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Problem booting Win XP after restored image

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DarkCyber

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
May 14, 2003
Messages
1,273
I had to restore an image of my computer's C:\ OS partition and for some reason I am having issues getting it to boot up afterward.

Here's the story. I made an image with AOMEI Backupper, which will not restore because it keeps saying I need a larger hard drive to restore it to, even when trying to restore it back to the exact same hard drive...I have used a larger hard drive and still get the same error. So, I restored an older Norton Ghost 9 image from a couple of years back. All the images are good and check out. After I restore the Ghost 9 image and try to boot the pc I get this error message:

Boot from CD:

A disk error occurred
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

I have tried all the usual stuff...Fixmbr, bootcfg /rebuild...etc. and so far nothing works. When I use Hiren Boot CD 15.1 and select the "Fix NTLDR is missing" and then select #1, the computer will boot up into Windows XP and work. But the next time I boot it, if I don't use the Hiren CD, the boot fails.

What am I missing here? Any suggestions appreciated. I'm stubborn and have been working on this for around 3 weeks...I don't give up and plus it has a legacy program that can no longer be registered anymore, the company stopped supporting the program because MS dropped Windows XP, so thus the reason why I need this image backup to work.
 
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Does the drive have a boot partition on it? Should be about 100MB in the front of the main partition. Backing up both partitions is critical to avoid these kinds of issues during a restore.
 
Liger88 said:
Does the drive have a boot partition on it? Should be about 100MB in the front of the main partition. Backing up both partitions is critical to avoid these kinds of issues during a restore.
Click to expand...

Yes, it does. When I have restored these in the past there has not been a problem. The hard drive is a 500 GB HD partitioned into a 70 GB partition for the OS and then the rest is partitioned into a data partition. When I restore it with Ghost I select the to restore the MBR, set it as boot drive...etc. (maybe not the exact names but I set all of that, like I have in the past). I have also tried restoring this to a 640 GB HD and get the same issue...so I know it's not a bad of faulty HD.

If that 100 MB partition isn't there or is damaged...is there a way to fix it or re-create it?
 
Liger88 said:
Does the drive have a boot partition on it? Should be about 100MB in the front of the main partition. Backing up both partitions is critical to avoid these kinds of issues during a restore.
Click to expand...

That 100MB partition is not really needed.

I used to create a single partition and then install Windows. It doesn't make that 100MB partition if done that way.

Same goes for when I was imaging machines.

OP, was there any other hard drives installed when you made that image you are trying to restore from?

If so, that may be your problem. I have seen multiple times when Windows installs some stuff on a different hard drive when it is being installed.

Another thing.. why even bother with an old image of XP. Why not just install from scratch?
 
cyclone3d said:
That 100MB partition is not really needed.

I used to create a single partition and then install Windows. It doesn't make that 100MB partition if done that way.

Same goes for when I was imaging machines.

OP, was there any other hard drives installed when you made that image you are trying to restore from?

If so, that may be your problem. I have seen multiple times when Windows installs some stuff on a different hard drive when it is being installed.

Another thing.. why even bother with an old image of XP. Why not just install from scratch?
Click to expand...


Probably right, but I've had nothing but issues without one when restoring backup images. For that my fix was the long way (just to make sure) by reinstalling the OS formatting the entire drive so the partitions would be correct and then I just restored the main partition.

My other guess was the same as yours where other hard drives were plugged in during the restore process. That has screwed me on another occasion where I needed another disk present because all the boot information was on it.
 
cyclone3d said:
That 100MB partition is not really needed.

I used to create a single partition and then install Windows. It doesn't make that 100MB partition if done that way.

Same goes for when I was imaging machines.

OP, was there any other hard drives installed when you made that image you are trying to restore from?

If so, that may be your problem. I have seen multiple times when Windows installs some stuff on a different hard drive when it is being installed.

Another thing.. why even bother with an old image of XP. Why not just install from scratch?
Click to expand...


No, it only had the single 500 GB hard drive in it partitioned into two partitions. The reason I cannot do a clean install is because I have a purchased program on the pc that is registered. The company stopped issues registration codes as of August 31, 2014. So, if I install it on a clean installation then the software will only be demo mode only.
 
I have restored an old image from around 2011 with Norton Ghost 9 and when I try to boot the pc I get this error:

No boot device available: Press ENTER key to retry
SATA -0: None
SATA-1: Installed
SATA-2: None
SATA-3: Installed

I have tried Fixmbr, bootcfg /rebuild..etc. and none of those seem to work.

I can take Hiren 15.1 boot cd and boot from it and select "Fix NTLDR is Missing" and then select option 1 on the next screen and it boots perfect into Windows XP.

So, what is missing that Hiren can boot it up but Windows XP can't boot by itself?

I have even copied NTLDR and NTDETECT from the Windows XP cd to C:\ and it still cannot boot.
 
There's more to that Hiren BootCD it appears.

http://www.wintips.org/fix-ntldr-is-missing-error/

That error can be a bunch of different issues, especially difficult to narrow down after a restore as I know first hand. Either something is corrupted, deleted, or misplaced. You should pull all your drives out except for the one that you want to boot from during all of this. It will make things much more difficult to fix.
 
Liger88 said:
There's more to that Hiren BootCD it appears.

http://www.wintips.org/fix-ntldr-is-missing-error/

That error can be a bunch of different issues, especially difficult to narrow down after a restore as I know first hand. Either something is corrupted, deleted, or misplaced. You should pull all your drives out except for the one that you want to boot from during all of this. It will make things much more difficult to fix.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link. Actually, I have pulled all the drives out expect for the one I am restoring to and that didn't help either. I moved my backup image to the external Seagate hd and was trying it that way with no luck either. I am not getting the NTLDR is missing error, but for some reason the pc will boot up with the Hiren Disc with that option...crazy.
 
I just did a restore the other day where it only restored the main partition and not the 100mb at the biginning (apparently didnt back up. I tried using all fixboot, fixmbr crap as well until... BAM it hit me. I started up diskpart (fdisk on XP) and marked the partition active. Booted fine faterwards. It is probably still booting that way booting because it is using the active boot partition of the CD and the CD is just relaying to the hard drive boot files.
 
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