Transferring XP Pro to new hard drive: Problems

  • Thread starter Thread starter P. U. Psilanimous
  • Start date Start date
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P. U. Psilanimous

I am having some problems moving Windows XP Pro from an older HDD to a
new HDD and having it boot successfully. I have tried the transfer
software from the manufacturer (Maxtor) and Norton Ghost. In both
instances I do not get a boot unless the old drive is still present on
the system.
Can someone help with this problem?
 
Norton Ghost: Sector be Sector copy option needs to be used. Needed to
copy ther Master Boot Record (MBR).

Y.
 
P. U. Psilanimous said:
I am having some problems moving Windows XP Pro from an older HDD to a
new HDD and having it boot successfully. I have tried the transfer
software from the manufacturer (Maxtor) and Norton Ghost. In both
instances I do not get a boot unless the old drive is still present on
the system.
Can someone help with this problem?
Click to expand...

Boot your computer with the Windows XP CDROM and (only) the new hard
drive installed in the machine. Choose the Repair (Recovery Console)
option.

At the Command Prompt enter the following commands:

FIXMBR
FIXBOOT C:

Then reboot the computer and hopefully it will now boot into Windows

If not then use the CD Boot again to get into the Recovery Console and
this time enter:

CHKDSK /R


Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."
 
P. U. Psilanimous said:
I am having some problems moving Windows XP Pro from
an older HDD to a new HDD and having it boot successfully.
I have tried the transfer software from the manufacturer
(Maxtor) and Norton Ghost. In both instances I do not
get a boot unless the old drive is still present on the system.
Can someone help with this problem?
Click to expand...

That symptom can be caused by messed up partition signatures in the XP
registry. This often happens if you install the new HDD and format it
from within XP before doing the cloning.

One trick that seems to work is to remove the old HDD, get a Win98 boot
floppy (download from www.bootdisk.com, if you don't have one), boot
from the floppy, execute the command "fdisk /mbr", remove the floppy,
then reboot into XP. If it now boots properly, you can reinstall the
old HDD if you want, but not until the new HDD boots properly by itself.
 
P. U. Psilanimous said:
I am having some problems moving Windows XP Pro from
an older HDD to a new HDD and having it boot successfully.
I have tried the transfer software from the manufacturer
(Maxtor) and Norton Ghost. In both instances I do not get
a boot unless the old drive is still present on the system.
Can someone help with this problem?
Click to expand...


Maxtor's own tech reps say that MaxBlast is "not very good".
Try Drive Image or one of the other "spook" imaging utilities
such as Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image or Future Systems
Solutions Casper XP (for Win XP). Your specific problem may
have resulted from not disconnecting the source hard drive
before booting from the destination hard drive for the 1st time.
See my posting entitled "Multi-boot Windows XP without
special software".

*TimDaniels*
 
That symptom can be caused by messed up partition signatures in the XP
registry. This often happens if you install the new HDD and format it
from within XP before doing the cloning.

One trick that seems to work is to remove the old HDD, get a Win98 boot
floppy (download from www.bootdisk.com, if you don't have one), boot
from the floppy, execute the command "fdisk /mbr", remove the floppy,
then reboot into XP. If it now boots properly, you can reinstall the
old HDD if you want, but not until the new HDD boots properly by itself.
Click to expand...

That procedure will not work if the hard drive is using the NTFS file
system.


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."
 
Ron Martell said:
That procedure will not work if the hard drive is using the NTFS
file system.
Click to expand...

Sure it will. It's not touching any partitions, NTFS or otherwise. A
Win98 boot floppy works fine just for getting at the MBR. All we're
doing is deleting the Disk ID in the MBR so that when XP reboots it
generates new partition signatures. "Fixmbr" from a XP recovery console
won't delete the Disk ID, but "fdisk /mbr" from a Win98 boot floppy
will.
 
Another thing to consider. Did you set the new drive to be the "master"
after removing the old drive? It could be that the system just isn't seeing
a bootable drive because there is only a "slave" present.

Joshua Smith
DirectInput Test Lab
Microsoft
 
I am having some problems moving Windows XP Pro from an older HDD to a
new HDD and having it boot successfully. I have tried the transfer
software from the manufacturer (Maxtor) and Norton Ghost. In both
instances I do not get a boot unless the old drive is still present on
the system.
Can someone help with this problem?
Click to expand...

I have not had any luck with the products you mention. I have had 100%
success with Partition Magic. Tell it to copy the partition, expand the
partition to fill the available drive and not to hide the new hard drive.

When it's complete, shutdown, remove the old hard drive and the new drive
should boot without a problem.

Chris
 
I have cloned the old disk to the new one using Norton Ghost. I then
removed all HDD's from the system except the new boot drive (Yes, the
jumpers are configured correctly).

On boot with the new drive, the system attempts to boot and gets to
the "Welcome to Windows" screen and hangs.

Using the WinXP install cd, I ran:
FIXMBR
FIXBOOT C:
and finally
CHKDSK /R

The result is the same.

Can anyone help here?

TIA
 
P. U. Psilanimous said:
I have cloned the old disk to the new one using Norton Ghost. I then
removed all HDD's from the system except the new boot drive (Yes, the
jumpers are configured correctly).

On boot with the new drive, the system attempts to boot and gets to
the "Welcome to Windows" screen and hangs.

Using the WinXP install cd, I ran:
FIXMBR
FIXBOOT C:
and finally
CHKDSK /R

The result is the same.

Can anyone help here?
Click to expand...

You didn't say whether you tried the fix I gave you three days ago, so
I'll repeat:

"That symptom can be caused by messed up partition signatures in the XP
registry. This often happens if you install the new HDD and format it
from within XP before doing the cloning."

"One trick that seems to work is to remove the old HDD, get a Win98 boot
floppy (download from www.bootdisk.com, if you don't have one), boot
from the floppy, execute the command "fdisk /mbr", remove the floppy,
then reboot into XP. If it now boots properly, you can reinstall the
old HDD if you want, but not until the new HDD boots properly by
itself."
 
I must have missed your earlier comment or maybe it was the comment
about the NTFS, but I tried your solution and it worked perfectly.

Thank you for your help.

Darrell
 
You're welcome. What happened was at some point you booted XP with both
disks installed, and XP saw the new disk, gave it a drive letter (let's
say F:, for example), and recorded that fact in its registry. Then you
cloned XP to the new disk, and of course the registry went with it.
Then when you try to boot the new disk, XP recognizes the disk it's on
was already given another drive letter -- namely, F: -- so the boot
sequence hangs, looking in vain for drive C:. The Win98 "fdisk /mbr"
command is a quick way to force XP to forget the previous drive letter
assignment and reassign it anew. The similar "fixmbr" command from the
XP recovery console, which you also tried, will not invalidate previous
drive letter assignments.

Many people who complain of problems with Ghost or DriveImage make this
mistake. You're not supposed to format the new disk first, you're
supposed to put it in bare and clone immediately.
 
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