XP Saw My Clone - Neither Drive Boots - Now What

[DRS.Usenet]

Mine is the typical situation: New larger drive to replace original XP
boot drive.

I hooked up the new drive on the cable my DVD burner was on and then
Using WD Data Lifeguard, I copied the existing boot drive to the new
drive. I used the option to create a bootable drive. When the process
was finished, I shut down, removed the original drive plugged in the
new drive in it's place, reconnected my DVD burner, but when I
powered-on the new drive would not boot.

Figuring I'd try xxcopy next, I re-connected the original drive and
used bios settings to request that it be the one to boot. But that
didn't boot either! I copied FROM this drive. How did it get changed?
Is it true that XP "poisons" it? I tried removing the cloned drive,
and that didn't make any difference; I had two drives with almost the
same data, but neither would boot!

Since I don't have real a Windows CD, the only way to get the machine
to even startup anything was the HP recovery CD. So I ran the
"non-destructive" recovery (coulda fooled me). It overwrote all of my
OS stuff, so everything needs to be reinstalled and reconfigured, not
to mention getting rid of all of that crap it puts on there. So I
don't want to go that route.

Anyway, with the fresh XP on the new drive (the clone I created earlier
is now gone), I can 'see' the old drive with all of my original stuff
on it. I tried the xxcopy option to restore the master boot record,
boot.ini, and the third thing (I selected all three), but the original
drive still comes up as a non-bootable drive.

This drive was perfectly heathy before, never had the slightest
indication of anything wrong with it, and in fact I can access all of
the data on the drive. XP seems to have "poisoned" this drive from
booting! Help!

All I want is my old drive to boot again. Please! There MUST be a
procedure I can follow that will give me my drive back!

--Dale--

 

[Grok]

(e-mail address removed) wrote:
| Mine is the typical situation: New larger drive to replace original XP
| boot drive.
|
| I hooked up the new drive on the cable my DVD burner was on and then
| Using WD Data Lifeguard, I copied the existing boot drive to the new
| drive. I used the option to create a bootable drive. When the process
| was finished, I shut down, removed the original drive plugged in the
| new drive in it's place, reconnected my DVD burner, but when I
| powered-on the new drive would not boot.
|
| Figuring I'd try xxcopy next, I re-connected the original drive and
| used bios settings to request that it be the one to boot. But that
| didn't boot either! I copied FROM this drive. How did it get changed?
| Is it true that XP "poisons" it? I tried removing the cloned drive,
| and that didn't make any difference; I had two drives with almost the
| same data, but neither would boot!
|
| Since I don't have real a Windows CD, the only way to get the machine
| to even startup anything was the HP recovery CD. So I ran the
| "non-destructive" recovery (coulda fooled me). It overwrote all of my
| OS stuff, so everything needs to be reinstalled and reconfigured, not
| to mention getting rid of all of that crap it puts on there. So I
| don't want to go that route.
|
| Anyway, with the fresh XP on the new drive (the clone I created earlier
| is now gone), I can 'see' the old drive with all of my original stuff
| on it. I tried the xxcopy option to restore the master boot record,
| boot.ini, and the third thing (I selected all three), but the original
| drive still comes up as a non-bootable drive.
|
| This drive was perfectly heathy before, never had the slightest
| indication of anything wrong with it, and in fact I can access all of
| the data on the drive. XP seems to have "poisoned" this drive from
| booting! Help!
|
| All I want is my old drive to boot again. Please! There MUST be a
| procedure I can follow that will give me my drive back!
|
| --Dale--

Probably nothing is wrong with the hardware, it's just that xcopy does not
an installation make.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Mine is the typical situation: New larger drive to replace original XP
boot drive.

I hooked up the new drive on the cable my DVD burner was on and then
Using WD Data Lifeguard, I copied the existing boot drive to the new
drive. I used the option to create a bootable drive. When the process
was finished, I shut down, removed the original drive plugged in the
new drive in it's place, reconnected my DVD burner, but when I
powered-on the new drive would not boot.

Figuring I'd try xxcopy next, I re-connected the original drive and
used bios settings to request that it be the one to boot. But that
didn't boot either! I copied FROM this drive. How did it get changed?
Is it true that XP "poisons" it? I tried removing the cloned drive,
and that didn't make any difference; I had two drives with almost the
same data, but neither would boot!

