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SATA to IDE clone fails to boot

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I get an error message that hal.dll is missing or corrupt when I try to boot from IDE clone.
I am hoping somebody has had a similar problem and can advise me how to fix it.

My desktop system has two removable SATA drives and two fixed IDE drives I use for data storage. I am running Windows XP Professional. I have been using Acronis True Image 11.0 to clone my SATA system disk for backup purposes every month for a couple of years with no problems and the clones have always successfully booted on the same machine. I always run Acronis from the recovery CD, not from Windows.

Yesterday I cloned the SATA system disk to one of the fixed IDE drives and although it appeared to copy the disk OK, when I removed the SATA master and tried to boot up from the IDE clone (having set up the BIOS boot priority correctly) I got an error message very early in the boot sequence (before any Windows logo appeared) to the effect that the hal.dll file was "missing or corrupted".

I assume that the problem stems from the SATA/IDE mix since I've never had this problem with SATA to SATA cloning.

I did try it again using Acronis TI11's Backup & Recovery utilities instead of the clone option, but the result was the same.

Does anybody have any suggestions. I am reluctant to mess around with the MBR or boot.ini as I can't see why there should be an issue with these, as some Windows forums have suggested to people with a similar error message regarding hal.dll.

Thanks

Keith

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Did you check whether any of this is any help?

http://kb.acronis.com/content/2711

Scott Hieber wrote:
Did you check whether any of this is any help?

http://kb.acronis.com/content/2711

Thanks Scott - I had seen these articles, but they don't cover the symptoms I am experiencing - they just explain how to run the clone disk utility and what to do if True Image fails to perform the clone operation. My problem is that the clone seems to work OK but the resulting new disk fails to boot.

Cheers

Keith

Almost forgot, if you changed the kind of disk that's the syste/boot disk, it might not come up in the batting order in the BIOS for booting the way the old drive did, so be sure to check the hdisk boot/booting order in the BIOS.

Unfortunately that's not the answer - I did check all the BIOS settings were updated. Also, I disconnected all but the new clone disk, so there were no other disks it could have found.

I appreciate your support, though - that is certainly something that could have gone wrong.

Keith