After restoring .tib to a new HD from external drive neither new HD nor OLD HD will boot.

Not sure why the original HD is even affected here, as the restore was done directly from the external drive it was contained on.

When both HD's are plugged in, on boot I get the Dell boot up screen, over and over. When just the new HD is plugged in, on boot I get a notice that bootmgr is missing. - When I remove the new HD and leave ONLY the original HD (which is healthy btw, just too small) I get the Dell boot up screen, over and over as before. On F1, I get asked which operating system I want (only Vista is offered) - On click, same thing, Dell boot, again and again. F8 is apparently unavailable all of a sudden. Cannot get boot options with one or both HD's.

In each step, trying out all combinations, I used F2, making sure all settings were correct - Currently I have both HD's in, with boot option set to the CD/DVD player, and the Acronis Bootable Rescue disk in. Acronis sees BOTH HD's, and reads all the information on both.

At first glance (we're talking 200gb here, so first glance is all we're talking about), both HD's appear to have all the same files and folders. The Recycle bin in each has a $ in front of it, not sure if that's a function of Acronis running in faux dos mode or not.

Oddly, when my external drive (where the .tib is located) IS plugged in, clicking the Browse for Backup from the Disk Recovery tab crashes the whole schmear, yet the external drive is healthy and fine when plugged into any other system in the home.

I'm sure this is something irredeemably imbecilic. I'm not even 100% sure it's an Acronis issue, tho' the timing of it seems to suggest such.

Now, a little extra info,

a) When setting the system up for a restore to the new HD (already formatted and partitioned, but wasn't worried about Acronis redoing it) I did check the box having to do with signing permissions(?). Not sure it this made BOTH disks active and on first boot they simply conflicted with each other. Doesn't seem right as neither disk will boot alone either.

b) I have Acronis (same version) on another system - When the external drive is plugged in, it does not recognize the .tib. Is this normal? It says that it's not valid or is corrupted. Is this because it's been plugged into a drive that was NOT the original drive? Ack...

c) Since on restoring a .tib from an external drive seems to have partially killed my original healthy C drive, can I or SHOULD I risk restoring anything from a copy of the .tib residing on the additional computer's hard drive (which the Acronis recovery sees just fine), and risking loosing the primary disk on my second computer as happened with mine?

d) I ran all diagnostics that come with Dell's and all passed with flying colors... Memory, HD, video, what-have-ya.

e) I "think" (this is just a gut feeling) that the paging, bootmgr, and other sys files got "knocked out" during the restore process. I STILL don't know why they would on a drive that wasn't part of the process, but... Could it be this simple? And if so, what do I do about it?

My entire business is in/on the broken system. I have the backup, which appears to have restored quasi-nicely to the new HD, even tho' it won't boot, most of the files seem to be there. I am in stasis. I am looking for my Vista CD's (we just moved, of course, and they're in a box, somewhere...) for other repair options. I don't think you can create a Vista boot disk online (?), anyway...

Help?

(she whimpered)

My account says I have 30-day free after-sales support, but when trying to get to such a thing, I only ended up with chat, who while kindly offering to have someone "call right away - 2 to 3 minutes" (I am somewhat disabled and cannot run from one room with chat to the other room with the broken computer over and over...lol), but then put me on chat hold for 45 minutes after telling me call backs were having "technical difficulties", then telling me he had no eta on fixing it, but could I please just stay in chat until they did (I have the transcript). I unfortunately could not hold longer than another 25 minutes. I tried tho'. :)

Thanks in advance... Ask me anything, I'll answer as best I can.

Cheers!

kim

p.s. I'd actually like to fix this, but here is an option, just throwing it our there for the super techies... I have the Windows 7 disk in my hot little hands. If I was to unplug the original drive, swap the new HD which was ostensibly restored and boot from the Windows 7 disk, and do the upgrade as I was planning to all along it could possibly restore the files that were errored and or missing and just act like a normal installation? (whimper)