Since I don't have real a Windows CD, the only way to get the machine
to even startup anything was the HP recovery CD. So I ran the
"non-destructive" recovery (coulda fooled me). It overwrote all of my
OS stuff, so everything needs to be reinstalled and reconfigured, not
to mention getting rid of all of that crap it puts on there. So I
don't want to go that route.

Anyway, with the fresh XP on the new drive (the clone I created earlier
is now gone), I can 'see' the old drive with all of my original stuff
on it. I tried the xxcopy option to restore the master boot record,
boot.ini, and the third thing (I selected all three), but the original
drive still comes up as a non-bootable drive.

This drive was perfectly heathy before, never had the slightest
indication of anything wrong with it, and in fact I can access all of
the data on the drive. XP seems to have "poisoned" this drive from
booting! Help!

All I want is my old drive to boot again. Please! There MUST be a
procedure I can follow that will give me my drive back!

--Dale--

Your report tells is a lot about what you did but it tells us next
to nothing about the actual error messages. To get back on
track I suggest this:
1. State clearly if you want to fix the old or the new disk.
2. Make that disk the primary master disk.
3. Disconnect the other disk.
4. Boot the PC.
5. Describe exactly what you see on the screen, including all
error messages, and how far the boot process goes.

The next step will depend on what you report.

 

[Kerry Brown]

Mine is the typical situation: New larger drive to replace original XP
boot drive.

I hooked up the new drive on the cable my DVD burner was on and then
Using WD Data Lifeguard, I copied the existing boot drive to the new
drive. I used the option to create a bootable drive. When the
process was finished, I shut down, removed the original drive plugged
in the new drive in it's place, reconnected my DVD burner, but when I
powered-on the new drive would not boot.

I suspect this was a cableing or jumper issue. It is possible something went
wrong during the cloning process but a hardware issue is more likely. This
is the correct procedure.

Figuring I'd try xxcopy next, I re-connected the original drive and
used bios settings to request that it be the one to boot. But that
didn't boot either! I copied FROM this drive. How did it get
changed? Is it true that XP "poisons" it? I tried removing the cloned
drive, and that didn't make any difference; I had two drives with
almost the same data, but neither would boot!

Since I don't have real a Windows CD, the only way to get the machine
to even startup anything was the HP recovery CD. So I ran the
"non-destructive" recovery (coulda fooled me). It overwrote all of my
OS stuff, so everything needs to be reinstalled and reconfigured, not
to mention getting rid of all of that crap it puts on there. So I
don't want to go that route.

Anyway, with the fresh XP on the new drive (the clone I created
earlier is now gone), I can 'see' the old drive with all of my
original stuff on it. I tried the xxcopy option to restore the
master boot record, boot.ini, and the third thing (I selected all
three), but the original drive still comes up as a non-bootable drive.

This drive was perfectly heathy before, never had the slightest
indication of anything wrong with it, and in fact I can access all of
the data on the drive. XP seems to have "poisoned" this drive from
booting! Help!

All I want is my old drive to boot again. Please! There MUST be a
procedure I can follow that will give me my drive back!

Since you have written to the old drive and the clone is gone you may not be
able to get back to the way it was. Further writing to the original drive
may only make things worse. My recommendation at this point would be to
clone the HP restore partition to the new drive, restore this drive to the
factory setup, reinstall your programs, then copy your data from the old
drive. This is the safest way to make sure you don't lose anything. You will
not be able to clone the hidden HP partition with the WD tools. You will
need True Image, Ghost or something similar.

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

Kerry

 

[Leythos]

I hooked up the new drive on the cable my DVD burner was on and then
Using WD Data Lifeguard, I copied the existing boot drive to the new
drive. I used the option to create a bootable drive. When the process
was finished, I shut down, removed the original drive plugged in the
new drive in it's place, reconnected my DVD burner, but when I
powered-on the new drive would not boot.

Why?

That's all you needed to do - other than have the BIOS set to autodetect
the drive.

Did you mess with the jumpers or make sure it was setup the same as the
old drive?

 

[DRS.Usenet]

(e-mail address removed) wrote:
| Mine is the typical situation: New larger drive to replace original XP
| boot drive. (snip)
| Figuring I'd try xxcopy next, I re-connected the original drive and
| used bios settings to request that it be the one to boot. But that

Probably nothing is wrong with the hardware, it's just that xcopy does not
an installation make.

