Windows hangs at opening screen

I have just completed a restore from the recovery CD and everything seem to work just fine except that when booting the system disk, it hangs at the opening screen and will not boot into windows XP.

I then ran CHKDSK at the sytem recovery console booting to the XP CD. CHKDSK found some errors so I invoked the /r for repair and after quite a time the process completed. I attempted another boot to the system with the same results.

I then used the fixmbr command in the recovery console as it stated the MBR appeared non-standard. Still no change when attempting to boot into the system.

Can someone please give me some suggestions what to do now as I really need to get the system to boot. I have every reason to believe that the image made with ATI is fine.

Please assist Please.

Thanks

 

you have a simple case of drive letter change during restoration. When the system partition has the wrong drive letter it will hang/or loop at the logon screen, this happens because windows xp is looking for the startup files in the wrong drive.

you can fix it by going into the registry of the non-booting drive and changing the drive letter back to what it's suppose to be.

One quick way to fix it is to use a windows98 boot floppy disk and typing fdisk/mbr. This will release all the drive letters and reassign the c: drive letter to the system partition.

I use the program "paragon justboot corrector" to fix these problem's, it takes 5 minutes at most and runs off of a bootcd.

Three things that cause this problem are 1.)if the source windows xp has previously seen the hard drive that you will be restoring it to, 2.)if you bootup the restored hard drive with the source drive still attached, 3.)if you restored a larger partition onto a smaller partition.

My advice download the demo of "paragon justboot corrector" and use that to bootup your computer, with the demo you will be able to read the drive letters right out of the registry even if the hard drive won't boot. That way you can at least troubleshoot if that is your problem.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=174958

 

Well, I'd call that a tad short of working just fine.

What version of True Image are you using and what build number is the Recovery CD?

What operating system are you using? (Windows XP, Vista...)

Why did you do the restore? Was the system working normally or was there a problem due to....?

Did you restore to the same hard drive or a new one?

 

Hey Folks,

need help in quite similar case (i assume).

I'm using:
Acronis True Image 9.1 Server
Windows XP Prof. SP2
Asus Notebook (quite up-to-date)


I did COMPLETE BACKUP of notebook in november 2007 and want to restore it now due to performance reasons. I made this backup directly after installing Windows XP and already did all Windows Tuning Tipps you should do (took me hours). Idea was to use this image whenever i want to have new system and avoid slow windows install process .... think u got me.


So I choosed Recovery in Acronis Software.....took like 20mins and all was done....!

Windows is booting (BootLogo) but stops at "User Logon". Wether it sais "log-off" or always changes between "Loading User Data" and "log-off".

Problem i can imagine could be that i did this backup WITH 2 PARTITIONS. I had C: (round 60GB) and D: (round 50GB) when doin this image... ! Now i only have 1 big partition.
Backup i want to restore is round 6GB and active primary partition --> C: !

BTW: I did backup of actual system (which i want to replace) and when restoring this IT IS ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEM ! Everything works fine !


What i tried:
1) Recover image via usual Acronis Interface (from working system).
2) Start with BartPE --> Format C: --> insert Acronis Startup CD --> Recover


Drive letter has always been C: !


Can anyone help me ? What is my fault ?

Thx a lot,

cheers,

applealex

 

it also sounds like you have the same "drive letter change problem", this is very common when restoring windows xp.

If you tried to read your drive letters using the acronis boot cd, that's not an accurate way, even if it's a different drive letter it will still say it's c:.

Download the demo of "paragon justboot corrector" and unrar it, burn the iso to a cd. Then use that bootcd to bootup the computer. The demo won't let you save any changes, but it is an excellent troubleshooting tool. With the demo you can read the drive letters of your non-booting drive right from the registry(the only accurate way to do it).

If it is a drive letter problem, these are very easy to fix. No need to redo everything or fixmbr etc. Just a simple change of the registry drive letter and a reboot will get the computer to boot up properly. I've had this happen to me a couple of times and a drive letter change always fix it the first time.

 

hey mate,

thx for your answer.

i'm not quite sure what u mean. I downlaoded it, burned to CD.

Am i supposed to recover the image before ?

Would be great if u add me to your

ICQ: 55717103
MSN: ruebsaamen@hotmail.de

THX A LOT !

cheers, alex

 

If your computer is currently not booting or hanging/loop at the logon screen, insert the paragon bootcd in it and let it boot up.
1.) in the main screen, choose "search for windows installations to correct"
2.) when you get to that screen, you will be looking for the partition that says "system", the drive letter here needs to be "c" , because that is what it was on your source drive.

 

Kk, i'll give it a try !

Could u plz tell me how to correct the drive letter, cause it wont start now and so i woukd need to recover several times...!

Perhaps u can tell me now and i can do it alltogether!

Thx !

Alex

 

Thank you for your reply.

I thought the same thing but what I did to continue trying to fix the problem is exactly what you said. I used a win 98 emeregency boot disk and used fdisk /mbr. That did not work either.

