Inaccessible_Boot_Device after hard drive clone

phuz

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Sep 24, 2013
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I just took an 80GB hard drive (two partitions and one OEM partition) from a Compaq Deskpro (old, old PC) and cloned it to a new 120GB. I did a sector-by-sector copy in Acronis True Image. Now, when I put either the old drive or new drive back into this old PC, I get a blue screen with INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE. The OS is Windows NT.
I use a USB --> IDE adapter to perform the cloning and the OS on the machine I used is Windows 7 64.

I am on a customer site and this obsolete PC controls a lot of equipment. I have warned them about the risks of not upgrading this ancient system when it is controlling some high priority stuff, but here we are nonetheless.

Any ideas?
 
i am not 100% sure but this is what it seems to have happened

acronis must have somehow managed to damage the MBR on both the drives. you will need to repair the boot record manually to be able to use the drives.

were you using 2 os s on the compaq desktop?
 

phuz

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No, we were using one OS, but it always booted with two options. Regular and VGA.

How can I manually repair the MBR?
 

phuz

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Thanks,
I downloaded and booted from UBCD (ultimate boot cd) and ran FDISK /MBR from the prompt.
It did not make a difference and I still have a blue screen.
When I am at the prompt, though, I cannot access C: and if I go into FDISK and view partition information, the active partition does not have a label.
If I connect it back to my laptop via USB/IDE cable, the volume shows up with a drive letter.
 

phuz

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It shows up as H: when connected to my windows 7 machine, but every drive letter I type when booted up on the CD shows "Invalid drive H:" and so on.
How do I set a drive letter or what else am I missing? FIX MBR is not working.
 

phuz

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Thanks, but I can't even get to windows to change the drive letter. It shows up fine when connected to my windows 7 machine, but when booting off a CD on the Compaq, I get no drive letters for the drive. The partitions show up in FDISK and the other utilities and it says ACTIVE and BOOT, but even with that, I still get the INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE blue screen.
 

popatim

Titan
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Are you sure you set the hdd as the boot device in the bios?
Jumpers are correctly set on the drives ( ie - Master/Slave, CS, Single) please reference the drives label for correct jumper setting for use in single mode.
You didnt by chance look into the bios first and see if the ide ports were in auto mode or using a custom C/H/S setting did you?
What OS is the old old pc running, what system did you use to clone, and what cloning software did you use?
 

phuz

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Yes, it is set as #1 boot device. It is set for CS. The old PC is running NT 4.0. I used Windows 7 to clone and used Acronis True Image. The bios on this COMPAQ DESKPRO is very strange...it actually resides on a small partition on the HDD, which was copied. I can go into the "bios" but there is no adjustment for that stuff.
 
Are you working on the clone or on the original drive? I suggest you keep one copy in its original condition.

Your statement regarding the BIOS doesn't make sense. A motherboard needs BIOS code in order to access the HDD and other devices, so if there is any "BIOS" on the drive, then it is either a backup copy, or perhaps it contains BIOS extensions which are loaded at startup.

Otherwise, is it possible that you are referring to a Disk Drive Overlay (DDO)? This DDO would live in sector 0 and would be required to circumvent any HDD capacity limitation (eg a 32GB limit of some early BIOS versions).

Could we see the original contents of sector 0? That's where the MBR code and partition information resides.

You could use a sector editor (eg DMDE freeware) to do this. Select Mode -> Hexadecimal.
 

phuz

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I am working on both drives, but both are behaving in the same manner. I am focusing more effort on the original drive. The DESKPRO 4000 does not let you enter the bios directly. Instead, it forces you to enter a "setup" from a partition which makes its changes to the BIOS. I agree, its absurd. I don't know how to access the sector information. I do have Ultimate boot cd (UBCD) available and there are a few tools on there but not sure if that will help.
I have tried obtaining a copy of WinNT 4.0 install disc but it won't recognize the hard drive, only the CD-ROM and I assume because the drivers are not on the disc. I wanted to perform a repair and hopefully reset it.
 

phuz

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I took the drive's Windows partition and created a virtual machine based on that and tried to boot it.
SAME ERROR: INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE
So what is going on here......
 

phuz

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I did something that I thought would have NO chance of working.
I reinstalled NT4 on the drive(s) and copied the WINNT folder and other files (except boot.ini and pagefile.sys) to the new installations, and it actually worked.
Unbelievable!