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Restoring very old xp machine from .tib file

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I have a computer shop and am able to do things with computers that most would give up on and thought nothing of spending days at a time to do things others just wouldn't attempt. I have tried everything except post on a forum for help which I have never ever done in my life but I have hit a brick wall here and it might be very simple for someone here. Luckily I can follow instructions also!

I have an old xp laptop come in and it is using and old ide hard drive. As much as I tried to convince him to bin it and buy any old heap of crap he really wants to keep that laptop as he loves it but it doesn't boot, in any mode, blue screened and restarted. Long story shorter....

I have an old .tib file backup. I don't know when or where it was made. I can create rescue media to usb and the machine will boot from USB1 at least. But it doesn't have enough memory to run a ram drive.

I have tried everything I can think of, but I wont list any of it here, and start again with anything suggested. So I own all versions of Acronis from 2015 to 2019.
His hard drive is partitioned and the tib file is on what would become drive D: and drive C: is blank and ready to restore to. Please can someone tell me how to download the iso that will let me start the software to recover the .tib?

I have looked at the contents of the drive of the tib on windows 10 machine and it's all in there but I cant figure out how to use the correct version of rescue media, that was out in those days (if todays are not compatible) or just a helping hand. it's been 2 weeks and I cant try any more without screaming! Thanks!

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David, welcome to these public User Forums.

Some initial questions:

How much memory does this laptop have?

What is the make / model of the laptop, type of processor and size of disk?

What is the size of the .tib file and what date was it created as shown in Explorer?

When I have dealt with similar situations in the past (none recently), I have been able to use an older USB adapter to connect the old style laptop IDE drive to a working PC to be able to work on the drive without being limited to the original laptop.

I don't know if it is possible to get hold of this type of adapter anymore?  See image below:

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David, found the following adapter on Amazon (UK) that might help you here:

IDE 2.5 44 pin to SATA adapter / converter - Change a Laptop IDE 2.5 44 pins Hard drive into a SATA 2.5"drive

The key gotcha to watch out for if connecting this drive to another computer in order to recover the old .tib file to the drive is how that other computer boots from the BIOS.

The old .tib file and ancient XP laptop will both be Legacy / MBR and the recovery needs to be performed in the same mode or else ATI will convert the drive to be UEFI / GPT and will never work in the old laptop.

See KB 59877: Acronis True Image: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media

If your other computer is a Legacy boot system, then you can recover the .tib from the ATI application running from Windows, but if it is UEFI boot, then you will need to boot it from the Acronis Rescue Media in Legacy mode to avoid converting to GPT.

My Acronis account still shows True Image 2015. Go to your account and see if you see 2015 listed. Under the downloads you will see Bootable Media. That will be the ISO for the Linux boot media. Give that a try on the XP laptop.