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Help - Uninstalled DiskWizard and Now Drive Won't Boot

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Hello.

I recently bought a 500GB Western Digital hard drive to replace the 150GB Seagate hard drive in my HP Elitebook 3690p laptop. I am running Windows XP Pro.

A sticker on the new WD hard drive mentioned going to the WD website to download some alignment and cloning software to help with the upgrade. "Acronis True Image WD Edition" was the name of the cloning software downloaded and Acronis made the alignment software as well.

With the Seagate HD in the laptop and the WD attached via a SATA-USB adapter cable I attempted to install the TI WD Edition software to the Seagate, but a message popped up saying that the software would not run unless on a WD hard drive. Since I did not have a boot disk I needed the Seagate in the laptop in order to boot off of. Unable to get the TI WD software to install and needing the Seagate in the laptop to boot, I decided to look on the Seagate website for similar software and that is where I found the Acronis "DiskWizard" software.

I downloaded the DiskWizard software and was able to get it to install on the Seagate HD. I then used it to clone the Seagate to the WD hard drive. I then put the WD HD into the laptop and was able to boot off of it. Great!! I think I even booted off the WD a couple more times. Then I figured I should uninstall the DiskWizard software from the WD HD and install the True Image WD Edition software. As the uninstall neared the end a reboot was required. So, I rebooted and the drive would not reboot!! Blue screen as soon as the Windows splash screen came up. Message said boot was stopped to prevent damage to the pc and recommended removing any newly installed drives.

So, I took out the WD and put the Seagate back into the laptop and it booted fine. I decided to try cloning again, but use a different software. I thought that it would be a good idea to uninstall the DiskWizard software from the Seagate prior to re-cloning to the WD in order to keep it off in the event it was messing up the WD. Big mistake!! Now the Seagate won't boot either! Same blue screen message about stopping the boot in order to prevent damage to the pc.

What happened when I uninstalled the Diskwizard software that made each drive unable to boot??

I would appreciate any help because now I have no drives that will boot and no boot disk to boot from. I am able to connect the hard drives via USB to my wife's laptop.

Thanks,
Rob

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Have you checked the BIOS to make sure it selecting the correct boot disk?

Did you perform an Acronis disk backup before cloning?

Do you have a Windows Install/Repair disk?

Thank you for the reply, Grover. I appreciate your willingness to help!

Good news! I am up and running. This morning I decided to put the new HD in the laptop and slave the source (original) HD via USB-SATA cable and use the cloning software that came with the Apricorn USB-SATA cable I purchased for the HD upgrade. The software is "EZ GIG III". I have rebooted on the new HD a couple of times and so far so good... I thought this would be a long shot because both HD's led to blue screens during boot, but it worked. I am still not sure why the act of uninstalling the DiskWizard software made the drives unbootable. One fact to mention is that each time I cloned the original HD the new HD was outside the laptop on the USB cable. Maybe that had something to do with it. In the past I have used other products like Norton Ghost with the destination drive out on the USB cable without problems.

Not sure it matters now, but to answer your questions above:

I believe the BIOS was selecting the correct boot disk as I only had one in the laptop at a time during boot and no DVD/CD's or memory sticks plugged in. I would also go into the Bios and select the installed hard drive to boot from. It did seem like the boot process got far enough to make me think the hard drive was being accessed. Could the Windows XP splash screen come up without seeing a HD?

I did not perform Acronis disk backup before cloning. I guess I figured sense I had the source drive that I should be ok while cloing to the new drive.

I do not have my windows disks with me, but might be able to borrow / round some up if need be.

Thanks again for engaging!
Rob

Glad it all worked out. My reasons for asking would have been to use the backup to get you back normal; or if Win 7, it has a repair feature when a disk is not bootable. No need for either now. Good luck.