windows hangs while loading after restoring image

I recently purchased Acronis TI 9.1 and AUR for my company to utilize the restoring images to different hardware configurations. So far we are only somewhat successful at this.

We have 2 different types of pcs, newer Dells and older (but not that old) custom built p4's. I created an image with TI on our older p4's and have successfully restored them to our newer Dells. So in a way our process is working. I run into a problem when i try to restore an image from our Dell pcs to our p4's.

After rebooting it just sits at a black screen and never gets to the windows loading screen. After rebooting again it gets to the windows didnt load correctly screen with the normal options. If i choose to start windows normally the white scroll bar makes it all the way across the screen but hangs after that and never makes it to the windows loading screen. If i choose Last known good config it brings up a file missing or corrupt "\windows\system32\config\system".

I have tryed using the windows repair with /fixboot and /fixmbr as well as a win98 boot disk with fdisk /mbr. Neither worked.

My first thought was that partition differences could be causing the problem, because our Dells come with a small like 30 meg FAT16 partition in addition to the larger ntfs partition. So i restored an image from one of our p4's to a Dell so that it only had one partition. Then i made an image of it and tryed restoring it back to the p4 pc. Same error, so unless i have missed something i don't think its the partitions.

Another thing i tryed was using a completly different p4 pc in case there was some hardware issues with the one i had been working on. Same problem. On top of that i tryed a brand new HD in case the image wasnt liking something on the p4 HD's. Same error.

I am restoring from a harddrive that we have windows loaded onto with our stored images. I have read that the pc might confuse which drive to assign the right letter to and that maybe windows is trying to boot off the wrong hd. So i have tryed restoring and, before closing Acronis after hitting OK, shutting down the pc and removing the HD with out images. Same error.

If anyone can help or has any suggestions on what else might be the issue it would be much appreciated. Thanks -drew

 

*update*

today i loaded xp from scratch on the p4 that wouldnt boot. Then i created a backup using Acronis. I restored that backup right back over the top of the hard drive. I get the same error that i have been having. Windows hangs right after the white scroll bar and before the loading screen.

Anybody have any ideas?! It wouldnt even restore to the same machine the image was just created on. And i know there are no hardware problems because i loaded xp just fine before creating the image.

please help.

 

Are you using any wireless devices or multiple usb devices via a hub? And if you didn't, create the bootable TI Rescue CD and make and restore the image using the CD.