I mis-spoke. I meant "xxclone", the lauded freeware tool for such disk
cloning activity.

--Dale--

 

[Richard Urban]

Mine is the typical situation: New larger drive to replace original XP
boot drive.

I hooked up the new drive on the cable my DVD burner was on and then
Using WD Data Lifeguard, I copied the existing boot drive to the new
drive. I used the option to create a bootable drive. When the process
was finished, I shut down, removed the original drive plugged in the
new drive in it's place, reconnected my DVD burner, but when I
powered-on the new drive would not boot.

Figuring I'd try xxcopy next, I re-connected the original drive and
used bios settings to request that it be the one to boot. But that
didn't boot either! I copied FROM this drive. How did it get changed?
Is it true that XP "poisons" it?

Where did you ever get that stupid idea?


Richard Urban

 

[DRS.Usenet]

(snip)
I suspect this was a cableing or jumper issue. It is possible something went
wrong during the cloning process but a hardware issue is more likely. This
is the correct procedure.

Something I might have done wrong was to change the cable from one IDE
channel to the other on the first shutdown. In other words, new drive
was master on IDE 2 while it was getting loaded, then I shut down, and
when Windows came up again, it was on the IDE 1 cable. But all of this
is water over the dam unless this helps decide what I need to do to get
my original drive booting again.

Since you have written to the old drive and the clone is gone you may not be
able to get back to the way it was. Further writing to the original drive
may only make things worse. My recommendation at this point would be to
clone the HP restore partition to the new drive, restore this drive to the
factory setup, reinstall your programs, then copy your data from the old
drive. This is the safest way to make sure you don't lose anything. You will
not be able to clone the hidden HP partition with the WD tools. You will
need True Image, Ghost or something similar.

I'm not sure I was completely clear. My original drive has had no
extensive changes; the only things changed were whatever was involved
in the poisoning process, then whatever xxclone did when did the three
things (MBR, boot.ini, and the third thing).

Bottom line is that I'm not ready to throw in the towel yet on getting
my original drive booting again, and thus giving me another chance to a
nice clean clone that boots.

--Dale--

 

[DRS.Usenet]

Your report tells is a lot about what you did but it tells us next
to nothing about the actual error messages. To get back on
track I suggest this:
1. State clearly if you want to fix the old or the new disk.

I want to fix the old disk. It should be just the way I left it,
except for the MBR and boot.ini kinds of things. The bottom line is if
I get my old disk working, I can try another clone process.

2. Make that disk the primary master disk.
3. Disconnect the other disk.
4. Boot the PC.
5. Describe exactly what you see on the screen, including all
error messages, and how far the boot process goes.

The next step will depend on what you report.

I've done steps 2 through 5 many times. It's done other things, but
right now it just goes to a cursor; no error message. Of course I see
the bios text first, and can press F1 to see that it's going to start
the original hard drive. When I leave bios, or don't enter it in the
first place, the drive makes a normal but very short read noise, then
nothing. I'm just looking at the cursor on the upper left of the
screen.

Thanks to you and all for your ideas and expertise!

--Dale--

 

[DRS.Usenet]

Where did you ever get that stupid idea?

Well Richard, it sounds pretty stupid to me as well, but my research
included several different, and apparently smart, people that
indicated that after a clone operation and before the next Windows
boot, you MUST disconnect the original drive. Not only that, here are
the facts in my case:

1) Cloned from original to new drive using WD Lifeguard
2) new drive didn't work
3) removed new and replace old drive to system exactly as before
4) original "everything" didn't boot.

You could say that WD Lifeguard changed the data on the source drive
(doubtful), or Windows did something when it saw two drives that looked
identical (likely?).

--Dale--

 

[DRS.Usenet]

Did you mess with the jumpers or make sure it was setup the same as the
old drive?

I should have said: Both drives were set to cable select.

--Dale--

 

[Kerry Brown]

Something I might have done wrong was to change the cable from one IDE
channel to the other on the first shutdown. In other words, new drive
was master on IDE 2 while it was getting loaded, then I shut down, and
when Windows came up again, it was on the IDE 1 cable. But all of
this is water over the dam unless this helps decide what I need to do
to get my original drive booting again.

