Booting Problems SATA/IDE

[JohnBoy2005]

I've got a PC with SATA and IDE compatabililty. I've taken out the SATA drive to add a IDE drive. The IDE drive has been cloned from an existing PC on our network with XP Pro on it. The clone works fine on the PC it was cloned from (removed existing IDE drive to test)

When I put the IDE back in the new PC, I make sure it boots from that IDE drive, but I get MISSING OPERATING SYSTEM.

Any ideas?

Cheers

John

 

[wolluf]

system partition is set active?

this PC you've put it into - how similar hardware to one original was installed on? (though hardware compatibilies should show up later - not at load o/s stage).

presume the IDE drive is being correctly identified in the bios - & you say you've set bios to boot from IDE.

(not a floppy in the drive!)

 

[JohnBoy2005]

All correct, partition is active, bios has detected hard drive as primary master and I have set IDE Primary Master to be the first boot device.

I have even ruled out HD problems by using a second IDE hard drive.

 

[rvnguy]

XP is config'ed to the hardware is is installed on, this is one of MS's schemes to thwart piracy of their OS. Unlike, Win9X one can not just copy it with out a special license and version.


rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[JohnBoy2005]

We are using Ghost 2003 to do the cloning and the PC we are cloning from has a Windows XP VLK.

 

[rvnguy]

VLK allows for many things, unattended install neing one of them.

It still does not encompass cloning from a PC whose hardware is different.

If a company say purchases 10 to ?? new PC's that are all the same, an image can be created for them. This image is good for these PC's only.

If another batch of PC's with differing hardware is procured then another image must be gen'd for them

rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[wolluf]

rvnguy - the thing about problems caused by hardware differences is you get a windows error message - ie, windows starts to boot. The missing operating system message says that when the bios is trying to execute the bootstrap code on the hard drive, it can't find it, or that code can't load the operating system. Which might suggest there's a problem with the mbr on the drive.

JohnBoy2005 - might be worth trying recovery console (apart from anything else, if you can load recovery console it means the windows folder is accessible). If you can try running fixmbr (& fixboot for good luck).

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307654

 

[JohnBoy2005]

Thanks for the advice. I've done some research and I'm not sure that it is because it's been cloned from another machines because of the error "Missing Operating System"

The internet is spread with rumours that cloning to a sata drive from an IDE drive using Norton Ghost 2003 can cause massive problems with capatability.

Due to time restrictions, I've just installed XP and the software required. The PC is now running fine. Just could have been easier using a clone.

Thanks anyway.