The I formatted the drive using the recovery console to obtain a virgin NTFS format. Attempted to restore the drive again and it still did not work.

I am trying a new drive at this point to see what will happen with it.

Please continue to monitor this thread as i would appreciate your input on what I have provided thus far.

The original sympton was that the drive suddenly stopped bootin at the same place. I was able to get into safemode a couple of times then that stopped working. the I attempted to restore.

System is a Dell XPS 410 running XP Pro. @ Gb RAM three drives for storage and one SATA Seagate 320 Gb for system drive.

Thanks!!

in an NTSF e after the next the recovery console (booted to Windows system CD) and chose to to after I was convinced that there was more to the issue is I disconnected all drives from the system excep the one that contained the image and the boot drive. I attempted the restore again which failes at the same place/

I then formated the system drive that would not boot and ran a chkdsk which found errors and they were fixed.

 

To fix drive letters you can use a win98 floppy disk (only a win98 bootdisk will work -not a win95/winme/xp etc), when you boot up with it type fdisk/mbr then reboot the computer, that will automatically reset the drive letters.

The other ways to change drive letters are listed in the link provided, these are more complicated but it's a free way to do it.

I bought the full version of "paragon justboot corrector" and use that to fix drive letters. that's probably the easy way to do it. The only other program that I know that can change drive letters is "avanquest partition commander pro version 10" it has a bootable cd with a boot corrector built-in.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=174958

 

Per your suggestion, I just checked for the "Just boot corrector" software and the "try it" link is dead. If this is simply a drive letter issue what do you think about the fact that Fdisk /mbr did not work? Have you had cases where fdisk would not free the drive letters?

My system partition is NTFS and the restore is as well.

Please offer any input that you can.

The registry fix that was mentioned in historical threads can't work if you can't boot?? I guess the assumption there was that one has at least one working boot drive, which in my case I do not.

 

jkb242,

Could you describe what you mean by, "hangs at the opening screen".

 

I finally found a way to get a preview or demo of the Just boot program. The CD loaded at boot but gave me criptic message that no swap space was avaiable and terminated the program.

Got any ideas concerning what this means?

Thanks!!

 

My guess is that it has nothing to do with drive letters. That's why I'd like you to clarify my previous post.

 

--> IT WORKS <--


THANK U FOR SUPPORT !

AppleAlex

 

For that particular command, yes only a win 98 disk. However if one has an xp install cd. Fixmbr & fixboot are the commands one needs to run in the recovery Console. The Latter being the solution to what we are trying to accomplish in this situation.
Recovery Commands: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058

 

I am another user who is having exactly the same problem (hanging at "Windows XP" screen before logon boxes, safe mode and normal). I was fiddling around with adding/removing harddrives last night, so I guess it is to do with drive letters too.

I downloaded the trial version of justboot boot corrector and burnt it to a CD, however it crashes with a page fault when starting up. I was unable to find any information on this online, so I am purchasing the full version now (it's only $20) and see if that helps, or if I can otherwise get some support from them on this.

I personally don't think this particular problem has to do with the MBR, as I understand that is read on system startup - the disk wouldn't even boot if the MBR was incorrect. This feels more like Windows reassigning the drive letter when it gets most of the way through loading.

I'll keep you posted if I get any further with justboot, please post any other methods you know to get the drive letters reset. Thanks!

 

Hi there, an update.

I'd like to confirm that my problem was indeed the drive letters (my main drive had been reconfigured in the system registry to F: instead of C. I think this was because my HDs are all SATA, I added a PATA drive briefly, it got confused and thought it had priority, pushing my SATA drives down past the CD/DVD drives.

I downloaded the trial version of justboot and burned the recovery CD as recommended - this however didn't work for me, the recovery disk page faulted! I talked to their support and they say it's due to "hardware incompatability" though couldn't be more specific. I also bought justboot to try that, but it failed the same way.

I then purchased, from the same company, Paragon, Disk Backup 8.51 Personal edition, which can also make a Linux-based recovery CD. This worked for me fine - it booted, I went into the Boot Controller, moved the main drive back to C:, rebooted, and it all worked! However, be warned that the free demo of Disk Backup recovery CD does *not* include the Boot Controller option.

I would recommend anyone with the similar problem, download the trial of justboot to fix it. If that fails for you like it did for me, you may have to splash out on Disk Backup ($30, not extortionate, and has a lot of good stuff), but it WILL get the job done.

Good luck, hope this helps someone.

Oh and for the record, this is not related to the MBR. If it was, the process would not get as far as booting windows - the MBR contains no information about drive letters, only the partition table, the bootstrap (to make the drive bootable or not), and the disk signature - Windows uses that signature to identify the disk and uses it effectively as a hash in the system registry, but using FDISK will *not* affect this value, only the code segment of the MBR. If you use dd or something, you're on your own

 

(sorry for bumping an old topic, but I am having serious problems)

Okay, since nobody likes long stories, I shall keep this as short as possible.

