ATIH premium 2014: Restore Windows 7 on different hardware

Does anybody have an answer to this? Please help.

Most likely you have not successfully added the drivers for the hard drive controller of the new computer. Just putting the CD that came with the motherboard in will not work. You need to determine the 64 bit driver for the controller and find the driver for in the format of .inf, .cat and .sys files. When you use Universal Restore you need to point to the .inf file. If the driver for the controller is on the CD in .exe format, it will not work. All other drivers can be dealt with after you get the new Windows to boot.

@Mustang: There are maybe 20 inf-files for my motherboard ASUS P5B Deluxe (http://support.asus.com/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&m=p5b+deluxe)
Is pointing to a folder containing all inf-files sufficient or should I point out the exact inf-file? Which one is it?

Either way should work. As long as the correct file can be located so that it can install, then all should be well.

Oke, I'll give it a try. Thank you.

You mentioned you are putting the new system on an IDE drive. I looked at your motherboard and it is a JMicron controller that is supplying IDE support. On the ASUS support page enter Windows 7 64 bit. Look under the OTHER category. You will see the JMicron driver. After you unzip the download, drill down to the Driver\AHCI\Disk\64 Bit folder. There you will find the driver you need. Point Universal Restore to jraid_f.inf.

After you do the restore you will need to enter the BIOS and make sure the JMicron controller is enabled. You may also need to play with the SATA configuration settings to get the IDE disk to boot.

I have retried the whole process with the driver you suggested (I previously used the original CD supplied with the PC).
Now Windows does boot. Thank you very much for your help.
If there are any other questions, I'll get back here.

Glad to hear it worked.

After a few reboots, when Windows has stopped detecting new hardware, look at Device Manager to if there are any yellow exclamation marks. Then add drivers for those devices from the manufacturer of the device. Now you can use the installation media they provide (setup.exe for example).

I was a bit to soon. The system I restored was a backup made on the same system.
Restoring a backup from the other system still gives me a blinking cursor.

Assuming that you are talking about the system with the JMicron IDE controller, make sure the bios is set to boot from the IDE controller, not the SATA. Your IDE drive should also be set as Master or CS by jumper on the back of the drive.

Your first post is a little unclear.

1. Have you restored the image to an IDE hard drive connected to the JMicron controller of the P5B?

2. Was the image of the old Windows 7 system a full disk backup or just the C: drive?

3. Windows 7 can have one or two partitions depending on how it was installed. Was there a 100 MB System partition and the C: drive partition or just one partition?

4. When you restored, did you restore the entire disk including the MBR or just the C: drive?

1. Have you restored the image to an IDE hard drive connected to the JMicron controller of the P5B?
It is connected through SATA.
HDD: http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Samsung-SP2504C-250-GB-SATA-300-…

2. Was the image of the old Windows 7 system a full disk backup or just the C: drive?
Yes

3. Windows 7 can have one or two partitions depending on how it was installed. Was there a 100 MB System partition and the C: drive partition or just one partition?
There was also a MBR 100mb partition

4. When you restored, did you restore the entire disk including the MBR or just the C: drive?
Yes

The drive in the link you have provided is an SATA drive not an IDE (PATA)drive which I think Paul and I were under the impression you were using. It is possible to operate an SATA drive in IDE mode. At this point I am not sure what it is you are trying to do other than boot this drive. Obviously I think you have the restore image on the drive so it is the booting of the drive that is at issue. The image you restored to this drive, what mode was used to boot this image from originally, SATA, AHCI, IDE, EIDE, ATA? This setting is found in the machine bios so the machine that you got this image from is where you would look to answer this question.

Sorry for the confusion.
The system where the image is made from is booting in AHCI mode.
The system where the image needs to be restored to in booting in SATA mode.

The image is restored onto the new system (on a ASUS P5B deluxe motherboard with SATA), but it only gets to the point of showing a blinking cursor.
The new system is used as a back-up for my general used system (on a ASUS P9X79 deluxe motherboard with SSD).
What would be the next thing to do?

Well the drivers for the Intel Chipset are very complicated. I would connect the restored drive (as you have it now with the JMicron driver installed by UR) to the JMicron SATA port on the motherboard. There are 6 ports for the Intel SATA, don't connect there. Look for a single SATA connector near the IDE connector. When the computer boots, you should see a screen for the JMicron controller showing one hard drive attached. If you don't see this screen it means the JMicron controller is disabled in the BIOS. If you see the JMicron screen with no hard drive attached, it means you are not connected to the proper SATA port on the motherboard.

