Cloned Hard Drive XP Problems

[C D]

Built new system with 80gig HD, Partitioned at 25gigs,
and 50gigs NTFS. Took old hard drive from previous
computer with 98 on it. Installed as the master drive,
loaded XP upgrade successfully, then cloned old drive to
new one via Norton Ghost. Removed old drive, moved new
one to Master and tried to boot the new hard drive but
failed to boot from it. Listed partition error, and I
tried to do a recovery from XP CD. Ended up reloading
from MS XP CD, which left everything in files and no
programs or Icons loaded at all. Don't know if this is an
error on my part duplicating the hard drive, or if
Windows XP is acting based on it's assumption that I was
loading on a different computer. Any suggestions other
than sitting on hold on the phone with MS for an hour?

 

[JVI]

Make sure boot partiton on new drive is set
to "active." If it is, check boot.ini to see that it
accurately lists the boot partition. You may also refer
to KB314058 for bootcfg, fixboot, & fixmbr.

 

[Matt]

Yeah, stuff like that really hoses it up. I've had same
problems. What I found to be the best route in your
situation is to put a clean copy of XP on the drive
WITHOUT formatting the disk. Then re-install everything
you have. Most will go and setup leaving your data alone.
The only problems are 'documents and settings' where you
may have data there that is under the old machine name.
When you re-install XP, it will assign a new name e.g.
old logon user name was Matt with machine name XYZ. If
you use the same items, the new directory will be
Matt.XYZ leaving the old Matt dir there.
hope this helps.