URGENT - Help Needed with TOTAL System Restore

[Guest]

Sorry for the duplicate posting form the other forum, but I'm in a really bad
situation.

I am very diligent about doing a nightly full system backup. I backup to an
external USB drive using Retrospect HD. This software does a progressive
nightly backup of my ENTIRE hardrive, including the operating system.

Two days ago my hard drive crashed. I've installed a new hard drive and
installed the version of XP-Pro that shipped with my Dell desktop about 3
years ago. My plan was to install just the OS and then install my backup
software and use it to reinstall everything from my backup drive. I was
hoping that my backup would overwrite the version of XP with my most recent
backed up version, along with all my programs, data, and settings.

Here's the problem.

I've gone through the process 3 times of reinstalling XP, and then restoring
all of my backed up data. All my data appears to be present -- I can see all
of the files on the system after they are reinstalled, BUT the system will
not boot from the new hard drive after I power down. I get the following
error message:

"Windows could not start because of a hardware configuration problem. Could
not read from the selection boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware.

Please check the Windows documentation about hardware dis configuration and
your hardware reference manuals for additional information."

At this point my system get's stuck in a loop and XP will not load. The only
place I can get to is the BIOS. I have confired that my new hard drive is set
to the Primary Master drive.

I'd really hate to have to reinstall all of my programs, settings, etc.
manually. I feel like I'm so close to getting this right , but I'm missing
something.

Was I incorrect to think that simply restoring all of my data would override
the basic installation of XP?

I've been messing with this for 2 days and I'm about to pull my hair out.
ANY suggestions you have would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance for your help--

Signed,

Desperate

 

[DL]

You should, if neccessary crosspost and not multi post

 

[R. McCarty]

Your partitioning scheme changed. The Dell PC hard drive has a number
of partitions not present on your replacement drive. You need to boot to
the XP disk, taking the Repair option and perform a Fixboot command.
Likely the Retrospect recovery is installing the original Boot.Ini file
which
is pointing to partition(2) instead of (1) which is what your current config
is using.

 

[R. McCarty]

Sorry, that should read take the Recovery Console option.

 

[Guest]

Ahhhhhhhhhhh that makes total sense. Thanks so much!

Is there a resource that you can point me to that will walk me through steps
that I need to take? I do know how to reach the Recovery Condole, but have no
clue what to do when I get to the C:WINDOWS> prompt. How do I need to
customize the Fixboot command?

Thanks again!!!

 

[R. McCarty]

Here's the MS Knowledge Base article that describes the Recovery
Console commands. Believe I gave you bad advice, the command
you're interested in is BootCfg / Rebuild - Not FixBoot.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058/EN-US/
Close only counts in Horseshoes and Hand Grenades - PC advice
should be a little more precise.