Unable to boot Win2k of both source and copy after imaging drive
I have a piece of industrial machinery that uses Windows 2000. The machine was working fine until I removed the HDD for backing up.
I have used Acronis TI on this hardware before, but in the past I've always used a True Image Western Digital Edition (not sure which one) under Windows 7. We have a minimalist PC just for drive backups. Unfortunately, this PC had it's main HDD fail and has since been replaced with Windows 10 and True Image 16. This is the first time I'm using TI16 on this machine's HDD.
Drive A:. For most backups I used TI16's "Backup" tool. I pulled the (working just fine) HDD from my machine and did a full sector by sector backup to a network location. For good measure I also did a file backup to the network. I did not write to to source drive in any way (that I am aware of). When I returned the drive to the machine, windows 2000 would display the Splash screen, you'd have an opportunity to press F8 for advanced startup options, but no matter what you did, it BSOD on startup, 0000007B Inaccessible Boot Device.
I can browse the drive just fine on my backup PC, and running disk checks show no errors. Using the F8 advanced startup menu, Windows Safe mode fails, and Last Known Good Configuration fails, etc. I used a Win2k install cd and tried a couple of windows repair actions like FIXMBR and FIXBOOT, as well as using the official Windows 2000 Emergency Repair Floppy created on that exact machine, and no dice.
Drive B: Not wanting to perform any further experiments on the original drive, I put the original drive aside and went through my pile of drives looking for a "test hard drive". Lo and behold, I found a working drive from 2020 from this exact machine (I had used Acronis in 2020 to fix a problem I'd had). I browsed the files on the Win 10 backup PC (which is how I discovered this drive). I put the drive in my machine and it booted up. Its data and product files were 3 years out of date, but at least it booted. So now I had a working Windows 2000 system, and browsing the drive under Win 10 hadn't broken it. This is a useful observation.
Drive C: I restored my clone of Drive A from the network to a third drive (Drive C) and tried various internet solutions to make it boot, repair windows, etc. No dice. At one point I installed a clean copy of Windows 2000 and it booted up just fine, which proves the hardware to my satisfaction. But I was unable to get either my full Drive A image or my file backup of Drive A onto Drive C and get past the BSOD on startup
Drive B again: I decided to use Acronis's "Clone Disk" tool to clone (working) Drive B directly onto Drive C. Previous to Acronis, Drive B booted fine. However following the Clone, both Drive B and Drive C BSOD, Inaccessible Boot Device, exactly as Drive A.
As this is a piece of manufacturing production equipment, I am under enormous pressure to resolve this. It seems pretty obvious to me that TI16 somehow damages the source drive, but I don't understand what it would be doing modifying the source at all, or how how to fix this issue by repairing Win2k. Recall that both Drive A and Drive B booted, even after being browsed on a Win 10 PC, but as soon as Acronis was run on them, they are broken.
I do not have this machine's software installation CDs so a clean install and reinstalling the software is not an option. Somehow I have to figure out what has happened to my Drives A and B, I'm trying all my experiments on Drive C
Any advice is greatly appreciated
Good day Steve,
Thank you for taking the time to read my problem and post a reply.
I'm having a hard time believing that this is what happened, though. Why would Acronis take it upon itself to convert the BIOS mode of a hard disk with no instruction or permission to do so? Isn't the BIOS mode something that the computer mainboard of the PC is set to, not the contents of all the hard drives connected to the system? Also...the Win 10 Backup computer is actually set to a legacy bios IIRC; I recall conventional text menus, not a graphical interface.
Recall that when putting the original drive back in the Win2k machine the boot progresses to some extent...past the F8 advanced boot menu (safe mode, normal mode with logging, etc) and past the splash screen. The drive is being recognized to some extent and the boot fails partway.
Lastly, I always thought that of cloning as a "forensically safe" operation for the source drive...the source is untouched in any way. You said as much yourself: "Acronis should not have touched or changed the original Source drive from the Win2K computer when making a Backup image or Clone copy." I completely agree with that statement.
I'll check on it when I get to work but I am having a hard time reconciling this as the problem.
I do appreciate the idea though. I hadn't even thought about BIOS modes. My Win2k machine wouldn't cope with a UEFI.
Dan
As a follow-up, the disks are all still MBR. No automatic conversion to GPT was performed.
Googling, it looks like Acronis can do the conversion, but it's a process the user has to specifically initiate.
Dan
Dan, it is good that there has been no MBR to GPT conversion here and that your Win 10 PC is running in Legacy mode.
What size and type of disk drive is being used here? Typical drives going back 20+ years when Win2k was in use were PATA with the newer SATA drives coming along much later.
I ask because I experienced a disk corruption issue on an old Win XP PC a few month back when I tried using a PATA to SATA adapter to connect the old PATA drive from the XP PC to another PC with SATA controllers when trying to get data from that old drive!
Win2K drives are effectively based on DOS boot techniques and have corresponding boot files in the root of the OS drive so should have the following files present:
AUTOEXEC.BAT
boot.ini
CONFIG.SYS
IO.SYS
MSDOS.SYS
NTDETECT.COM
ntldr
pagefile.sys
As you have a copy of the Win2k install media, then you could try using the Windows 2000 Recovery Console that you can install from the install media.
See webpage: Fix your Windows 2000 system quickly with the Recovery Console - for details.