I decided to merge a few partitions and resize them with Acronis Disk Director Suite in Windows XP x64. This all went fine. It booted back to Windows after it completed. But then I decided to change the drive letters (since they were not in order).

And here the problems started; Disk Director did some things in Windows (without errors) then it rebooted (like normal) went to DOS, did a couple of more changes and synchronised the system (still all fine here). Then it try to reboot back to Windows XP x64, but it hangs on the Windows Logon screen (just a few seconds before you enter your password). I tried to be patient, but the screen remain the same. Apparently Acronis Disk Director didn't work that well after all.

Now I have read most posts which were posted before me. But I am still having problems to get Windows XP x64 back to booting normally. Currently I am using Windows Vista x64 (on the C: partition) to type this message. But I cannot seem to get XP x64 booting up properly. And I use XP x64 for my work. So you probably understand the seriousness of this problem.

I tried the registry trick with the load hive, though it loads up fine under a dummy key, I cannot seem to see any differences betweet the two.

Please help and advice. I really need to get Windows XP x64 back working...

Thanks in advance!

//edit

I gave Partition Commander 10 a go, but that program doesn't work to well; it says in Vista x64: Unknown Windows Version.
I will give the other program a go which was mentioned here earlier in the topic.

 

Well I tried several things, but still no succes.

It just hangs at the light-blue screen with the Windows XP logo in it...
So anyone who can help me out?

Also more information;

I have 2x 250GB HD's in RAID 0 configuration in several partitions; with on C:\ Windows Vista x64

On a 3rd HD, a single (different brand) 250 GB HD non-raid, I have 3 partitions one with Windows XP x64.

 

I am currently suffering the same thing you described above. I find it BIZARRE that others are suggesting to buy yet another tool to fix problems that disk director allows you to create.

I bought into the marketing statement: "Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 is the easiest and most convenient partition manager and hard disk toolkit. It brings together the most popular disk management functions, partition recovery tools, and boot disk manager for Windows XP and Vista desktop systems."

i spent two hours last night digging my way out of the mess OS selector made of my system, uninstalled it and won't go back to that.

Now I find after using DD to change a drive letter, I'm in for a few more hours of work, and perhaps having to buy some other product to fix the damage done.

yes - I am frustrated!

 

ehh.. After 4 or 5 hours. I gave up, I was only a few hours into the new drive/os.

After reading this page: http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm i have a much better understanding of what happened, but it still baffles me that DD couldn't have assisted me through this, or at a minimum told me I would be tortured for 4-5 hours.

Some in this thread mentioned justboot corrector. Didn't try it as the trial link was dead, and I guess I just think it's plain stupid to have to pay another $20 when DD should have this capability itself.

I also found savepart that is supposed to assist with boot drive letter changes. It's free, but I didn't try it.

And as an FYI for anyone with the same problem stumbling across this thread like I did, heres some data from my experience:

Win98 -> fdisk /mbr didn't work for me, unlike many others.

Recovery console -> FIXMBR didn't work, probably for reasons explained under method three at this page.

Didn't even try Recovery console -> fixboot as MS says its not supported under xp x64 here.

I would strongly caution anyone from changing boot drive drive letters without careful consideration. DD will let you shoot yourself in the foot.

peace

 

I've never tested a "boot corrector" on xpx64. So I can't comment on what type of repairs to recommend for that operating system. But if your getting the boot drive hanging at the logon screen it points to a "partition ID drive letter" problem.

But I do know that restoring windows xp will on occasion result on "drive letter changes". Not with just true image, I've recently been using "easy image" to backup and restore my other computers. I've also encountered "drive letter change" problems with that program. On both situations using a "boot corrector" got the restored drive to boot.

With drive letters you need to verify which of the 2 "drive letters" is causing the problem. Theres the "partition ID drive letter" and the "mounted device drive letter". Both these drive letters must match in order to get a proper boot. I think most problems deal with the "partition ID drive letter", that's the one that the win98 fdsk/mbr fix will not repair. Fixboot/Fixmbr/repair installations won't fix the problem either.

I've been searching for a procedure to change a "partition ID drive letter" without using a "boot corrector", but haven't found anything that works. The "mounted device drive letter" can easily be fixed using freeware.

For me the "boot corrector" was my final option when I purchased it, I didn't think it was going to fix the problem, but it worked as advertised. If the "boot corrector" can boot up the computer and find the operating system, it can probably fix it. I consider a "boot corrector" a necesity when restoring windows xp. I'm one of the few people here in the forums that actually fixes drive letters, instead of worrying about what cause the problem in the first place and redoing th clone again. It never takes me more than 5 minutes to fix these problems.

to HHawk
The "avanquest partition commander version 10" bootdisk, has a built-in "boot corrector", it's not the latest build of the "boot corrector" but you might want to check and see if you can get it to work for you.