Boot Problem

[barrowhill]

I have HP laptop running XP with SATA Drive. I've used Acronis Disc
Director (ADD)to regularly make an image onto another SATA drive. However, I
cannot boot from the image drive when I install it; I just get blinking
curser top lleft on black screen ?

This is first time used ADD on SATA drives. Use on PATA drives without
problems.

The online drive is running SATA native mode - I had to to disable this when
installing XP as it insisted there was no drive to install itself on ! Once
installed I renabled (after following procedure to ensure correct drivers
were installed). Irrespective of whether running native mode or not, just
get blinking curser. Any help appreciated.

 

[Bob Harris]

Two thoughts:

1) When you say "make an image", do you mean clone the whole disk,
including the boot sector, or make an image file (or file set). To be
bootable, you need to a clone, not just make an image.

2) I just replaced my SATA drives using Acronis True Image, which is
related to Disk Director. The cloning was successful, but my BIOS could not
see the new disk, even though the same PC had just seen it to do the
cloning! Of course, XP would not boot.

The extra wrinkle was that my SATA disk controller on the motherboard is
also a RAID controller. I went into the RAID setup and discovered that the
new disk was found, but not assigned to any RAID array. (Don't ask why a
single disk needs to be in an array; my motherboard simply demands it.) It
became apparent that the RAID controller knew that something had changed,
that the new disk was not the same as the old one. So, the default was to
not assign it.

The solution for me was to define (really re-define if you ask me) that this
disk was RAID array #1.

One I did that and rebooted the BIOS saw the disk, XP booted, and all was
well.

 

[barrowhill]

Bob,

Thanks for response...........

1) I'm assuming Acronis Disc Director clones the disk. Normally when I use
with PATA drives, I reformat partion I wish to copy to then copy required
partion from drive in question. I ensure all OK by swapping over drives.
Acronis checks partions, assigns drive letters, syncronises and restarts. No
problems.

2) Interesting......I assume your testing was done on a desktop. I'm
trying to clone from laptop (HP-NC6400) to USB hard drive - It works as every
stage of operation shown as successfull. Your comment ".....that something
had changed,
that the new disk was not the same as the old one. So, the default was to
not assign it" maybe is important. I'll have a look at what BIOS options are
available but RAID won't be one of them.

 

[Bill Blanton]

Assuming you did copy the partition and did not clone the disk,
there may not be any boot code in the MBR. (some programs
will automatically put it in, some won't).

You'll also need to set the partition active. This is never done
automatically.

 

[barrowhill]

Bill,


Thanks for response. I've reconnected Imaged drive as USB drive and opened
Acronis Disc Director. This drive is shown as a primary and active partition

I'm certain that when system wouldn't boot with drive installed, I used the
recovery console and ran fixmbr and fixboot. However, you raised the
question so I'll check this again

 

[Bill Blanton]

Failing that, open ADD again and clear the NT disk signature number.

Under my version of ADD, it's under: Advanced > Edit > "Windows NT serial number"
Put a 00000000h in the edit field.

Shut down and try again.

 

[barrowhill]

Bill,

Checked BIOS; limited options.

If I set BIOS to SATA native mode enabled, recovery console won't run
because as far as it is concerned there is no disc installed.

If I set BIOS to SATA native mode disabled, recovery console runs.

The commands, 'diskpart' and 'bootcfg' show nothing untoward. I ran
'fixmbr' and 'fixboot' successfully.

Despite all this this disc refuses to boot; blinking cursor on top left of
black screen

As regards your other suggestion re NT disk signature number, I do not see
"Windows NT serial number" under Advanced>Edit when drive selected.

I have entries for.....

1) Serial Number: which is 0A996h-05DEh-0FE8h-0F722h
2) Boot Sector signature (0AA55h): which is 0AA55h

The serial number can't be changed as appears auto detected. The boot
sector can. Is this the "signature" you refer to and suggest set to 00000h
???

 

[Bill Blanton]

What version of Acronis?

I'm not sure what that number is, but the NT disk sig # is a 32-bit hex dword
(8 hex digits long). If you want to, you could email me a screenshot of what you
are looking at. My address is listed here-
http://home.earthlink.net/~bblanton2/mail/


Do not change the boot sector signature. AA55h is correct.

Another way to wipe the disk signature is to boot with a Windows 98
startup disk and issue an
fdisk /mbr
at the command prompt. 98 is unaware of the NT disk sig, and will overwrite
it. You can download that at http://www.bootdisk.com/

 

[Bill Blanton]

Also;

Was either disk set up as a Microsoft dynamic disk?

Do you have Goback installed?

