backup image C: will not boot
Installed a new hard drive, partitioned and formatted it then used my latest C: backup image to restore operating system. Computer will not boot.
I have been using True Image Home 2009 and Drive Image before that and never had a problem like this. What can I do to make it boot besides reinstalling WindowsXP on the C: drive. What can I do to get system to boot now and 2) how to avoid this situation in future?
Jimbo:
1. What does the PC do when you attempt to boot?
2. Do you see any error messages, and if so, what are they?
3. Did you restore your C drive image to the same location on the disk or to a different location? In other words, if the original image was from partition #2 did you restore it to partition #2 on the new disk?
4. Did you choose "Primary" and "Active" as the partition types when restoring the image?
Lots of questions, but if answered they will provide important clues to help understand what went wrong, how to fix it, and how to avoid it in the future.
bin: That's just not true; you can use either clone or restore to move the operating system partition to a new disk.
oh right, i'll just pig off and say nowt, obviously I know shit
Computer will not boot.
Jimbo3,
In addition to Mark's questions, what do you see on the monitor when the computer won't boot?
This may or may not matter, but was that Image validated using the Rescue CD?
Well, you were trying to help, and that's good.
All of us who post here will sometimes be wrong, so don't stop posting. The good thing is that someone else will post a better answer, and we all will learn.
The C: image came from C: drive and was restored to C: drive [except on a new hard drive]. This is the only physical hard drive I now have in the computer. The image of C: was made using True Image Home 2009. The new hard drive was formatted and partitioned using Acronis Disk Director v10. The C: drive is the primary, active partition.
When I try to boot, WinXP goes thru the normal routine of checking & listing the drives and PCI devices then when it gets to the line: Boot from the CD/DVD, it stops with a blinking cursor. That's as far as it goes. No error messages ever appear. If I click enter, nothing happens, if I Control Alt-Deletem it does same thing over again to the blinking cursor. No error messages, etc.
Hope that answers everyone's questions, Jimbo
Hope that answers everyone's questions
It has, but unfortunately there are more. Where is your backup image stored?
When you restored the image to the new HD, was there only one HD in the computer? Or two?
Is the new HD connected to SATA port 0 on the motherboard. Or jumpered as Master if it is IDE?
The blinking cursor problem is usually hardware related.
Boot into bios and reset Boot Sequence.
Boot into bios and reset Boot Sequence.
That's what I think too.
The description given was not what WinXP does; it's what the PC does when running its power-on self-test. When the PC gets to the point of starting the boot process it sounds like it doesn't even attempt to boot from the hard disk.
Those details that you posted were very helpful, Jimbo. Try yrag's advice next.
OK, I booted into bio and found this:
IDE Channel 0 master [new WD SATA 500gb HD]
IDE Channel 0 slave [empty]
IDE Channel 1 master [CD Rom]
IDE Channel 1 slave [empty]
I did not change the boot sequence because already the First Boot Device is Ch 0 M = WD SATA HD
The C: drive image was restored from a second SATA HD connected on Channel 1 slave. After Acronis True Image restored the image to C: partition on the new HD and I found that the computer would not boot, I physically removed the second hard drive. I did not check to see if the image was validated and not sure how to do that. Hope this info helps. Jimbo
OK, I booted into bio and found this:
IDE Channel 0 master [new WD SATA 500gb HD]
IDE Channel 0 slave [empty]
IDE Channel 1 master [CD Rom]
IDE Channel 1 slave [empty]
I did not change the boot sequence because already the First Boot Device is Ch 0 M = WD SATA HD
The C: drive image was restored from a second SATA HD connected on Channel 1 slave. After Acronis True Image restored the image to C: partition on the new HD and I found that the computer would not boot, I physically removed the second hard drive. I did not check to see if the image was validated and not sure how to do that. Hope this info helps. Jimbo
Good info.
Confusing BIOS with IDE channels and SATA.
It shouldn't matter but is the HD SATA cable plugged into the same SATA port on the motherboard that was in use by the old HD?
Are you sure the HD is SATA?
Good info.
Confusing BIOS with IDE channels and SATA.
It shouldn't matter but is the HD SATA cable plugged into the same SATA port on the motherboard that was in use by the old HD?
Are you sure the HD is SATA?
Some bios makers have a strange sense of humor......
The C: image came from C: drive and was restored to C: drive [except on a new hard drive]. This is the only physical hard drive I now have in the computer. The image of C: was made using True Image Home 2009. The new hard drive was formatted and partitioned using Acronis Disk Director v10. The C: drive is the primary, active partition.
When I try to boot, WinXP goes thru the normal routine of checking & listing the drives and PCI devices then when it gets to the line: Boot from the CD/DVD, it stops with a blinking cursor. That's as far as it goes. No error messages ever appear. If I click enter, nothing happens, if I Control Alt-Deletem it does same thing over again to the blinking cursor. No error messages, etc.
Hope that answers everyone's questions, Jimbo
That whole thing has me confused. How and why did you use Disk Director? In Windows with both drives hooked up? Did you partition the new drive? How, exactly, did you create the image on the original 'C' drive to the original 'C' drive and than restore to the new 'C' drive?
