Dual Boot XP 32 bit & Vista 64-bit restor issue?

TI 11 Dual Boot XP 32 bit/Vista 64-bit "WinLoad.exe....Is Missing" restore issue?

As stated in the title I have an unusual issue with verified backups from a dual partitioned (XP 32-bit/Vista 64-bit) on a single 74 GB Western Digital raptor system hard drive whilst restoring to two other experimental spare backup 80 GB & 150 GB Velociraptor Western Digital hard drives

The reason I call them experimental is that I had started to restore the 74 GB raptor system drive first of all to the 80 GB instead of my usual server-based backup and restore scenario. This was started because I had read an excellent methodology here in the forums of restoring to a similar or identical hard drive and using that restored hard drive to boot either OS thus confirming the success of the restore. This is made easy with a quick release Thermaltake 5 1/4 MAX4 SATA HD front facing bay caddy system.

I started this only a week ago and I had success with this method using True Image version 11 on the first restore to the 80 GB HD so I used that HD for about a week doing incremental backups when I installed new programs etc to Windows XP and Vista. As you can imagine, because of the faster read/write times of the 74GB raptor drive, I decided to use that as my day-to-day system drive. But when I came to update the slower 80 GB HD (from the updated 74GB backup & restores) I was only able to boot into windows XP 32-bit partition as the Vista 64-bit dual boot screen told me about the 64-bit system was corrupted. But how could that be the case if I'm able to successfully backup/restore, update the 74 GB hard drive but not the 80 GB HD?

Second guessing myself & the fact that I was in the market for a new hard drive anyway that was at least as fast as the 74GB raptor HD I decided to upgrade to the even faster Velociraptor 150 GB & to gain more system space to-boot but low and behold I got the same problem as with the 80 GB, no Vista boot! I have even resorted to backing up the system state of the successful 74GB, (which I have never had to do in the past) as well as backing up the Master Boot record of the 74 GB and trying to restore that and the system state on the 80 GB and that 150 GB Vista partition's but there is no joy, I still can only boot into the XP 32-bit partitions of the 80 GB and the 150 GB hard drives!

Just to reiterate the incremental backups of the 74 GB HD have been verified and can be used successfully to dual boot into Windows XP and Vista partitions once restored to the same 74 GB HD. But these verified dual boot backups can only be used to boot into Windows XP on the 80 GB and 150 GB partitions experimental hard drives due to Windows Vista dual boot complaining of corrupted Vista system state which is obviously not the case due to verification and successful restore to the 74 GB?

I thought it might be that True Image needed an identical model hard drive but the fact that it successfully restored to the 80 GB the first time and allowed me to boot into Vista 64-bit means that was not the case, doesn't it?

It might have something to do with the order in which I restore set partitions because if I install Vista 64-bit partition first and that becomes Active, Primary and then XP 32-bit secondly as a Primary (Non-Active) and Windows complains that the NT loader file is missing so I have to reverse the restore procedure.

So once I reverse the procedure I also decided to try to restore the Master Boot record in the correct order, namely XP 32-bit partition Master Boot record recovery first and the 64-bit Vista partition Master Boot record second, but still no joy!

This might be a long winded thread but I can see me being the only person who has a dual boot OS scenario with true image 11, so I will be saving others a lot of heartache if we get this question bottomed out. Also I do not want to have two pair of Windows Vista 64-bit installation from the original OS CD every time I do an incremental restore, which Windows is asking for.

Any thoughts appreciated including out-of-the-box failure reasons & suggestions that will mean I do not have to buy another identical hard drive, unless somebody has the answer of course.

 

Re: TI 11 Dual Boot XP 32 bit/Vista 64-bit "WinLoad.exe....Is Missing" restore issue?

After a Google search on the "WinLoad.exe....Is Missing", seems it's Vista Cloning issue & how Acronis True image clones a dual boot system state/ Boot Manager / NTLoader scenario, SEE THIS ARTICLE : "Multibooters - Dual/Multi Booting With Vista - Cloning Vista" http://www.multibooters.co.uk/cloning.html

I haven't implemented this solution yet, as it seems very manual and user intensiveeach time I backup and restore incrementally, but at least I'm now looking in the right direction.

I'm about to look in this forum under "WinLoad.exe....Is Missing", to see if acronis is aware of this issue, (especially with the Acronis True Image 11)?

I'll keep you all informed if and when I find a easy and workable solution.

 

Re: TI 11 Dual Boot XP 32 bit/Vista 64-bit "WinLoad.exe....Is Missing" restore issue?

The Winload... error is common when the BCD file settings are incorrect for the Vista installation. In your first post, you said got a "corrupted" error message. The actual error message would have helped more.

When TI 11 does a restore of a Microsoft dual-boot system, it often only gets one of the operating systems setup correctly in the BCD file. This is a known problem with TI 11.

However, since you have been able to successfully do restores to your old drive and didn't have any problems, I think that once you fix the BCD file and then create new backups of the new drive, you should be able to do restores successfully.

This problems will happen more often in dual-boot situations and in certain situations involving restoring to a different drive or a different sized partition.

If you need help fixing the BCD file, run the bcdedit program and copy the output and include it in a post. Also include the drive letters assigned to your partitions. If the Vista partition is visible when booted into XP, you should be able to do this when XP is running. Browse to the \Windows\System32 folder on the Vista partition for the bcdedit.exe program.