XP Pro Boot Problem After HD Replace

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support (More info?)

Is drive is jumpered as master and set up correctly in the BIOS?

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support (More info?)

Do you know if the boot partition is marked (been set) to active? Sometimes one forgets to do that when migrating to a new HD.

--
Maurice N
MVP Windows - Shell / User
-----

Chris LeFebvre wrote:
> I've got an HP / Compaq notebook where the smart diags indicated a
> failing hard drive, HP shipped me a replacement drive under warranty
> and I removed the drive and used a couple of notebook hard drive
> adapters to hook them up as master and slave on the secondary channel
> of one of my desktops. I then used Ghost to clone the failing drive
> to the replacement since I really didn't want to have to reinstall
> all my applications again. The clone completed without any seeming
> problems however I haven't been able to get the new drive to boot up,
> the problem is that I just get a blank screen with a flashing cursor
> and no boot menu, end of story...
>
> I happen to have a Win XP Pro full version CD and I am able to boot
> from the CD to the recovery console, I've tried the following:
>
> Chkdsk /R - Did find and fix some problem the first time around, but
> didn't find anything wrong on subsequent runs.
>
> Fixboot - ran with no problems but still no go.
>
> FixMbr - indicated "This computer appears to have a non-standard or
> invalid master boot record", no matter how many times I've run this
> and it says it's rewritten the MBR successfully it still says the same
> thing.
>
> In-place upgrade - I've run an in-place upgrade twice and both times
> it completes and says the system will reboot and the installation will
> continue but it still gets stuck on the reboot.
>
> Following the two in-place upgrades I've rerun all of the previous
> steps and I still can't get it to boot, nor do I get any type of
> error message that indicates what the problem is. This is not the
> first time I've done this and no matter Win2K or XP I've never had it
> fail to boot or give me a clue about what the problem was so that I
> could fix it. Anyone have an idea or two on anything else to try to
> get this fixed?
>
> Thanks,
> Chris LeFebvre

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support (More info?)

The original drive had no jumpers installed, and neither did the
replacement.. As a matter of fact I had to install and then remove
jumpers to set them as master and slave when I hooked them up to my
desktop computer in order to clone the disk. The bios does show the
drive correctly also.

Thanks,
- Chris LeFebvre

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support (More info?)

Hi Maurice:
I haven't actually looked at that (can you run fdisk from the recovery
console?) but in every previous case where I used Ghost to clone a disk
it took care of setting the partition active and the replacements always
booted up just fine.

Thanks,
- Chris LeFebvre

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support (More info?)

Fdisk is NOT in the Recovery Console set of commands. Matter of fact, it's
not in XP.
What the Recovery console does have is the Diskpart command.

Once you get in recovery console:
1.. Type:
diskpart

2.. At the DISKPART prompt, type:
list partition

Make note of the number of the partition that you want to mark as active.

3.. At the DISKPART prompt, type:
select partition n

Select the partition, n, you want to mark as active.

4.. At the DISKPART prompt, type:
active

5. Lastly, use EXIT to get out of Recovery Console

You are likely correct on Ghost. I've never used it.

HTH
--
Maurice N
MVP Windows - Shell / User
--

"Chris LeFebvre" wrote
> Hi Maurice:
> I haven't actually looked at that (can you run fdisk from the recovery
> console?) but in every previous case where I used Ghost to clone a disk
> it took care of setting the partition active and the replacements always
> booted up just fine.
>
> Thanks,
> - Chris LeFebvre
>

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support (More info?)

You need to re-format and re-install!

"Chris LeFebvre" wrote:

> I've got an HP / Compaq notebook where the smart diags indicated a
> failing hard drive, HP shipped me a replacement drive under warranty and
> I removed the drive and used a couple of notebook hard drive adapters to
> hook them up as master and slave on the secondary channel of one of my
> desktops. I then used Ghost to clone the failing drive to the
> replacement since I really didn't want to have to reinstall all my
> applications again. The clone completed without any seeming problems
> however I haven't been able to get the new drive to boot up, the problem
> is that I just get a blank screen with a flashing cursor and no boot
> menu, end of story...
>
> I happen to have a Win XP Pro full version CD and I am able to boot
> from the CD to the recovery console, I've tried the following:
>
> Chkdsk /R - Did find and fix some problem the first time around, but
> didn't find anything wrong on subsequent runs.
>
> Fixboot - ran with no problems but still no go.
>
> FixMbr - indicated "This computer appears to have a non-standard or
> invalid master boot record", no matter how many times I've run this and
> it says it's rewritten the MBR successfully it still says the same
> thing.
>
> In-place upgrade - I've run an in-place upgrade twice and both times
> it completes and says the system will reboot and the installation will
> continue but it still gets stuck on the reboot.
>
> Following the two in-place upgrades I've rerun all of the previous steps
> and I still can't get it to boot, nor do I get any type of error message
> that indicates what the problem is. This is not the first time I've done
> this and no matter Win2K or XP I've never had it fail to boot or give me
> a clue about what the problem was so that I could fix it. Anyone have an
> idea or two on anything else to try to get this fixed?
>
> Thanks,
> Chris LeFebvre
>
>

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support (More info?)

Ghost 9.0 (previously Drive Image 7) does have an option to
check if the partition containing the cloned system is to be
marked "active". It also asks if the HD containing the clone
is to have the source HD's MBR copied to the destination HD.
The OP may not have checked one or both of these options.

For simple cloning of a single partition, or of an entire HD
(the user is given the option), Casper XP works fine. It's
cheaper than Ghost or True Image, and it can be downloaded
from Future Systems at http://fssdev.com/products/casperxp/
for a free trial. What Casper XP doesn't have are all the cute
scheduling of automatic incremental backups and backups
to optical media, etc.

*TimDaniels*

"Maurice N ~ MVP" wrote:
> Fdisk is NOT in the Recovery Console set of commands. Matter of fact, it's
> not in XP.
> What the Recovery console does have is the Diskpart command.
>
> Once you get in recovery console:
> 1.. Type:
> diskpart
>
> 2.. At the DISKPART prompt, type:
> list partition
>
> Make note of the number of the partition that you want to mark as active.
>
> 3.. At the DISKPART prompt, type:
> select partition n
>
> Select the partition, n, you want to mark as active.
>
> 4.. At the DISKPART prompt, type:
> active
>
> 5. Lastly, use EXIT to get out of Recovery Console
>
> You are likely correct on Ghost. I've never used it.
>
> HTH
> --
> Maurice N
> MVP Windows - Shell / User
> --
>
> "Chris LeFebvre" wrote
>> Hi Maurice:
>> I haven't actually looked at that (can you run fdisk from the recovery
>> console?) but in every previous case where I used Ghost to clone a disk
>> it took care of setting the partition active and the replacements always
>> booted up just fine.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> - Chris LeFebvre

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support (More info?)

Hi Maurice:
I'm still working on this problem, I had to take a break to fix some other
things but I did find some additional information that may provide a clue to
the problem. I found mention that for this to work with WinXP "sysprep" needs
to be run before imaging the hard drive then when the image is restored it will
work properly. I seem to remember reading something about sysprep sometime back
but don't remember the specifics, in this case is there anything that you know
of that I can do after the fact (since the bad drive is long gone back to HP)
other than the things that you've mentioned (the one and only partition does
seem to be set active) to fix the current installation if sysprep wasn't run
before the old drive was imaged?

Thanks,

- Chris LeFebvre