Using archive Image to restore after replacing damaged internal hard drive? Advice pl

I have researched and read a fair bit in order to solve this challenge, including the User's Guide (both 8.0 version and 9.0 version) , and I still cannot find any answer.

I am using Acronis True Image version 8 (build 937) , Windows XP home edition on a Dell Dimension 3000 desktop computer.

My challenge : Cannot restore image(s) (i.e. those .tib files that I created ) stored in secondary master drive (let's call it drive 2 ) to new primary master drive (let's call it drive 1) .

Once upon a time, when I have just reinstallled the Windows XP home edition and sundry drivers and softwares on my old internal primary master drive (i.e. old drive 1) before the drive went bust (last month) , I created about 5 different .tib image files along the reinstallation process, each .tib image file contains more reinstalled softwares than the preceding .tib file. And I stored all these 5 .tib files in drive 2.

So I have made a full image archive of my entire 'Disc 0' [the equivalent of 'My Computer']. In fact, I created five .tib image files of this entire 'Disc 0' , at varying degrees of software reinstallation.

I reckoned if I needed to restore images from drive 2 to drive 1 , I have 5 different .tib files to choose from , each of these archives contains more reinstalled softwares than the preceding .tib file.

Each archive is a 'full' backup of drive 1.

Before you ask, yes, I did test restoring each of the 5 .tib image files from drive 2 to my old drive 1. I test restored each of them by booting my computer up using an Acronis bootable rescue CD. So here is my proof that each of this .tib image file does work.

A few months later, old drive 1 is out of order. Dell sent me a replacement hard drive ( different brand ; same number of gigabytes ).

After setting up the new hard drive as master drive (i.e. new drive 1; made sure jumper in right place), pressed F12 upon starting up computer and change the boot sequence to reading from CD/DVD drive first. Inserted Acronis bootable rescue CD , going through the same old procedure of restoring from a particular .tib file in drive 2 to new drive 1.


In other words, using the bootable CD, I went through the whole procedure of choosing which .tib file to restore to new drive 1.....

A couple of minutes later, Acronis said operation is successful , meaning the image has been restored to new drive 1.

Restarted computer, and computer refused to go to Windows desktop. This is totally unexpected, as far as I am concerned. What am I missing?

Here is the message I received from my Dell computer after restarting computer:
"Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem. Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware.
Please check the Windows documentation about hardware disk configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional information."


Why a replacement master drive of different brand would fail to get an image file restored?

I am very very very sure the old drive 1 , if it was not out of order, would have no problem getting restored from any one of the 5 .tib image files that I previously created.

I have done quite a bit of homework. But nobody seems to be advising about the procedure to use in restoring .tib image to a brand new master drive from a slave drive (that only has .tib files and has no operating system . )

The closest and best thing I have read is https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=137549&highlight=restore replacement hard drive
Rhoda in that post is asking the same question. The only difference is she is asking about her laptop and her external master drive; whereas I am asking about the two master drives in my Dell desktop computer.



Additional information:
I had kept things simple for myself , i.e. I made no partition or MBR changes to my old drive 1 before I created my 5 Acronis image archive. Whatever extra partitions there are were created by the Windows XP operating system CD provided by Dell.


I am not an expert , so if possible please provide a step by step instruction.

Thank you very very very much.

 

Try a few things.
Remove the boot CD.
Put your boot order back the way it was in the BIOS.
Check all your drive cables and power cables to make sure nothing separated, including the ones to your floppy drive.
Check your jumpers again to make sure they're OK.

 

Hello studentguru2,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are very sorry for the delay with the response.

First of all, please make sure that you restore the entire hard drive and not separate partitions. The point is that version 8.0 has a capability of including the MBR into the entire hard drive image only. Accordingly, MBR is restored only in case the entire hard drive is being restored. In other words, if you restore partitions separately then MBR is not restored. In order to restore the entire hard drive you should check the box near the hard drive's name (e.g. Disk1) on the appropriate screen of the image restoration wizard.

If that does not help then please also try fixing your hard drive's MBR either by booting the computer from Windows installation CD and issuing the 'fixmbr' command in Recovery Console or using one of the methods described in Acronis Help Post.

If that does not help either then please create Acronis Report in the way described below:

- Download and run Acronis Report Utility;

- Select the "Create Bootable Floppy" option;

- Insert a blank floppy disk in the A: drive and proceed with creation of the bootable floppy;

- Boot the computer having the issue from this beforehand created diskette and wait for the report creation process to finish;

- Collect the report file from the floppy.

Then please submit a request for technical support. Provide the report.txt file collected in your request along with the step-by-step description of the actions taken before the problem appears and the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with the solution.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov

 

I experienced the same problem (Configuration error message when attempting to boot). I Loaded Windows XP Setup Boot Discs(6)
and tried FIXMBR from Recovery Console as suggested, but that didn't seem to work. Then I used BOOTCFG /LIST to find my restored Windows installation, then used BOOTCFG /ADD to add it, then BOOTCFG /DEFAULT to make it the default installation, exited Recovery Console and all was well on reboot. Well, almost. When I attempt to access the BIOS on bootup, all that appears is the first page displaying system time, etc but no other info for diskette drive, hard drive, service tag, etc and I cannot access the other 6 pages. I thought the BIOS was in ROM, why can't I access it? How can I regain this ability? I thought at first that the reason was I hadn't backed-up and restored a hidden partition A: that appeared to belong to Symantec's "GOBACK", but with the BIOS in ROM, now I'm wondering. The PC in question is a DELL Inspiron 8100 notebook with what seems to be a Phoenix BIOS and I had used TI to restore a full image backup of my old working hard drive to a new larger (120 GB) Seagate one. Everything else seems OK. Can someone help me access my BIOS again? Additionally, When I used BOOTCFG /ADD, one of the prompts asked for "OS Load Options", to which I simply replied "Enter". Should I have done something here? What are the "Load Options"? As I've said all seems OK. One mor thing, where is the "bootable media" that the User Guide mentions that is supposed to be included in the retail box?

 

I was able to successfully repair this problem by reflashing the BIOS from an updated BIOS from Dell's website via CD versus from the Desktop icon created by the download, which failed on execution.