 

[barrowhill]

Bill,

1) Acronis Disc Director is v10 Build 2160

2) Screen shot sent

3) Boot Signature: comment noted

4) Microsoft Dynamic Disc: No

5) GoBack installed: No

 

[Bill Blanton]

You're in the partition's boot sector page. To get to the disk's MBR you need to click
the disk icon to the left (in the graphic at the bottom), or the text "Disk #" at the
top and then do an advanced > edit. (IOW, you want to edit the disk, not the
partition.)

Then fill the NT serial number with zeros.

 

[barrowhill]

Bill,

Thanks for putting me right.....NT Serial number changed as advised.
Partition copied. Rebooted. Acronis auto runs, Partitions analyzed,
partitions locked but during partion checking, notified............."Error;
Partition configuration has changed. Press Key to reboot......."

Reboot. Run acronis. Obviously no partition copy. Check previous disk edit.
Serial number "restored" (no longer 0...0h)

Note restored in quotes . As an aside I changed NT serial number to
0...0h, closed acronis (no partition copying), reopened and found serial
number "restored". Serial number not same as before.

 

[Bill Blanton]

barrowhill, I'm not sure that we're on the same page ;-)

You recopied the partition and rebooted to the original source drive
after removing the signature? You should have tried to boot to
the "copy" after removing the sig from the copy. With the source
drive disconnected.

The reason that the sig/number was "restored" is that Windows gave
it a new number when it loaded.

 

[Bill Blanton]

The steps would go something like this:

1) Copy the MBR from the source to the destination drive
(probably unecessary at this point)

2) copy the partition
(unecessary at this point)

3) set the partition active on the copy

4) zero out the sig on the copy.

5) shut down / recable / boot

I'm not sure that that is what the problem is, but that will for
all intents and purposes give you a bootable clone of the
source drive's %system% partition.

 

[barrowhill]

Bill,

Thanks for your continued replies.

When copying partions using Disc Director, when you "commit" to the process
after performing the actions to required to copy, the procedure requires a
reboot. On rebooting, Disc Director auto starts. The partitions are analyzed
and locked , ancillary actions undertaken (label, drive letter) then copying
commences. When completed system will reboot on original drive.

At this time one can change over to image drive as partition has been
copied. When booting on image drive, Disc Director auto boots, checks
partitions, assigns drive letter, synchonises etc. then starts up.

I'm always failling with ............."Error; Partition configuration has
changed. Press Key to reboot......." at copy partition time.

I have managed to successfully copy by DELETING partition, then creating (a
new)partition, formatting partition, then copying partition. On swapping to
image drive this failed to start because NTLDR missing???? Not sure whats's
going on

 

[Bill Blanton]

That's why I don't use partition/imaging programs that run from within
Windows. The GUI's nice and ADD is an excellent program, but Windows is
always in the way.. Especially so for NT based OSs.

I just installed ADD into a virtual machine to get a better feel for it.
The following steps work for me for cloning the system to an empty drive,
and then being able to boot the "clone" (to use the term somewhat loosely)



1) clear the destination drive of any and all partitions

2) right-click "Disk 1" > Advanced > Copy MBR > select the dest disk

3) right-click the system source partition > copy > click the dest > next >
make **sure** to choose Pimary partition in the "Copy as:" drop down list >
("logical" is the default) > ok out

4) Commit changes > let Acronis reboot to do the copy and reboot. again..

5) Open Acronis again after Windows loads

6) Right mouse click the dest disk > Advanced > Edit

7) Put a 00h (those are zeros) in the "Windows NT serial number" edit field > exit > save

8) Close Acronis

9) Shut down Windows

10) Remove the dest drive, and cable the source drive in its place.
Note that ADD will probably autorun again (God knows why),
but it should eventually boot to Windows.


I see a lot of posts in here about the ability of Acronis to clone drives.
I don't see anything to suggest that that is so. Maybe there would be less
headache if using its bootable media outside of Windows?

 

[Bill Blanton]

step 10) was transposed. It should read:

Remove the *source* drive, and cable the *destination* drive in its place.

Probably obvious..but.....

 

[barrowhill]

Bill,

Thanks for inf, appreciate your time on this. Now OK using process.
Thanks again for all your help

 

[Bill Blanton]

You're welcome barrowhill.

Bill,

Thanks for inf, appreciate your time on this. Now OK using process.
Thanks again for all your help

 

[Bill Blanton]

That's why I don't use partition/imaging programs that run from within
Windows. The GUI's nice and ADD is an excellent program, but Windows is
always in the way.. Especially so for NT based OSs.

I just installed ADD into a virtual machine to get a better feel for it.
The following steps work for me for cloning the system to an empty drive,
and then being able to boot the "clone" (to use the term somewhat loosely)

[snip]

I see a lot of posts in here about the ability of Acronis to clone drives.
I don't see anything to suggest that that is so.

I just installed TrueImage and see it does have disk to disk cloning capabilities.

Using Disk Director you have to copy the partitions individually, and also copy
the MBR in order to clone a disk.