Ghost image backup won't boot.

[Matty Anderson]

I restored my boot partition from a Ghost image, and when booting, the
computer gets past the first XP screen, then hangs at the welcome screen. I
see the mouse and the welcome screen, but no login choices. This is the
first time I've tried this, and the restoration itself seemed to go
smoothly. I was sure to check the box to set the partition active.

BTW, this is a Gateway laptop w/ Turion, 1Gb ram, 120gb HD with XP Media
Center. I'm trying to avoid doing a full reinstall. That's why I made the
ghost image. In case I need to, though, I no longer have the disks that
came with the computer, but the XP sticker is still on the bottom. Will
that serial work with a non Media Center and non-OEM version of XP? That
is, could I borrow someone's XP disk and use my legit XP serial (since I
bought the laptop with XP installed)?

Thanks y'all.

Matty

 

[Patrick Keenan]

I restored my boot partition from a Ghost image, and when booting, the
computer gets past the first XP screen, then hangs at the welcome screen.
I see the mouse and the welcome screen, but no login choices. This is the
first time I've tried this, and the restoration itself seemed to go
smoothly. I was sure to check the box to set the partition active.

What version of Ghost? What does their support say?

BTW, this is a Gateway laptop w/ Turion, 1Gb ram, 120gb HD with XP Media
Center. I'm trying to avoid doing a full reinstall. That's why I made
the ghost image. In case I need to, though, I no longer have the disks
that came with the computer, but the XP sticker is still on the bottom.
Will that serial work with a non Media Center and non-OEM version of XP?
That is, could I borrow someone's XP disk and use my legit XP serial
(since I bought the laptop with XP installed)?

No, sorry, that won't work. Your serial number will require an MCE (and
thus OEM) install CD. It won't work with, for example, Home or Pro, retail
OEM or VL.

 

[Anteaus]

If it gets to Welcome, the problem is not with the boot process which would
have failed much earlier. At this stage the computer is running
winlogon.exe, which is only a couple of steps aways from showing the desktop.
The issue here might be with inability to access the useraccounbts in the
registry SAM database.

I'm wondering if your original problem might be with hardware, for example a
failing disk. I would check this possibility out first. Do a full disk
verification with the likes of Ranish Partition Manager.

If not the reason, you should be able to do a Repair Install with a borrowed
CD, provided it's the same type (OEM/Retail) and same service-pack level as
the original.

 

[msnews.microsoft.com]

BTW, this is a Gateway laptop w/ Turion, 1Gb ram, 120gb HD with XP Media

No, sorry, that won't work. Your serial number will require an MCE (and
thus OEM) install CD. It won't work with, for example, Home or Pro,
retail OEM or VL.

Ok, so I found my Gateway disk, but unfortunately it's a restore disk, and
only gives options to restore the original factory configuration. Is there
any way to access the MCE files directly? Also, I tried a friend's
(admittedly downloaded) MCE disk, but my serial was found to be invalid. I
was actually a little surprised, since I thought all MCE editions were OEM.
Anyway, any ideas on getting further with the Gateway disk?

Thanks.

 

[msnews.microsoft.com]

If it gets to Welcome, the problem is not with the boot process which
would
have failed much earlier. At this stage the computer is running
winlogon.exe, which is only a couple of steps aways from showing the
desktop.
The issue here might be with inability to access the useraccounbts in the
registry SAM database.

Is there any way to work through or around that? I ctrl+alt+deleted, but
didn't get anything. Can you tell me more about the SAM database?

I'm wondering if your original problem might be with hardware, for example
a
failing disk. I would check this possibility out first. Do a full disk
verification with the likes of Ranish Partition Manager.

Interesting you should say. The reason I was trying to restore in the first
place was because I was noticing that my 12gb of files seemed to be taking
up 19.5gb of space on my 20gb boot partition. Furthermore, I had been
unable to access System Restore, since the program kept crashing. Something
was eating up HD space, and I couldn't find a culprit or delete any restore
points. I may have taken things too far...
I'll try the Ranish Partition Mgr to check the hardware.
thanks.