It is best with such an old OS to run any FIXBOOT and FIXMBR commands from within Win2K using the Recovery Console rather than from a later version of Windows which may apply different settings.
Steve,
Drive A (the orig drive) is a WD 40 GB IDE partitioned to be 20GB. Drives B and C are both Maxtor IDE drives, B is an 80GB partitioned the same as the WD, the other is 200GB partitioned to be 20GB. My backup computer has both SATA and IDE interfaces, making it ideal to image a variety of drives, no adaptor required.
All the files you listed are present on all drives.
One of the things suggested right on the BSOD dump is to scan for viruses and run CHKDSK /f, and that was basically the first thing I did. At that time, before I found the recovery console CD, that meant taking it to my Win 10 machine for scanning. There was no problem browsing files, no disk errors, and no viruses detected.
Here's something important: I have several Win2k Install CDs and only ONE of them offers the repair console.
I have booted into the recovery console several times and used it to do a variety of attempts to repair things, including FIXBOOT and FIXMBR. I even used the "Emergency Repair Disk" created on that exact machine to attempt a fix. It was unsuccessful. I also tried to reinstall Win2k over top hoping to provoke a "Repair this installation" option and curiously, the console was unable to find the existing copy of Windows. This turned out to be a clue that I failed to recognize at the time.
Despite trying numerous things with the recovery console it was not until much later that I tried to look at the directory of the hard disk from within the console. Much to my surprise, I got "an error during directory enumeration".
Recall that I have no such error under Win 10, and had run chkdsk /F under Win 10, but I figured Win2k is where I'm having issues, so maybe Win2k is where I should run chkdsk. The command is a little different under the Win2k recovery console:
CHKDSK /R
It went away and chewed on that for about 25 minutes and reported that it had fixed one or more errors (!!) Executing the DIR command following that produced the expected directory listing.
More importantly, rebooting the machine no longer hung, and the issue is fully resolved. I have since replicated the success on all 3 drives.
Not sure whether it is Acronis that created the error, or Win 10, since Drive B had been read more than once on Win 10 without a problem, and only broke when Acronis copied it over. But clearly, something created an error that bothered Win2k enough to display the boot menu and splash screen but NOT boot, whereas Win 10 had no problem whatsoever with it.
The key takeaway is that you need a Win2k Install CD with the Recovery Console, and you need to run a CHKDSK /R from within the Win2k recovery environment.
I appreciate your responses, Steve. I hope my experience can be of benefit to you next time you're confronted with a similar issue. I've seen one or two very similar issues posted on here without resolution...if I stumble them I'll add to them so that the next guy doing a search has it a little easier than I did.
Dan
Steve,
Drive A (the orig drive) is a WD 40 GB IDE partitioned to be 20GB. Drives B and C are both Maxtor IDE drives, B is an 80GB partitioned the same as the WD, the other is 200GB partitioned to be 20GB. My backup computer has both SATA and IDE interfaces, making it ideal to image a variety of drives, no adaptor required.
All the files you listed are present on all drives.
One of the things suggested right on the BSOD dump is to scan for viruses and run CHKDSK /f, and that was basically the first thing I did. At that time, before I found the recovery console CD, that meant taking it to my Win 10 machine for scanning. There was no problem browsing files, no disk errors, and no viruses detected.
Here's something important: I have several Win2k Install CDs and only ONE of them offers the repair console.
I have booted into the recovery console several times and used it to do a variety of attempts to repair things, including FIXBOOT and FIXMBR. I even used the "Emergency Repair Disk" created on that exact machine to attempt a fix. It was unsuccessful. I also tried to reinstall Win2k over top hoping to provoke a "Repair this installation" option and curiously, the console was unable to find the existing copy of Windows. This turned out to be a clue that I failed to recognize at the time.
Despite trying numerous things with the recovery console it was not until much later that I tried to look at the directory of the hard disk from within the console. Much to my surprise, I got "an error during directory enumeration".
Recall that I have no such error under Win 10, and had run chkdsk /F under Win 10, but I figured Win2k is where I'm having issues, so maybe Win2k is where I should run chkdsk. The command is a little different under the Win2k recovery console:
CHKDSK /R
It went away and chewed on that for about 25 minutes and reported that it had fixed one or more errors (!!) Executing the DIR command following that produced the expected directory listing.
More importantly, rebooting the machine no longer hung, and the issue is fully resolved. I have since replicated the success on all 3 drives.
Not sure whether it is Acronis that created the error, or Win 10, since Drive B had been read more than once on Win 10 without a problem, and only broke when Acronis copied it over. But clearly, something created an error that bothered Win2k enough to display the boot menu and splash screen but NOT boot, whereas Win 10 had no problem whatsoever with it.
The key takeaway is that you need a Win2k Install CD with the Recovery Console, and you need to run a CHKDSK /R from within the Win2k recovery environment.
I appreciate your responses, Steve. I hope my experience can be of benefit to you next time you're confronted with a similar issue. I've seen one or two very similar issues posted on here without resolution...if I stumble them I'll add to them so that the next guy doing a search has it a little easier than I did.
Dan
Dan, glad that you have been able to resolve this worrying issue and get your system back up & working.
I agree that your update may be of help to anyone else struggling with trying to maintain an equally old system - I don't recall seeing any other Win2k topics in the forums for many years but anything is possible!