Switching from one channel to another didn't cause the problem.

I'm not sure I was completely clear. My original drive has had no
extensive changes; the only things changed were whatever was involved
in the poisoning process, then whatever xxclone did when did the three
things (MBR, boot.ini, and the third thing).

Bottom line is that I'm not ready to throw in the towel yet on getting
my original drive booting again, and thus giving me another chance to
a nice clean clone that boots.

Your choice. If nothing else make sure you have your data backed up.
Everytime you try to fix it the problem it could get worse. Eventually you
may make the file system so mixed up you won't be able to recover. I do this
for a living. When something like this happens I have found it is best to
err on the side of caution even if it takes longer. I am sure the mbr and
partition table could be fixed. Trying to do so when you don't know exactly
what you are doing is playing with fire. If you want a shortcut then clone
the drive again and try to fix the clone leaving the original alone for now.

Kerry

 

[Kerry Brown]

Well Richard, it sounds pretty stupid to me as well, but my research
included several different, and apparently smart, people that
indicated that after a clone operation and before the next Windows
boot, you MUST disconnect the original drive. Not only that, here are
the facts in my case:

1) Cloned from original to new drive using WD Lifeguard
2) new drive didn't work
3) removed new and replace old drive to system exactly as before
4) original "everything" didn't boot.

You could say that WD Lifeguard changed the data on the source drive
(doubtful), or Windows did something when it saw two drives that
looked identical (likely?).

You are correct. I have cloned hundreds of drives. Occasionally if you do
the first boot with both drives hooked up Windows does something to one or
both drives such that neither will boot. Where you went wrong was trying to
fix things. When this goes wrong usually you can fix the clone from the
recovery console. Your mistake was overwriting the clone and then trying to
fix the original. You should always immediately remove the original after
cloning it. Once you have booted once successfully from the clone the
original can be reinstalled. If the clone doesn't boot then fix it so the
original with your data is always safe. If the clone can't be fixed then
remove it and boot from the original. Once you have done that then the clone
can be reinstalled and you can try the whole procedure again from scratch.

Kerry

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I want to fix the old disk. It should be just the way I left it,
except for the MBR and boot.ini kinds of things. The bottom line is if
I get my old disk working, I can try another clone process.


I've done steps 2 through 5 many times. It's done other things, but
right now it just goes to a cursor; no error message. Of course I see
the bios text first, and can press F1 to see that it's going to start
the original hard drive. When I leave bios, or don't enter it in the
first place, the drive makes a normal but very short read noise, then
nothing. I'm just looking at the cursor on the upper left of the
screen.

Thanks to you and all for your ideas and expertise!

--Dale--

A blinking cursor in the top left-hand corner (and no other messages)
means that the Windows boot files are not being invoked. This is often
due to the primary disk partition not being set to active. Here are a
couple of suggestions to push things along:

1. Boot the machine with a Win98 boot disk from www.bootdisk.com,
then run fdisk.exe and set your primary partition to "active".
While you're at it, run these commands:
ntfsdos /L:M
type M:\boot.ini > a:\boot.ini
xcopy
You can get ntfsdos.exe from www.sysinternals.com.
Try to boot the machine and report your results. If this does
not work then do Step 2.

2. Boot the machine with a WinXP boot diskette. Here is how
to make one:
- Format a floppy disk on some other WinXP/2000 PC.
Don't do it on a Win9x PC - it won't work.
- Copy these files from the \i386 folder of your WinXP CD to A:\
ntldr
ntdetect.com
Since you don't seem to have a WinXP CD you may have to
copy the two files from some other WinXP PC. You may have
to unhide them before copying them.
- Copy a:\boot.ini from the Win98 boot disk to the WinXP boot disk.

 

[Gene K]

You might tell Richard also that "Cable Select" is contained in the
instructions provided by at least some drive manufacturers [Maxtor for one]
when you intend to make the new drive into the primary boot drive [Master].

 

[Gene K]

Amen!

 

[Andy]

Mine is the typical situation: New larger drive to replace original XP
boot drive.

I hooked up the new drive on the cable my DVD burner was on and then
Using WD Data Lifeguard, I copied the existing boot drive to the new
drive. I used the option to create a bootable drive. When the process
was finished, I shut down, removed the original drive plugged in the
new drive in it's place, reconnected my DVD burner, but when I
powered-on the new drive would not boot.

