REcovery of Windows XP on alternate drive failed blue screen then nothing
I have Acronis True Image Home 11.8101 installed. I also have Windows XP 2002 Service Pack 3. I formatted a raptor hard drive this weekend (60Gb) and recovered my current system to this drive using Acronis. I made sure the backup was validated before I tried to do the recovery to this drive also. When I tried to get the system to boot up the recovered hard drive, the system showed a blue screen then nothing happened. I actually got to another screen where I could boot into safe mode or run windows normally but none of the options worked as well. I got the same blue screen then nothing. What should I do? Any suggestions would be appreciated especially if they work. As a side note when I did the backup that I tried to recover, I made sure I had dropped all antivirus, firewalls, ran a disk clean-up and defragged before even backing anything up. When I received the validation message for the backup I assumed everything was ok. Also, the drive that I backed up was a solid state hard drive but the drive I tried to recover my system on was a raptor.
To be honest there was no error code -- only a blue screen quickly flashed then nothing. Too fast to actually read anything. And as far as the controller Im not sure of that _ Before I used the solid state hard drive as my main boot drive I used the raptor over 1.5 years ago. They are in the same hard drive slots in my Tower and have not been moved or used different connecting wires.
Where would I find the BSOD error code? and information about the controller mode?
After the blue screen, when you say nothing, what do you mean? Normally, on a BSOD, the computer will reboot and you'll end up at the "Safe Mode" menu or it will remain on the blue screen and display the error information.
There may be some information in the Event Log, but you'd need to get into Windows to see it.
The controller mode would be in the BIOS settings. Common options for that setting are: IDE Compatible, RAID, and AHCI. However, since you say the raptor was in the computer previously and you didn't make any changes to the controller mode, I doubt that's the problem.
Were there any driver changes/updates that you can remember while the SSD was being used?
If you disconnect the raptor and reconnect the SSD, does the SSD boot-up normally?
First of all -- thanks for answering my post, mudcrab. When I get the blue screen and then "nothing" the computer seems to run through a process and the Safe Mode screen pops up giving me options on how to proceed. I have tried choosing "safe mode" and "start windows normally" but the blue screen appears quickly again -- too fast to read any errors messages again, then back to the BSOD( safe mode screen). No updates were done to the SSD either. Yes the SSD boots up normally when I changed the boot sequence back in the BIOS from the raptor to the SSD.
Do you have both the raptor and the SSD connected when you're trying to boot the raptor? If so, have you tried disconnecting the SSD so the raptor is the only drive connected when you boot it?
I have changed the order of the Boot process in the BIoS only. I have not physically unplugged the esata cable from the SSD. And both drives are enabled in the Devise Manager in Windows( which I dont think would have any effect since Windows wont boot)
Having both drives connected on the first boot-up of the restored drive (the raptor) can cause problems. Windows may still be trying to reference the SSD instead of the raptor.
So you're saying that even if I go into the BIOS and make the BIOS impossible to read the SSD drive that I have to physically disconnect the SSD drive in order for the Raptor to even have a chance to be read by windows? Wouldn't Windows not even have a chance of reading the SSD if the BIOS doesn't give it permission?
I suppose it would depend on the BIOS. I've seen some computers where disabling a drive in the BIOS did not make it undetectable.
The problem is that Windows saves the drive letter assignments. When you imaged the SSD and restored it to the raptor, all the assignments for the SSD were also restored. If Windows boots and doesn't find the SSD assignments, it will release them for use on the raptor. If it does find the SSD, it will try to use them instead.
If the SSD is connected via eSATA I don't understand why it would be difficult to disconnect.
If you want to find out the BSOD error code, boot to the Safe Mode menu and select the Disable automatic restart on system failure option. Then select to boot into Windows. When the BSOD appears, it should remain on the screen.
I took your advice and disconnected the SSD drive so that only the Raptor was connected and made the adjustments to Safe Mode screen so I could read what the Blue screen (BSOD) said and here's what it told me as Windows sould still not boot up.
I'm just putting the technical info as the 3 paragraphs above the technical info just said that Windows wasn't able to boot but didn't give specifics.
Technical Information
***STOP: 0x0000007B (0xB84C7524,0x0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)
Any help on this issue would be appreciated. And thanks again Mudcrab
7B usually means the mass storage controller driver is wrong.
Before, when you used the SSD, was it being run from the eSATA connection or an internal SATA connection?
Are both the eSATA and SATA ports run from the same controller? On many computers, the eSATA ports are on a separate controller and use different drivers.
For example, the eSATA controller may be in AHCI mode and the SATA controller may not be. Also, some SSD drives won't work properly unless the controller is in AHCI mode.
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Does the raptor boot if you connect it to the eSATA port?
When I unplugged the SSD drive and left the Raptor hooked up, I noticed the esata cable that was previously connected to the SSd was also connected to the Raptor. I think my tech did this in case one hard drive was bad I could boot from the other one. Note, before the Acronis Recovery was placed on the Raptor I could read the Raptor from windows. After I formated and placed the recovery on the Raptor is when I started having these problems. The Raptor has an esata cable going into it just like the SSd drive does. So in a sense they are "branched", like a tree limb.
As far as I know, SATA and eSATA connections can't be split. Each one should have a direct connection to the board or card (one port per drive).
I think I would try doing the restore to the raptor again and then booting it with it being the only drive connected.
So I should reformat the Raptor then Restore correct?
I think I would remove the partitions from the raptor and then do the restore to the empty drive.
I may not have written this but there were no partitions on the Raptor - it is just a system drive. I formatted it last night again so I'll try to reinstall the Recovery on it today.
If you're formatting it, it has a partition. One partition is still a partition.
I was suggesting that you try deleting the partition from the drive so that when you restore, you're restoring to unallocated space instead of an existing partition. You can use Disk Management to delete the partition.