Unsuccessful boot after data recovery

I'm at my wits end. I've read many of the threads on this forum about difficulties booting after an attempted recovery onto a new HD, but nothing has worked yet for me. Here is my problem: my Maxtor 60 Gb HD died recently on my HP Pavilion desktop. Luckily, I had imaged my C: drive onto a 120 Gb WD external HD. I bought a new IDE 80 Gb HD (WD) and installed it correctly. When I tried booting, I got an immediate error message: "Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem. Could not read from the selected boot path." Etc., as in other forum messages. So, I booted from my Acronis CD rescue disk and restored the old Maxtor image onto the brand new HD. However, I got the same configuration error message and no boot. So, after reading some more threads, I decided to re-do the restore, this time also restoring the MBR and Track 0 image. Still, no successful boot. Then, I placed the original Windows XP Home CD into the slot, booted, went to the restore console by pressing R at the prompt, and did a bootcfg /rebuild, but to no avail. I also tried fixmbr and bootfix and still no boot. I feel I have tried everything. What have I done wrong or not done? Please help if you can. Thanks a lot.

Al

 

Hellow
If you got the message ""Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem"
RIGHT after inserting the new Harddisk, That is exactly what you have!
I'm allmost certain this is not a software issue.

Can you go successfully through a Windows XP install from CD and start it?

Is it an IDE disk or SATA? It just might be that you've jumped it wrongly somehow.

Please give the exact disk types (old and new) and where the jumpers sit

 

Note that this error is telling you that there is a hardware problem.

I think you have done everything right with Acronis, but the new drive is not configured correctly for booting and cannot be read.

Is there more than one drive/device on the cable that includes the new drive?
How is the other drive/device jumpered?

If the other device is jumpered Cable Select (CS), you must jumper the new drive CS. If the other device is jumpered Slave, you must jumper the new drive Master (or for Western Digital drives, Master with Slave).

When you get the jumper set correctly, check in BIOS that the new drive is selected as the boot drive. This may have changed when the old drive was removed.

I hope this helps.

 

Thank you for your reply. Both the old and new drives are IDE drives. I checked the jumper on the new WD drive, and it was set on Cable Select (pins 1 and 2 jumpered). I set it for master (pins 5 and 6 jumpered) to see if that would help. I can boot from a WinXP disk and my Acronis CD rescue disk, but I still can't boot into the C: drive. I am now re-restoring it just to make sure it is restored with the new jumper setting, but I suspect I'll get the same problem. I'll let you know in about 45 minutes.

Al

 

See my reply to the previous poster. I am currently re-recovering my data again after the new jumper setting, so I haven't consulted the BIOS yet. Since I can't boot, I can't go to the BIOS anyway. I'll let you know after the recovery in about 40 min. Thanks a lot for your help.

Al

 

Well, after the repeated Acronis recovery, I tried booting again and got this message: Disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter. So, there's still a major problem. Any other ideas?

Al

 

Did you partition and format the new drive?

 

No. I didn't think I had to if I restored to it from another drive. Do I have to format it?

Al

 

If you are cloning you shouldn't need to. If installing an image file [*.tib] I believe you need to partition and format.

 

Really? Why? What do you mean by partition AND format?

 

A lot has been written about this matter. You might also gain some insight from the WD literature. See if this link will help:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;313348

 

How was the old (failed) drive jumpered?
Was the old drive also a WD drive?
Did you set the new drive to be jumpered exactly the same way as the old drive?

When restoring an image, it is not necessary to partition or format a drive if the drive already has an MBR. However, when restoring the image to a new drive, it is necessary to restore the entire drive including the MBR. If you only made an image of the C partition, then it is necessary to partition the drive first to create an MBR.

You do not have to be able to boot Windows to go into the BIOS Setup. Press the
F1, F2 or Delete keys repeatedly at the very start of booting. You should see a message as to which key is the right one. If all you see is a company logo, press the Escape key and look for a message such as "Press F1 to enter setup." Check the boot order to be sure your new drive is the boot hard drive.

 

OK, I got into the BIOS. The new HD is indeed the primary master. There is a secondary master (CR-48XATE, which I presume is a CD drive, and a secondary slave (Toshiba DVD-ROM). In the Advanced tab, the boot order is 1) ATAPI CD-ROM, 2) Floppy, 3) IDE hard drive (the new WD), and 4) INT18 device (net), whatever that is. I presume this is the proper order?

The old drive was a Maxtor (60 Gb), and it was jumpered as the Master. The new drive, which has 80 gigs, came jumpered as Cable Select, which I changed to Master, which didn't make a difference.

Apparently, I had originally only imaged the C: drive since I ignorantly didn't know you had to image the entire disk (live and learn). So, now that I'm in this pickle, how do you create a partition with its own MBR? Thru formatting from the original WinXP disk? Thru Acronis?

Thanks very much. You guys have been a great help.

