XP won't fully boot after restoring image
True Image 8
I made a simple image of my primary partition on a Windows XP SP2 system. It was a fairly clean install used for specific software development, so the size was small at around 9GB uncompressed. The image creation went fine. Restored the image to a 320GB hard drive connected to the USB port, set the partition as active during the restore, and the restoration succeeded with no problems. Swapped drives to test and the following happens:
The usual initial black screen with the Windows XP logo and the blue progress bar in the middle appears and seems to be loading normally. Next it goes to a black screen as it normally does, then the mouse appears, then the blue Windows XP screen appears that has light blue in the middle and darker blue borders at the top and bottom. Nothing happens after this point, the system sits there indefinitely (well, I've let it sit there for at least a few minutes).
What normally happens if the original hard drive is hooked up, is the exact same process, but when that blue Windows XP screen appears it's only for one second or less, before the Windows logo and text is replaced by "Welcome" on that same blue screen. That only stays up for perhaps 2-3 seconds and then my desktop appears. So, on the restored drive it's getting all the way to about 3 seconds before the desktop appears, but that "Welcome" text never appears either.
I've tried the process 2 or 3 times with the same results. I've also tried loading the XP Recovery Console with the restored drive, and running Fixboot then rebooting (didn't help), and then Fixmbr then rebooting (also didn't help). I also tried starting in Safe Mode but that didn't work either. I know of no other tricks or options that might get the restored drive to boot to XP, and I'm also unaware of anything I could do differently in the image or restore process that could produce different results.
Anybody?
TIA
It looks like you have a problem with the OS, not with your boot records since XP kicks in but then hangs.
Restore your image with the recovery CD, with the target disk at the same spot as the original disk. Make sure that both disks are NOT in the system at the same time (the source disk and the target disk).
Be careful: remember that the recovery CD might not show you the same drive letters as windows. Look at the partition labels to make sure you select the right disk when you look for your backup and when you restore.
Once the target disk boots OK, take it out, and put the original back in, depending on what you want to do...
Thank you both for the suggestions. Immediately after I posted this I decided to try a full disk clone rather than the backup and restore of just the C partition. I didn't want to do this originally because the D partition had about 250GB of stuff on it that I didn't need on the target drive, and I didn't want the target drive partitioned, not to mention the time difference between a 9GB backup/restore vs. a 250+GB cloning, but I can resolve the first two issues after cloning. As with all of my prior disk clones I had no problems and the target disk booted up fine. I'll keep the C partition image around in case I need to restore the drive again in the future, and I'll make a note of the suggestions you both gave.