Cloned Partition hangs on Welcome Screen

[Pink Sparkle Girl]

I cloned my XP Pro partition onto a new hard drive using Norton Ghost 9
(including the master boot record) so I have a back up if my main hard drive
fails.I booted up the clone but it hangs at the Welcome screen.

I have tried various boot options, all with the same result.

I disconnected the original hard drive (power cable only - should I
disconnect the other cable too?) and set the clone to Master. It is detected
as a 2nd master, rather than primary, but still failed to boot past the
Welcome screen.

Why doesn't the cloned hard drive work?

Thanks, Sarah

 

[DatabaseBen]

probably because it is considered "a change of hardware". It is a failsafe
to prevent ungenuine clones.. (oxymoron...?) I think that one of the so
called "critical updates" was something called autocheck, which check the
genuine status at the welcome screen. There's been a lot of hell on the net
about this... But anywho.....

In cases where the cloned hd was exactly as the original, winxp would not
have known the difference. What you can do is to reinstall the clone either
as a master or slave, then run a windows repair. It will find your
installations and you can point to the clone when the cd asks where you want
the new installation to be. It will ask you if you want to overright that
installation or repair it....

Keep in mind that windows can only boot from 1 hard drive. So your clone
should be set up as the slave if you are using it as a backup installation.
However, if it is bigger and faster you may want to make the clone as the
master and primary boot up device.

There are 2 additional things to keep in mind as well. You may have to
"activate" the cloned installation, but you may know what to
say....(Whenever I had to reinstall windows on my computer was because of a
harddrive crash that required a replacement.)

Also, windows may create a dual boot menu. If by chance it configures your
clone as the default boot menu selection, this can easily be changed with
Notepad. Let us know.....

 

[Pink Sparkle Girl]

Hi, thanks for replying to my problem. I tried a repair install but it just
crashes when trying to boot (no matter how I tell it to boot up). This is
driving me crazy! I thought it would be nice and easy to simply copy my XP
partition onto a new HDD and then use it as either a backup or master. I
just don't understand why it doesn't work.

Before doing a repair install I found out that if both HDD's were connected
I could boot into the new one with no problem, but with only the new one
connected it would hang on the blue welcome screen. How come I could boot
into it one way, but not another?

I tried doing a repair install with only the new drive connected - crashed.
I tried doing a repair install with both drives connected - still crashes.

I have just formatted the new HDD and think I will try a fresh install and
see if it boots up. Does it matter if I install Windows with the drive set a
slave if I decide to set it to master later? I noticed that when I
disconnected the original drive and set the clone to master the PC took its
time finding it.

Any advice most welcome.

Thanks, Sarah.

 

[DL]

If you need both hd's connected in order to boot a win installation on your
new disk, then the boot sector is likely installed on your old hd. ie
something went wrong with the clone operation, or in what you did after it
was cloned during its first boot up.

You would be advised to install with the new drive only connected.
Partition/Format it using the winxp cd

Both HD's are ide?

 

[Pink Sparkle Girl]

The last time I cloned the hd I then booted it up with only the new one
connected and set to master. After it failed to boot I tried rebuilding the
boot.ini from the Recovery Console, and after that failed and I realised I
could boot into the new drive from the old, checked the boot.ini file from
there too. Nothing helped.

Both hd's are connected via ide (along the same line). At the moment my
original drive (C) is the Master and the new one (I) is the slave.

I really want to clone my new hd so I don't have to load 30-40 other
programs too. I can't do that without the current hd connected too.

Thanks for the advice,
Sarah

 

[DL]

Something bizare going on here.
Did you partition or format your new drive when you first connected it?
Just to clarify: Does your sys boot up with 'old' hd alone, new one
disconnected?

 

[Pink Sparkle Girl]

Yes, I formatted and partitioned it before attempting anything with
Partition Magic, and have since formatted it via Windows. My old hard drive
boots up fine with and without the new one connected.

 

[DatabaseBen]

Here are some additional thoughts as you seem to be getting some pretty good
advice already:

Did you check to ensure that the tiny connectors in the back of the hd is
set to either master, slave or something in the middle?

Also, when you use that ide ribbon cable, keep in mind that one of those
connectors is assigned for the master only. Don't recall what they are
called, but they are tiny little clips that connect/short tiny wires in the
back. You should have maybe 4 or 5 pairs of them.

So if you got the hd plug into the master connector, but the hd settings of
the back are set for slave, you will have a problem.... Double check,
because basically, if your new hd is installed as a master and the bios and
those little plugs/connectors are set as master, then installing windows
should be no problem. There could be a chance that both your hd's are set
as master, So check those little connectors in the back. Both hd's should
have a sticker on them indicating how to set them as either master or slave
or master/slave. If not, check out their parent website for this data...

Another problem is that you may have to make your partitions smaller. Some
motherboards can't handle big partitions. I suggest to make the main
partition the same size as the old harddrive you had, 40 gigabytes is good.
The others should be of equal size too. Later you can resize them with your
partitioning software...

 

[DL]

What did you do with PM?
I have seen a disk that was prepared with PM cause problems when attempting
to install win.
With your sys booting from the old hd, and the new connected as slave. Go to
Disk Management and delete any partitions on the new hd.
Re boot the sys.
Now fire up Ghost and follow its cloning procedure, once completed I believe
you are required to shutdown, remove old C, then connect new hd as master. I
seem also to recollect that maybe the master HD should be on the last/end
connector on the ide ribbon.
Now try booting
(I havent used Ghost, but used True Image)