I would appreciate any tips on this slightly weird situation. I have built loads of PCs but have never before seen an HD not booting if both the original and the destination BIOS is set to "basic" IDE.
The drive itself is of course SATA but that's irrelevant.
Original PC: 1TB HD 500MB c: 500MB d: winXP
BIOS set up for IDE and Compatible or Enhanced mode (both modes boot)
That HD was cloned to the one below using Trueimage 2013
New PC: 1.8TB HD 900GB c: 900GB d:
Unfortunately the Gigabyte BIOS doesn't have the corresponding config. It has IDE/RAID/AHCI and stuff like that. There is no Compatible/Enhanced config.
The computer starts to load Windows and then BSODs, at the usual spot when you didn't load the drivers using the 3.5" floppy and F6. But this MB should not need that and indeed I did previously install winXP on that very same HD and the same MB without doing any of the F6 business!
What could be wrong?
The new HD was visible on the old PC - that is where I cloned it.
I think I have tried all possible BIOS configs on the Gigabyte MB. They do make a difference but none of them actually boots. One of them ("Large") says "disk read error, press ctrl-alt-del".
To add: the objective is to end up with a dual-boot winXP/win7-64 system. I have already tested both OSs on the new computer and on the 1.8TB HD. Both worked flawlessly.
Yet, something about the boot process, when cloned from the Asus MB to the Gigabyte MB, fails.
In the distant past I recall solving this sort of (non booting) issue by starting to install a bare OS on the new drive and just as the install reaches the GIU portion, you interrupt the power and edit boot.ini as required. But this time it doesn't seem to work.
Could it be that just NTLDR is different for the 1.8TB HD?
I have just done a fresh winXP install on the 1.8TB HD (on c: ) and confirm the boot.ini is identical to the one on the old 1TB HD. As indeed it should be - both are on the first partition. So it has to be something else...
Also I have compared ntldr and ntdetect.com on the new and old and they are the same byte for byte.
Here is the boot.ini from the target drive, after I installed a fresh XP on it
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS.0
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS.0="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP drive c: (default)" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Windows XP drive d: (bare - VGA output?)" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
The bold one boots. The one below it, same partition etc, doesn't. The 3rd one is irrelevant (an old XP install on d: )
I wonder if it is to do with the new HD being over 1TB? In that case, after cloning the HD, I need to edit something on the target HD, but what?
One thing I have not yet tried is simply putting the 1TB HD into the new PC. I would prefer to not do that in case it gets corrupted. That is my working PC, with hundreds of apps on it.
The drive itself is of course SATA but that's irrelevant.
Original PC: 1TB HD 500MB c: 500MB d: winXP
BIOS set up for IDE and Compatible or Enhanced mode (both modes boot)
That HD was cloned to the one below using Trueimage 2013
New PC: 1.8TB HD 900GB c: 900GB d:
Unfortunately the Gigabyte BIOS doesn't have the corresponding config. It has IDE/RAID/AHCI and stuff like that. There is no Compatible/Enhanced config.
The computer starts to load Windows and then BSODs, at the usual spot when you didn't load the drivers using the 3.5" floppy and F6. But this MB should not need that and indeed I did previously install winXP on that very same HD and the same MB without doing any of the F6 business!
What could be wrong?
The new HD was visible on the old PC - that is where I cloned it.
I think I have tried all possible BIOS configs on the Gigabyte MB. They do make a difference but none of them actually boots. One of them ("Large") says "disk read error, press ctrl-alt-del".
To add: the objective is to end up with a dual-boot winXP/win7-64 system. I have already tested both OSs on the new computer and on the 1.8TB HD. Both worked flawlessly.
Yet, something about the boot process, when cloned from the Asus MB to the Gigabyte MB, fails.
In the distant past I recall solving this sort of (non booting) issue by starting to install a bare OS on the new drive and just as the install reaches the GIU portion, you interrupt the power and edit boot.ini as required. But this time it doesn't seem to work.
Could it be that just NTLDR is different for the 1.8TB HD?
I have just done a fresh winXP install on the 1.8TB HD (on c: ) and confirm the boot.ini is identical to the one on the old 1TB HD. As indeed it should be - both are on the first partition. So it has to be something else...
Also I have compared ntldr and ntdetect.com on the new and old and they are the same byte for byte.
Here is the boot.ini from the target drive, after I installed a fresh XP on it
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS.0
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS.0="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP drive c: (default)" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Windows XP drive d: (bare - VGA output?)" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
The bold one boots. The one below it, same partition etc, doesn't. The 3rd one is irrelevant (an old XP install on d: )
I wonder if it is to do with the new HD being over 1TB? In that case, after cloning the HD, I need to edit something on the target HD, but what?
One thing I have not yet tried is simply putting the 1TB HD into the new PC. I would prefer to not do that in case it gets corrupted. That is my working PC, with hundreds of apps on it.
And some stuff I will lose for ever e.g. Adobe CS3 which will not run because they have killed their validation servers.
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