HD Upgrade with Acronis 10

[George W. Barrowcliff]

I upgraded my 100 GB to a new 250 GB by using the clone function of
Acronis 10 on my Compaq Laptop with Vista Home. I set the clone to do
an autoverify afterwards and it completed with no errors.


250 GB was hooked up as a USB drive and clone went without problems but
when I replaced the 100 with the 250 and tried to boot, I get a message
from a black screen "unable to load \windows\system32\winload.exe,
missing or corrupt" Suggests to put in the Vista install cd so it can
get winload.exe from there. Unfortunately I do not have the Vista
install disks, all I have are the two DVD's I made for system recovery
and neither one has winload.exe

I ran the disk diagnostic from the bios for two hours with no errors.

I'm stuck, any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Lenster]

I upgraded my 100 GB to a new 250 GB by using the clone function of
Acronis 10 on my Compaq Laptop with Vista Home. I set the clone to do
an autoverify afterwards and it completed with no errors.


250 GB was hooked up as a USB drive and clone went without problems but
when I replaced the 100 with the 250 and tried to boot, I get a message
from a black screen "unable to load \windows\system32\winload.exe,
missing or corrupt" Suggests to put in the Vista install cd so it can
get winload.exe from there. Unfortunately I do not have the Vista
install disks, all I have are the two DVD's I made for system recovery
and neither one has winload.exe

I ran the disk diagnostic from the bios for two hours with no errors.

I'm stuck, any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

I have never done a clone, but I have used TI to backup and restore my
XP and Vista systems many times and to different drives.

This may seem like a PIA, but you might want to try.

With your old drive installed and your new drive hooked up as a
secondary (or USB), create a primary partition at the front of your
new drive big enough to hold your VISTA partition then create a
logical partition to hold a backup image of your old drive.

Do a backup of your Vista partition on your old drive to the logical
partition on the new drive.

Put the new drive in place and boot the Acronis recovery CD. Then do a
restore from the logical partition containing the backup to the
primary partition of the new drive. See if that will boot.

If it does, you can then delete the logical partition and use a
partition manage to enlarge or shrink the primary as you see fit.

 

[Dominic Payer]

With the disk in a USB enclosure I doubt that a boot sector was written to
it. Cloning disks with Acronis is intended to be done with both disks
connected to an onboard controller and the source disk must be disconnected
before booting from the cloned disk.

Without a Vista installation disk you probably cannot repair the cloned
installation.

If you can borrow a Vista disk you may be able to create a boot sector and
MBR with Vista's repair functions. Possibly Compaq will supply a Vista disk
for a fee.

 

[John Barnett MVP]

The normal procedure would be to insert your Vista DVD and then choose the
'repair' option. The repair option repairs startup problems. A recovery CD
does exist (See
http://mintywhite.com/tech/vista/download-a-windows-vista-recovery-disc/ ).
I'm not sure whether this will cure your problem, but it is worth a try. If
it doesn't work then your only option is to borrow a Vista DVD.


--

--
John Barnett MVP
Windows XP Associate Expert
Windows Desktop Experience

Web: http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org
Web: http://vistasupport.mvps.org
Web: http://www.silversurfer-guide.com

The information in this mail/post is supplied "as is". No warranty of any
kind, either expressed or implied, is made in relation to the accuracy,
reliability or content of this mail/post. The Author shall not be liable for
any direct, indirect, incidental or consequential damages arising out of the
use of, or inability to use, information or opinions expressed in this
mail/post..

 

[DL]

A clone to usb connected drive works fine using TI, at least it allways has
for me.

 

[philo]

I upgraded my 100 GB to a new 250 GB by using the clone function of
Acronis 10 on my Compaq Laptop with Vista Home. I set the clone to do
an autoverify afterwards and it completed with no errors.


250 GB was hooked up as a USB drive and clone went without problems but
when I replaced the 100 with the 250 and tried to boot, I get a message
from a black screen "unable to load \windows\system32\winload.exe,
missing or corrupt" Suggests to put in the Vista install cd so it can
get winload.exe from there. Unfortunately I do not have the Vista
install disks, all I have are the two DVD's I made for system recovery
and neither one has winload.exe

I ran the disk diagnostic from the bios for two hours with no errors.

I'm stuck, any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Did you shut the machine down right after the clone was made?

If you rebooted with the USB drive still attached, the drive letter would be
changed.

 

[John Barnes]

John's suggestion is on target, but you should first check to make sure your
BIOS boot priorities are set to boot the new drive where it is hooked up.
You should also make sure you are using the same socket on the mobo as your
original drive was installed on.

 

[John Barnes]

Make sure that the partition with the boot files on the new drive is marked
'active'

 

[GWB]

OK, I have tried a number of other things, none of which worked so far. I
made the compaq recovery DVD's necessary for the recovery of Vista. So I do
have these.

I cloned from the laptop to a usb connected drive, then removed the original
drive and replaced it with the new one so it was not connected as usb when I
rebooted.

I can try the primary partition, logical partition scheme next. It takes 3
hours for each attempt since the original is about 85 GB.

Thanks for your inputs.

gWB

 

[irvinepogi]

Update:
I found a download for the start environment for Vista that is
supposed to cure the "can't find winlogon.exe" issue and made a cd
with it on it.

I have tried a number of things, none of which worked
satisfactorily. The big issue is: The boot drive comes up as F: and
I have done everything I can think of to change it back to C: but
have had zero success. i tried backing up the bcdedit of the working
drive and copied it onto the clone/restored but it still comes up as
F:

I used Paragon Partition Manager to remove the disk letters hoping it
would start in the normal sequence but didn't.

I think the restore is good, how can I make that blasted boot drive
come up as C:???????????????????????

TIA, GWB