After you see the JMicron screen with the drive showing, you will need to set the BIOS to boot from that drive. That drive needs to be set in the BIOS to be the first hard drive. You need to review your ASUS manual for the motherboard for help finding these settings. Once that is done, you need to set the SATA mode to AHCI in the SATA Configuration section of the BIOS.

After you get Windows booted, you can use the motherboard CD to install the Chipset drivers and that will allow you to reconnect the drive to one of the 6 Intel SATA ports and Windows should boot. At that point you could go back to the BIOS and disable the JMicron controller so the boot process will be faster.

Well this takes restoring with ATIH Premium to a whole other level. Can anybody use this without support?

I have to do this more often, so I would like the easiest way to get from one system to the other. Even if that means I need to start all over again for now and use a different set of drivers at installation.

What would be the easiest procedure to replicate (preferably without opening the computercase).

Okay.

Download the SATA driver from ASUS (IMSM_V8901023.zip). Unzip and drill down to Driver\Disk\f6flpy64 and you will find two drivers listed (iaAHCI.inf and iaStor.inf). Do the restore again and point UR to both of these drivers.

Again, your BIOS needs to set to boot from the newly restored disk and the SATA mode needs to be set to AHCI before Windows will boot.

I've done the last suggested actions, but I still get a blinking cursor.

Specifically:
1. downloaded SATA drivers as stated and placed them on a separate CD
2. started restore and pointed UR to the CD-drive containing the drivers
3. image was restored succesfully
4. set SATA to AHCI in bios
4a. in "Main" -> "IDE configuration" -> "Configure SATA as" = AHCI
4b. JMicron SATA/PATA controller = Enabled + "Controller mode" = AHCI
4c. "Boot Device Priority" is set to the HDD used during restoring the image
5. after restart I still get a beautiful blinking cursor
6. disabled JMicron SATA/PATA controller
7. after restart I still get a beautiful blinking cursor

Any suggestions?

Item 4c - This should be set to the drive on which you restored the image, in other words the drive which was on the receiving end of the restore operation. Is it?

1. Hit the F8 key during POST to enter the popup boot menu. Do you see the hard drive listed? If you do, select it and continue booting.

2. Do you have a Windows 7 installation DVD? If you do, boot from it and choose to repair the computer and run a Startup Repair.

3. If that doesn't work there is another option. Do a Windows 7 install on the drive until Windows is able to boot. Then from the Acronis recovery CD, restore just the C: partition on top of the new Windows C: partition using Universal Restore pointing to the SATA drivers.

Enchantech: Yes it.

Mustang:
add 1: Yes the harddrive is listed but it doesn't boot
add 2: Yes, but there is no windows installation detected. Probably because the correct drivers aren't installed yet?
I can install driver here, but the list of hardware for each driver is extensive. Which one to choose?
add 3: This might work but would take a lot of time each time I want to restore my system to the other computer.

It's odd that the Windows Startup Repair did not detect a Windows installation. Have you tried booting the restored drive on the original computer? Does it work?

Yes if I restore the image onto the original computer it works fine.

A great addition to ATHI premium would be if it were able to export all drivers while building the recovery disk.
When a restore is done with UR, it then presents the option to load drivers from the recovery CD.
Problem solved (I think).

I must say that all support is great but it shouldn't be neccessary if the product would do as it says it does, namely restore an image onto a computer with different hardware. It doesn't say that you have to be a computer genius to get it to work.

Thank you all for the great support I realy appriciate it and hope we get is to work.

Maybe a list of installed drivers on the new system (to restore to) with a working Windows 7 installation might help our cause.
Please see attached file.

WIZZ,

Try this, looking at the SATA data cables attached to the motherboard you should see 6 connectors on the board. 4 of these are red in color and 2 of them are black. If you look closely you will see they are numbered SATA1 SATA2 SATA3 etc.. Connect your drive to the red port SATA1 and attempt to boot again.

The drive is attached to SATA 1 port. This is visible in the bios.

You should look at the restored drive to see what is actually on it. The problem could be as simple as the 100 MB System Reserved partition is not set to Active.

How would I check that?

There are a number of ways to check.

For the moment, lets go back to the Startup Repair idea. Maybe WinPE did not support your SATA controller. Boot the Windows 7 disk and use the Add Driver feature to add the SATA drivers you put on a CD. This will inject the driver into the running WinPE system allowing it to see your hard drive. Then try the startup repair again.

As for looking resored disk. You could download a free partition manager program such as MiniTool Partition Manager Home Edition and install it on another computer. Then make a bootable recovery disk. Boot the recovery disk and see what the partition look like. The 100 MB parttion should show as Active & Boot.

Question, is the restored drive, the one which will not boot the only drive installed in the PC?