 

I got this message from Acronis support last night: "As far as boot fixes (sic) does not help the problem is related to the drivers incompatibility: the Windows copy is adapted to the old hard disk drive and does not correctly recognize new one. We recommend you to get the hard disk drive of the exact the same type as your old one and try to restore on it. If there are any other hardware changes, we recommend you to undo them prior the restoration. Unfortunately, MS Windows operating systems do not have any mechanism allowing drivers change without any pre-backup preparations."

Well, I already bought a hard drive that is different from the original one. Also, since I could not find my original copy of the WinXP OS, I borrowed my son's, which has never been opened from the shrink wrap. Does this mean I'm screwed from a driver standpoint?

 

Something you might try. I haven’t done this quite this way so I can’t say with absolute certainty that it will work.

Assuming that you have your original Product Key for your installation and also that your son’s Win XP installation CD is the same type, by this I mean that they are as an example both Win XP Home. Additionally are they both the same type, perhaps the retail version?

If the above are true, you might try installing Win XP using your son's CD and your Product Key. When prompted to Activate enter later. Note that the installation will format the new drive. If Windows installs successfully you should then be able to overwrite it using the True Image Rescue Media CD to install the image. Uncheck the option to include the MBR and Track 0.

 

Hi avcinci
Just my words!!
Install XP. IF it CAN boot, you'll know for certain that the disk works on your system. If it CAN't boot. Well, then you wont get the backup to work either.

 

Bruce, Both versions of XP are the Home edition, except my son's is for a Gateway while mine is for an HP. I don't know if this matters or not. I did what you suggested. However, before I restored the image, I tried booting into Windows after removing the CD, but it failed again. The message was "Disk boot failure, insert system disk and press Enter." When I go into the Acronis CD with the old image on it, it can see the new C: drive just formatted, and I can see all the Windows folders on it when I click on the + sign to expand the folder. However, it reports Free Space of 74.02 GB and Total Size at 74.53 GB. This doesn't make sense since Windows has to take up more space than 0.51 GB, doesn't it? I also re-jumpered the HD back to Cable Select and tried booting again with the formatted disk. Now, I get no error message at all, just a white blinking horizontal cursor in the upper left corner of the screen, and nothing happens at all. Very frustrating. Can't understand why this thing won't boot.

 

If I understand correctly, and setting the image restore issue aside for the moment, it sounds like the Windows XP Home Edition didn't install correctly. Since you are using the OEM version from two different manufacturers this may well be the problem. Looking at my systems (which are quite old) my Windows directory alone is between 3 and 4 GB. A fresh install would be somewhat less don't know how much tho. My experience suggests leaving the new drive configured as a Master is the best choice.

It appears that you have two options:
1. Contact HP and see if you can get a replacement Windows XP Home CD.
2. Purchase a copy of XP Home. Not sure if this should be the retail or OEM version. My concern here is that if the Retail version is used, importing the image might conflict due to the Product ID and Product Key differences. Thinking about it a bit more the OEM version should have a greater chance for success. You would then enter your old Product Key when prompted during the install.This will install the system but you might not have custom drivers that are specific to the HP system. The HP website might have what you need.

Perhaps someone else will jump in here with additional thoughts.

 

What you say about the Win install sounds logical although I don't understand how the CD knows not to install itself on the system. BTW, I was never queried during the install process to input my Product Key. Does that happen after Windows starts up? I don't remember.

I might have my original WinXP disk at work, which I'll check tomorrow. Anyway, I called a local geek company, and they are coming Tuesday evening to "fix" the problem (unless I can find my original CD and fix it myself or unless someone else comes in with another idea not tried yet).

For future reference, when I image a hard drive, I should image the entire disk, not just C:, right? I guess I always thought the C: drive was the entire disk. Shows how much I know!! Again, thanks a lot to you, jmk94903, and samohtrelhe for taking the time to help me out. Hope some day I can do the same for you.

 

Being an OEM CD you are not prompted to enter a Product Key (I forgot about that). HP took care of it. With the retail version you are prompted to enter it when installing. I don't recall what TI version you have but generally when creating a backup image you check the box Disk 1.

 

My post is way late compared to the dates in this thread... but just in case someone else makes there way here, my experience my help.

After a successful ATI 9 restore of Windows XP disk, I got the message "Windows will not start because of a computer disk hardware configurartion problem. Could not read from selected boot disk". As a reminder, I could restore using ATI, but could not boot.

I kept having this problem, and continued search via google and came up with an MS document on the topic. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314477which described how to modify the boot.ini file. I did this an lo and behold, the system booted, and I seem to be back to my pre-disk-crash environment. I had to then make few edits to the Boot.ini file from within Windows (covered in the same MS tech note).

I am not really sure why this happened, but I suspect its because the ATI Rescue CD I used did not come from PC I was trying to restore. This might have created a Boot.ini file with a different Windows OS name than was in my original configuration.

If you have further questions I'd be happy to provide more info.

Paul