Vista migration problem from one harddrive to another using Acronis True Image 11

Hi,

I have 2 physical SATA hard drives in my computer: the first one 250gb with WinXP installed, and the other one 750gb with Windows Vista Ultimate installed on it. The dual-boot info is stored on the XP's drive.

My goal is to remove the XP installation and to migrate my Vista installation from the bigger hard drive to the smaller one (in place of XP).

There are the steps I've taken:

1. Formatted the 250gb harddrive
2. Using Acronis True Image 11, I made image of Vista installation partition.
3. Using Acronis Bootable Recover Media, I recovered the image to the blank 250gb harddrive (everything went smooth so far)
4. The Vista (now on the 250 gb drive) was not able to boot, because of boot problems. I repaired the startup using Vista Install CD, and the boot was successfully written.
5. Now, the computer successfully finds Vista, loads it, gets through the "Choose User Profile..." screen, and when I select user, it writes "Preparing your desktop..." and hangs indefinitely.

What could be the problem? I assume is not boot-related problem as far as Vista starts loading. Can you point me in the right direction to solve this issue?

Best regards,
Zlatko

 

Did you still have the 750GB drive connected when you booted into Vista on the 250GB drive? If so, you'll probably need to either do the restore again and make sure the 750GB drive is disconnected when you boot the first time from the 250GB drive or use the Vista DVD's Command Prompt, start the Registry Editor ("regedit") and clear the MountedDevices entry on the 250GB drive (similar instructions can be found here).

Was the original Vista partition assigned the C: drive letter when you were booted into it? Hopefully, it was. If it wasn't the repair will be different.

When you did the Vista Boot Repair, did you make sure the Vista partition on the 250GB drive was Active and that the 250GB drive was the booting drive in the BIOS?

 

MudCrab, thank you very much for your response. Doing the procedure for clearing the MountedDevices entry, I was able to successfully start Vista. I just left the "Default" entry, and everything went fine.

p.s. After doing this, everything makes sense; on the old drive where Vista was installed, there were three partitions. On the newer one, there was only one partition. Understandably, the imaged Vista pointed to some non-existing partitions (letters) and that was causing the problem with Vista starting.

Once again, thank you, your response has helped me alot.

Best regards,
Zlatko