Can't boot after Ghost clone

[binarybum]

Hi all,

I posted this a couple days ago in the XP_deployment forum but since I have not received any suugestions yet I'd thought I'd give a shot here.

I have a dual boot system with Win ME (drive C in windows) and Win XP Pro- NTFS (drive F) on a 120 gig HD. I use an 80-gig drive and Norton Ghost 2002 to clone backups. I discovered I am unable to boot the cloned drive into Win XP (XP hangs on the welcome screen, ME boots fine). I contacted Symantec tech support and was told I should use the MS Sysprep tool before cloning. I used sysprep from the root of my Win XP- F partition with both sysprep.exe and setupcl.exe in the root directory (They were NOT in a \sysprep directory, and I did not create an .inf file) of FXP sysroot). I ran sysprep, cloned after shutdown, shutdown after cloning, removed the source drive, cabled the destination drive as master (cable select) and tried to boot. I got a fatal error message saying the installation was incomplete and to run setup again. I shutdown, removed the cloned drive, put in the source drive as master, and got the same message with boot up. Now I got worried! I tried running XP setup from the installation CD as a repair on both drives but I got, and keep getting, an error message after the initial windows file copy saying that setup failed to remove the product catalogues and failed to install the product catalogues.

I tried a couple things in the recovery console (fix mbr, renamed sysprep and setupcl, put sysprep and setupcl in a sysprep directory in the system root, with no help.
At this point I have marked the extended and logical partitions (where XP resides) on the cloned drive as hidden (used Ghost gdisk), and installed Win XP on the primary partition (formerly Win ME) I let windows format it to NTFS. I am rebuilding my system o the 80 gig drive.

Can anyone tell me if it is possible to restore proper booting into my system on the source drive, or at least run a successful reinstall? All the files are there ( I slaved it to the new XP install to pull files into new installation). It just keeps going past the boot loader and into XP setup with the same error message.

Can anyone tell me how to clone in the future so that I will be able to boot into XP on the cloned drive? Perhaps the problem was that the source XP partition was designated as F: (made the mistake of booting with the cloned drive still installed a couple months ago) and then reassigned to D: when booting to the clone?

Thanks

 

[wolluf]

bit complicated.

don't know if I can help.

question: why are you trying to boot your backups?

point: you only need sysprep if the cloned install is going to be used on same domain network as source. for a backup it doesn't matter if SID is the same - its an either/or situation. Your original problem probably fixable with fixboot (ie a glitch in the ghosting process).

have you thought about independent (each on pirmary partition with their own boot sector) operating systems (if you're keeping dual boot) and using a third party boot manager (eg,

http://www.boot-us.com,

http://www.xosl.org,

boot magic, system commander).

it looks like sysprep has caused the problem - from your description it would also seem impossible to do a repair reinstall of XP (

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315341)

- so in your place I'd put it down to experience and reinstall from scratch. You could spend a lot of time trying to repair your installation (unless someone else has a definitive fix for you).

 

[binarybum]

Wolluf,

With clones as backups I can just pop in the HD in case of catastrophe and I'm up and running. I suspect the dual boot setup somehow caused sysprep to fail but I don't enough about it to be sure, much less fix it. I think you are right and I should chalk this one up to experience (unless someone comes in the forum comes up with a fix in the next week). At least I didn't loose all my data:-D I will forget about dual boot and just stick with XP.

Thanks...........BB

 

[llrand]

using ghost, make 2 separate images, 1 of the winme drive and 1 of the winxp.
with your new drive that you are trying to clone, make sure your have 2 partitions, one of them being active.
Run ghost and ghost each image to each partion, everything should run exactly as the original hd did.

 

[binarybum]

llrand,
If I remember right at one point I was cloning partition to partition separately (since I usually only ran Ghost on the XP partition) and I could boot into XP. This time I started with a new backup drive so I just cloned all at once. I don't see why it would make a difference but I also realize that it could. Thanks for the tip...................BB

 

[gamelin56]

Did the multi boot ever work. If so these comments probably won't help. WIN98 needs an overlay to see a 120 GB drive. I think WINME does too. WINXP wants to get rid of the overlay. Either one or the other will work. Depending on how your partitions are laid out you may get them both working. If it was working you need the boot sector on the 2 drive to be the same as the first. Are the partition layouts the same on both drives? Just different sizes? If all you've got on the second is the XP partition. Scratch that last line of thought. Is the big drive using an overlay and the small one isn't? If that's the case you're
going to need a different boot environment on the 2 drives a simple clone isn't going to work.

You might like to check out tech support for the HD mfg's they're usually pretty good on such a question.

You might like to check out my posts on thread779-449088 and thread616-448949.

Hope all is well.

 

[Eldad]

Hello, Here is my experience.
I clone for backup every week with Norton Ghost 2002.
Have 2HDs 40G each, 2 partitions on each.
If I clone disk to disk, I can always boot the backup.
If I clone just the C partition, it will boot only
sometimes, some clones will not boot, but stop at the
WinXP blue screen.
Will Bellini's advice of adding -FDSZ to the Ghost
boot wizard help, so partition clone will boot?
Is it to the Ghost floppy or to the actual clone process?
Another peculiarity: Usually when I test boot the clone
it 'gets busy' for a while, and I get a message "windows
has finished loading new devices", or similar message.
Then it works fine. Any explanation?
Thanks, Eldad

 

[firewolfrl]

what you are hanging up at is the windows xp license verification on the hardware. you lost or changed some settings (from original) and xp cannot verify its license. you are correct about the drive letterings and ghost(previous F: now D. if you had used a third party boot manager the drive would have been seen as Cit is much easier)
wipe the c: partition and install a fresh install fo xp
the create partitions D: through F: (F: is ghost target and any drive letter except F: as the second drive ) ghost the F: drive
hope it works
go to

http://www.xosl.org

for a good boot manager