cloned a drive, won't boot

nightice

I got my spiffy new 250GB drive Tues, installed SP2, used the WD software to clone my old drive, and Windows don't boot from the new one. It gets as far as NTLDR and reboots, then next time will give me the crap about Windows not starting properly. None of the available options (safe mode, safe/net, safe/cmd, lastgood, normal) succeed. FIXBOOT from the recovery console doesn't work either. Anything else I can do? I really want this as my main drive.

Q

Does Windows really not like having that done to it these days, or is that just moving the HD to a new system?

-Q

nightice

I don't see why there would be an error by just copying the drive and switching the jumpers.

wingzeroismine

Your new drive is a WD right? Try another ghost program like norton ghost.

[Deleted User]

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nightice

yeah. turns out it's bluescreening (took a while, had to hook up to a crt, lcd takes forever to switch resolution). for some utterly stupid reason i didn't uncheck "Reboot on STOP error", i was never able to see that, and it actually looked like it was rebooting before it finished painting the screen. i broke the master plug on the ide cable, forcing me to rip one out of this machine (the HP). and now the cd drive's b0rked, ejecting/closing and not reading CDs, making a repair install impossible. i'm getting a new ide cable and cd drive today.

UPDATE: 1 cd drive and a new ide cable later, the hardware works. I fixed the bluescreening by re-expanding atapi.sy_ into system32\drivers with BartPE. But even though the 250GB is primary master (according to BIOS, Knoppix, Recovery Console, BartPE), it still insists on booting the 20GB and making it C:. Any ideas?

nightice

Ok...so I swapped the drive letters in DIsk Management. Windows boots, but stops after the Windows XP fade-in on the logon screen. I think it has something to do with my drive-letter swapping. Is there any way I can reinstall Windows (without winnt32) but preserve my existing profiles and settings?

nightice

I reinstalled. Interestingly, I created the accounts with the same names as the other ones. When I log on, it puts everything in D&S\jz4208.Gateway instead of D&S\jz4208. How do I get around this and make it use the existing folders - the Windows accounts as of earlier today?

[Deleted User]

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nightice

Erm...perhaps I can put my 20gb back as the boot device, recopy WINNT and D&S, and set the 250 as the boot device...hmm...then I just have the issue of drive lettering.

nightice

(woot)(bounce)(woot)(bounce)

Fixed it. Just had to change a couple of entries in HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevices.