XP starts booting then hangs on cloned drive

[kkociolek]

I copied my hard drive to a second hard drive using Ghost 9. My compaq
presario came with a partitioned drive. Cnormal) and DRecovery). I
partitioned the new drive and copied C: and D: over. I made C: the
active partition and copied over the MBR. Everything copied well. Made
the new drive the master, connected up and pc started just as before.
So far so good. NOT. It gets all the way to the blue XP log in screen,
HOWEVER there is no users logon list (Just an image on the screen that
says
"Welcome XP". That's where it stops.


Frustrating. Has anyone gone through this mess?

 

[John John]

Slave the drive into another machine or remote access it over a network
and edit the registry remotly as per instructions here:

Unable to log on if the boot partition drive letter has changed
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/249321

John

 

[AJR]

If you "cloned" C and D to the new drive - installing new drive in place of
the old drive was all that should have been required.
The clone is an "exact" copy - not necessary to designate active partition
or mess with MBR.

 

[John John]

It's a known issue with disk-to-disk cloned/ghosted drives. Most likely
the OP won't need to fix the MBR but he will probably have to carry out
the steps in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188/

John

 

[kkociolek]

Ok, I'm alittle unclear here but bear with me. When I partitioned my
new hard drive, it was assigned the drive letters K: and L: . Are you
saying that these drive letters stay with the drive and when I pull out
the old drive and add the new one configured as the master, the bios is
still looking for a c: drive to boot from? Sorry, I'm not an I.T.
person.

 

[John John]

Try Removing the old (slaved) drive from the computer and try booting
again. The mounted drives and enumeration is inconsistent and that
prevents the computer from booting properly.

Computer cannot start properly after doing a disk-to-disk clone
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPOR...662ecd&dtype=&prod=&ver=&osv=&osv_lvl=&seg=ag

If that doesn't work you will have to follow the instructions in the
other Microsoft articles or re-image the drive. The cause is the same
as getting a "pagefile is too small" error message.

John

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Try Removing the old (slaved) drive from the computer and try booting again. The mounted drives and enumeration is inconsistent
and that prevents the computer from booting properly.

Computer cannot start properly after doing a disk-to-disk clone
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPOR...662ecd&dtype=&prod=&ver=&osv=&osv_lvl=&seg=ag

Symantec is wrong here. It doesn't matter a whit if two or more
HDs each have a Primary partition that is marked "active". In fact,
once the BIOS selects the HD and its MBR to use for booting,
only the Primary partition marked "active" on that HD is sought by
the MBR - the partition tables and the partitions on the other HDs
are ignored by the MBR, and the status of their "active" flags have
no significance nor any meaning. (See my continued reply below.)



The classic mistake made in cloning any Windows OS in the
Win2K/NT/XP family is NOT disconnecting the source HD before
starting up the clone OS for the first time. If this is not done, the
clone OS will see its identical "parent" and get confused. How
this confusion comes about is probably known to only a couple
people at Microsoft, but it manifests itself in random files in the
clone apparently not being given entries in the file table to the
local file but rather, entries to the identical file in the "parent" OS's
partition. This can be catastrophic or very subtle, depending on
which files are affected. If just a few .doc files are thus affected,
you will just blithely be editing the file in the "parent" system
when you think you're editing the file in the clone system. You
may not notice the discrepancy until after you reformat the
"parent" OS's partition and subsequently notice that the file
is missing in the clone.

This problem will not happen if you start up the "parent" system
with the clone visible to it. It only happens when the "parent" is
visible when you start up the clone for its first run. The way to get
around this is easy if the two partitions are on different HDs -
you just disconnect the "parent" OS's HD before you boot up the
clone for the first time. If the two partitions are on the same HD,
it requires that you first assure that the clone's partition is marked
"active" and then using 3rd party software to "hide" the "parent"
OS's partition before booting the clone. The latter can be tricky,
and I don't recommend doing it at home, kids.

Once the new clone has been "vetted" by a startup in isolation
from its "parent" OS, it can besubsequently started with the
"parent" visible to it with no problems. Whichever OS is running,
the other OS's partition will just be seen as a data partition
to/from which files may be exchanged by drag 'n drop, etc.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Whichever OS is running,
the other OS's partition will just be seen as a data partition
to/from which files may be exchanged by drag 'n drop, etc.

Do keep in mind that the clone will refer to its own partition
by the same name that its "parent" OS did. This means
that if the "parent" referred to its own partition as "C:",
the clone will refer to its partition as "C:", and it will refer to
its "parent's" partition by a different name. In the case of just
one partition on each of 2 HDs, each OS will refer to its own
partition as "C:" and the other partition as "D:". This will present
no difficulties unless you have shortcuts that contain references
to other partitions.

*TimDaniels*

 

[John John]

Do keep in mind that the clone will refer to its own partition
by the same name that its "parent" OS did. This means
that if the "parent" referred to its own partition as "C:",
the clone will refer to its partition as "C:", and it will refer to
its "parent's" partition by a different name. In the case of just
one partition on each of 2 HDs, each OS will refer to its own
partition as "C:" and the other partition as "D:". This will present
no difficulties unless you have shortcuts that contain references
to other partitions.

*TimDaniels*

This issue was present even when Powerquest owned Ghost and the fix for
it is shown in the articles mentioned earlier. If it doesn't exist then
please tell us why the computer is stuck in a reboot loop, and more
importantly tell us how to fix it!

John

 

[Timothy Daniels]

This issue was present even when Powerquest owned Ghost
and the fix for it is shown in the articles mentioned earlier. If it
doesn't exist then please tell us why the computer is stuck in a
reboot loop, and more importantly tell us how to fix it!

John

What "issue" was present?

What "doesn't exist"?

What, exactly, is the problem you're referring to?

My comments were to suggest re-cloning the drive, but to
disconnect the source HD before starting up the clone for
its first run, and that having two or more HDs with an "active"
system does not cause any problems. As for the clone calling
its partition "C:", that is only a problem if you have shortcuts
that point to other partitions. If it ain't broke, why look for
"solutions"?

*TimDaniels*