Figuring I'd try xxcopy next, I re-connected the original drive and
used bios settings to request that it be the one to boot. But that
didn't boot either! I copied FROM this drive. How did it get changed?

During the boot process the Windows loader checks the disk signatures
of all the drives to make sure that no two are identical. If they are,
the signature of the second drive (in this case your orignal drive,
since it was not connected as the first drive even though you were
booting from it) is changed. Once this happens, the disk won't boot
because its signature is different from the copy that is somewhere in
the registry.

Is it true that XP "poisons" it? I tried removing the cloned drive,
and that didn't make any difference; I had two drives with almost the
same data, but neither would boot!

Since I don't have real a Windows CD, the only way to get the machine
to even startup anything was the HP recovery CD. So I ran the
"non-destructive" recovery (coulda fooled me). It overwrote all of my
OS stuff, so everything needs to be reinstalled and reconfigured, not
to mention getting rid of all of that crap it puts on there. So I
don't want to go that route.

Anyway, with the fresh XP on the new drive (the clone I created earlier
is now gone), I can 'see' the old drive with all of my original stuff
on it. I tried the xxcopy option to restore the master boot record,
boot.ini, and the third thing (I selected all three), but the original
drive still comes up as a non-bootable drive.

This drive was perfectly heathy before, never had the slightest
indication of anything wrong with it, and in fact I can access all of
the data on the drive. XP seems to have "poisoned" this drive from
booting! Help!

All I want is my old drive to boot again. Please! There MUST be a
procedure I can follow that will give me my drive back!

Find out what the disk signature is by getting it from the registry,
and use it to fix the disk signature in the MBR.

 

[DRS.Usenet]

A blinking cursor in the top left-hand corner (and no other messages)
means that the Windows boot files are not being invoked. This is often
due to the primary disk partition not being set to active. Here are a
couple of suggestions to push things along:

1. Boot the machine with a Win98 boot disk from www.bootdisk.com,
then run fdisk.exe and set your primary partition to "active".
While you're at it, run these commands:
ntfsdos /L:M
type M:\boot.ini > a:\boot.ini
xcopy
You can get ntfsdos.exe from www.sysinternals.com.
Try to boot the machine and report your results. If this does
not work then do Step 2.

2. Boot the machine with a WinXP boot diskette. Here is how
to make one:
- Format a floppy disk on some other WinXP/2000 PC.
Don't do it on a Win9x PC - it won't work.
- Copy these files from the \i386 folder of your WinXP CD to A:\
ntldr
ntdetect.com
Since you don't seem to have a WinXP CD you may have to
copy the two files from some other WinXP PC. You may have
to unhide them before copying them.
- Copy a:\boot.ini from the Win98 boot disk to the WinXP boot disk.

Peagasus, Thanks for the recommendations. I am up and running on my
new drive!

Before I saw the post above, and when I was in the state of having my
original drive not-booting, and my new drive with that worthless HP
recovery, I had remembered that I had an AVG anti-virus bootable. So
using that, I recovered the boot 'stuff'. When I tried to boot, it
didn't work, I got even more disgusted (if that were possible) and quit
for the day.

This morning, I unplugged all IDE devices except for my old drive and
it booted! So I was back to where I was 24 hours prior! I don't know
why it didn't boot last night, but here's what I would say might have
helped me:

1) Unplug everything you don't absolutely need
2) Don't believe what the BIOS is telling you about hard disk boot
priority

So now I had the one hard drive and no DVD or CD's attached, so I
powered-down, connected only the new larger hard drive and a CD drive
to boot from. It was actually a XP Pro beta install CD that I
borrowed. I said I wanted to install to the new drive, doing the
'fdisk' bit, but I powered the machine off as soon as files started to
get copied. I did this because I didn't want that new drive to look
like a duplicate. It only took a few minutes, better safe than sorry,
again.

Finally I connected the old drive and the new drive (only), booting of
course from the old, and I ran XXCLONE with all three boot things
checked in the advanced menu. It worked perfectly. Now everything is
reconnected and working, except of course my old drive is cold on the
table next to me.

So to you, Pegasus, also Kerry, Grok, Andy, experts all, Grok, Leythos,
Richard, this community, I thank you.

--Dale--