Some PCs have two menus to control the boot selection. The first menu allows selection of the boot device; Hard Disk, CD, Network, USB, etc. The second menu allows selection of hard disk order; IDE 0 master, IDE 0 slave, etc.
From the description above, you were looking at the second menu. Check the BIOS again for presence of the first menu.
Yes, I am positive the new HD is Western Digital SATA model Caviar Green WD5000AADS-00S9B0 it replaced a Seagate Baracuda 7200.10 SATA that came with the computer. I used the same SATA cable and connections as the old drive. The operating C: drive on the Seagate had originally been imaged to drive J: on a second HD using Acronis True Image 2009. When the new WD 500 was installed replacing the Seagate, I formatted and partitioned the new drive using Partition Magic. After restoring the C: image to the new HD C: and the computer would not boot, I disconnected the second HD so the computer would not be confused.
I have successfully restored C: images many times before using PowerQuest Drive Image with never a problem, but this is my first time to restore a C: OS using Acronis. I was told Acronis was much better than the old PQDI, but I have not had success.
How many partions are on the drive with "C". I could not restore a backup on C it was putting "C partion" on another partion. it would put the "C" files on the "D" partion and put the "mbr" on the "C" partion this was done a" blue caviar western digital hard drive". it would just hang after the--- boot from cd. I had muliple partions on the drive. I to replace a maxtor with west.dig.harddrive
i had to partion and format "C" to the size the original backup was-- then install the backup.
i had to partion and format the remaining partions on the drive one partion at a time. and restore each partion seperatly.this may not be your problem but sounds simalar to mine.
I have exactly the same problem, the computer gets past the post and then the curser just flashes, I also used acronis disk director suite 10.0 in Windows to partition and format the drive with NTFS. Then I put the new drive in as a slave and ran Acronis True Image Home 10 to clone my old disk to the new one. I then shut down the computer and set the new drive as master and proceded to boot the drive and all I get is a flashing cursor. I have done this three times now with no success. Please help.
John:
Blinking cursors mean that the disk is not being recognized. Before doing anything else, re-read post #15 above and check into this carefully.
If that's not it, did you disconnect the original drive for that first boot into Windows, or were both the source and the destination drive connected at the same time?
A clone is an identical copy of the disk, so if they were both connected during that first boot, Windows does not like having two identical drives connected at the same time; it will detect this and will modify one of them to be unbootable. If this happened to you, try this. Use Disk Director to delete all of the partitions on the target hard disk and then repeat the clone process. When finished, disconnect the source hard disk and put it aside. Connect the newly-cloned disk as master and then try booting without the other disk attached.
I've had this happen and I think what I found was that after the image restore the partition was no long set as primary, active. After you've restore the image try booting Disk Director and checking that the newly restored partition is set properly.
I have a similar problem but the flashing cursor changes to the dell logo screen, and then instead of booting into windows, the logo screen just keeps rebooting itself.
I installed new 320gb 7200 rpm sata hard drive, formatted ntfs with 80 gb active partition using acronis recovery cd.
I vailidated and then restored a full image folder plus mbr from an usb external hard drive using true image 10, and the restore was successful.
I have read all of the above posts, but none seem to help me.
I did remove the external hard drive and the cd before trying the first boot.
I tried enabling the hd as the first boot in sequence but it didn't help.
I checked the new hd settings , and it is configured with one primary partition of 80gb, 40gb of which is my restored image.
thanks for any help.
I was finally able to restore, and here's my feedback. Before I start, I must say that acronis goes out of their way, imo, to force people to upgrade by not giving any support to older versions, even true image 10 from less than two years ago. There is no knowledgebase whatsover that I could find, as all searches got to the forum, and these forums did not help me either.
The failure to restore successfully the first time may be related to my vista machine which true image 10 may not fully support, although I purchsed the true image 10 for this vista machine two years ago but never tried to restore until now.
In any case, I solved the problem by downloading the new 2010 trial upgrade from the website. In my case, I was able to reinstall the old hard disk and do a new backup with the 2010 program version. I thought the clone might be more appropriate since i was moving to a new hard disk, but the trial version does not allow cloning even though they say it is a full version. So I performed the restore with mbr, exactly the same procedure as I did previously with the true image 10, but this time it worked flawlessly and booted up first time to my amazement.
I don't know if I could have restored the true image 10 backup using the 2010 upgrade version of the program or not, but maybe you can do that, and maybe it will solve your problem if you are not able to use your old hard drive to make new backup with 2010.
OK, I think I have found a solution.
I have been using Acronis True Image for a number of years, through a number of versions.
I have mainly used it to clone new drives into my lap-top, as larger ones become available,
and had no problems at all.
I think this is the first time I have done a restore from back-up, using Actonis True Image 11, for a replacement Windows C System drive, and I too got the blinking cursor - all the files seemed to be OK, the system would also boot fine into recovery mode from the Windows CD, the drives (Sata 0 and 1) were seen fine, and tested fine, but the system would not boot from the Sata 0 even if told to from the boot console.
The solution seems to be : first use Acronis to restore the partition (it can be made longer, which I had done), then from the restore options select restore MBR (master boot record) and Track 0. Now my system boots fine. Yeah !
This may just apply to Acronis True Image 10.