I note that in response to Paul's question about pressing F8 during POST you indicate that the hard drive is listed but will not boot. Pressing F8 during post should only produce the Safe Boot options unless there are more than one OS installs on the PC.

If you still have the original source disk that you made the image from installed in the PC, disconnect it from the motherboard and try boot again.

@Mustang: I've created a Minitool bootable CD.
DISK1 SATA HDD has two partitions:
*.System of 119,24 GB used 69,78 GB NTSF Primary Active
*. of 113,64 GB used 0 B Unallocated Logical None (this needs to become the D-drive later on)

DISK2 SATA HDD has also two partitions:
*.E of 116,44 GB used 89,41 MB NTSF Primary None
*.H of 116,44 GB used 66,68 GB NTSF Primary None

The 100 MB partition does not seem to exist on this system.

As I expect you will want to know how I restore the back-up. :-)

1. Start ATIH Premium from bootable CD
2. Select restore full disk
3. Select full disk image from other system
4. Select full restore of disks or partitions + Use Acronis Universal Restore
5. Select path where AHCI 64bit SATA drivers can be found
6. Select what to restore.
Here I am presented with virtual two disks
DISK1 containing two parts:
- MBR and track 0
- NTFS system reserved Prim,Act 100MB
DISK2 contains:
- NTFS (System) (C:) Prim,Act 119,2 GB
- MBR and track 0
I only selected DISK2 as that is the drive with the OS (C:). So both option under DISK2 are selected.
7. New location
- NTFS (System) (C:) Prim,Act 119,2 GB
8. MBR from DISK2
- I select Disk 1 (which also contains C:
9. Finish
Image is restored.

After that I tried something different. I did everything the same as stated in my previous post, but now at step "6. Select what to restore" I select:
DISK1: - NTFS system reserved Prim,Act 100MB
DISK2: - NTFS (System) (C:) Prim,Act 119,2 GB
This seems to make more sense to me now.
After restore I get a message: "Bootmrg is missing" Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to reboot

Startup with Minitool bootable CD.
DISK1 SATA HDD has two partitions:
*.System of 119,24 GB used 69,78 GB NTSF Primary Active
*. of 113,64 GB used 0 B Unallocated Logical None (this needs to become the D-drive later on)

DISK2 SATA HDD has also two partitions:
*.Reserved by system 116,44 GB used 90,52 MB NTSF Primary Active
*.H of 116,44 GB used 66,68 GB NTSF Primary None

Still no Active & Boot

I'm not sure what your original system looked like. You say the backup shows two disks. One disk has only the 100 MB System Reserved partition and nothing else but the MBR. The other disk only has your C: drive partition. After the restore, you show two disks but neither has the 100 MB System Reserved partition. If this is correct, there is no wonder you are having a problem. I don't think anything you do will work unless you put the system back on two disks as it originally was.

You should remove one of the hard drives from the new computer. Only leave the hard drive that you want to install Windows 7 on in the computer. Now go back to post #20 and use option 3. Delete all partitions from the disk before you start the Windows install. If you are not willing to try this, I won't be able to help you any further.

Thanks for all the help.
I will pick this up in time, as it takes to much time to figure this out (other work needs to be done too).

Wizz, your original posting indicates the source disk was an SSD disk.

Can you post a screen capture of that disk as shown in Windows disk Management or as shown in Mini Tool? This will show us what partitiions existed on the original SSD disk, and what their locatiion was, and whiich partiton was the active disk. The restore would need to mirror the same settings and partition location.

disk numbers and drive letters are generally meaningless to us. The disk decisions need to be judged on their characteristics or content.

You might find a review of my signature link 3 below to be helpful--especially item 1 inside that link.

Edit/added: If your source disk shows you to have a System reserve partition and that partitons was not part of your original backup, you will need to make a backup of the System Reserve partitons (or, optionally, a whole new backups of the entire SSD disk) so the backup of the System Restore partitons can be restored into the same original position on the target disk as the position existed on the source disk.

Here is the screencapture.
DISK SSD 1 on D: is the MBR
DISK SSD 2 on C: is the Windows OS

Hope this helps.

You don't have a drive problem yet. You have an active partition missing on your restored drive.
Boot on the recovery CD
Select Add New Disk. *Make sure you select the right disk*, and select your target disk. Go through the wizard, do not create a partition on it.
Then restore first the System Reserved partition, with a 1MB offset (unallocated space before the partition) on the target disk. Make this partition primary and active. Do not resize the partition.
Then restore the C:\system partition with Universal Restore.
Then, run the Windows installation DVD. Launch a command prompt from the installation DVD and type the following commands:
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /scanOS
This will show you the installed OS
bootrec /rebuildBCD

That should get your system to boot. If the UR didn't work well, Windows will kick in then crash.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392