Dual Boot - New HD - Win7 Won't boot

[Rich]

Greetings,

Sorry if this is considered off-topic but I have a question.
I installed a new 1 Tb drive to a dual boot system by cloning the drive
using Acronis software that automatically resizes the partitions. Now two
partitioning software programs show exclamation points for each of 4
partitions & Windows 7 won't boot but XP does. I received an error at some
point that the master boot record is corrupt (or something to that effect).
I tried fixing the master boot record. I also tried repairing the Win 7 boot
manager but nothing works.
I have a full image back up of the system made after the new drive was
installed. If I reformat the new drive & set the partitions myself (not
automatically by Acronis), when I restore the image will the partition
geometry errors be restored also?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Rich

 

[philo]

Greetings,

Sorry if this is considered off-topic but I have a question.
I installed a new 1 Tb drive to a dual boot system by cloning the drive
using Acronis software that automatically resizes the partitions. Now
two partitioning software programs show exclamation points for each of 4
partitions & Windows 7 won't boot but XP does. I received an error at
some point that the master boot record is corrupt (or something to that
effect). I tried fixing the master boot record. I also tried repairing
the Win 7 boot manager but nothing works.
I have a full image back up of the system made after the new drive was
installed. If I reformat the new drive & set the partitions myself (not
automatically by Acronis), when I restore the image will the partition
geometry errors be restored also?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Rich

You need to give exact details.

XP on one partition and Win7 on another does not add up to four partitions.

If you left the old drive in, that's the problem.

You need to clone it to the new drive, then shut down
and *remove* the original drive.

 

[Rich]

You need to give exact details.

XP on one partition and Win7 on another does not add up to four
partitions.

If you left the old drive in, that's the problem.

You need to clone it to the new drive, then shut down
and *remove* the original drive.

--

There were 2 drives in the system The drive I replaced had 4 partitions: Win
XP, Win 7, Data & Applications
The computer still has a 2nd drive with just data which was not touched. So
I cloned the system drive which had both OS partitions, a data & an
application partition.
The original OS systems drive that I cloned is out of the machine &
unchanged.

I can try a few different methods to try to restore Win 7 functionality but
I am just looking for the method that requires the least work. Essentially,
the only partition on the new drive that had any significant changes since
the cloning is the data partition. So I could reformat the new drive and
repeat the cloning procedure one partition at a time with the original old
drive but I would need to replace the data partition with a recent backup
made from the new drive which is showing partition errors. That is my
dilemma. If I reformat the new drive with good partition boundaries, I would
need to restore at least the data partition with an image from the new drive
which has partition errors. Would the data partition image from the flawed
drive reinstate the errors to the properly reformatted drive? Alternatively,
I also have been making file backups (not an image) of the data partition
just in case I learn that restoring an image from a drive with partition
errors would reintroduce those errors.

Sorry for the confusion. I hope this makes it clearer.

Rich

 

[philo]

There were 2 drives in the system The drive I replaced had 4 partitions:
Win XP, Win 7, Data & Applications
The computer still has a 2nd drive with just data which was not touched.
So I cloned the system drive which had both OS partitions, a data & an
application partition.
The original OS systems drive that I cloned is out of the machine &
unchanged.

But did you shut down, and remove the drive
before you booted up again?

 

[Rich]

But did you shut down, and remove the drive
before you booted up again?

- Before starting the computer, I hooked up the new 1 Tb HD
- Using the Acronis boot disk, I booted to the Acronis DOS program using the
rescue CD/Tools
- I chose the Acronis tool for installing a new HD which clones the old
smaller HD and proportionately increased the size of the 4 partitions.
- When the process completed, I shut the computer down, disconnected the
power & data connectors to the old HD, removed the Acronis CD & turned
the computer back on & prayed that it would boot normally to the multiple
boot menu, which it did.
- The default OS is Win XP & it loaded normally
- I then shut down the computer, physically removed the old HD which had
already been disconnected from power, mounted the new HD in its place &
then turned the computer back on. When the boot menu appeared I now chose
Win &.
- Win 7 would get as far as the colored logo beginning to move around,
freeze & reboot the computer.

I guess it should boil down to one basic question that I have regardless of
the exact process that I used:

1. I have a HD with multiple partitions that are displaying error symbols
making them unable to be manipulated with a non-destructive partitioning
program.
2. I back up the "flawed" HD by creating an image.
3. I then completely reformat the HD, creating the partitions needed. The
partitions would then show as valid using a DOS/Linux partitioning CD.

Finally, If I then restore the image made of the drive when it had
partitioning errors, would that image reintroduce those errors to the newly
& properly partitioned drive?

Thanks,

Rich

 

[philo]

On 02/24/2013 01:57 AM, Rich wrote:

- Before starting the computer, I hooked up the new 1 Tb HD
- Using the Acronis boot disk, I booted to the Acronis DOS program using
the rescue CD/Tools
- I chose the Acronis tool for installing a new HD which clones the old
smaller HD and proportionately increased the size of the 4 partitions.
- When the process completed, I shut the computer down, disconnected the
power & data connectors to the old HD, removed the Acronis CD & turned
the computer back on & prayed that it would boot normally to the
multiple boot menu, which it did.
- The default OS is Win XP & it loaded normally
- I then shut down the computer, physically removed the old HD which had
already been disconnected from power, mounted the new HD in its place &
then turned the computer back on. When the boot menu appeared I now
chose Win &.
- Win 7 would get as far as the colored logo beginning to move around,
freeze & reboot the computer.

I guess it should boil down to one basic question that I have regardless
of the exact process that I used:

1. I have a HD with multiple partitions that are displaying error
symbols making them unable to be manipulated with a non-destructive
partitioning
program.
2. I back up the "flawed" HD by creating an image.
3. I then completely reformat the HD, creating the partitions needed.
The partitions would then show as valid using a DOS/Linux partitioning CD.

Finally, If I then restore the image made of the drive when it had
partitioning errors, would that image reintroduce those errors to the
newly & properly partitioned drive?

Thanks,

Rich

It looks like you did everything correctly.

Your cloning software seems to have failed somewhere.

If it were my machine, I'd simply try the entire cloning procedure
again...maybe someone else here has a better idea ?

 

[Rich]

<snip>

It looks like you did everything correctly.

Your cloning software seems to have failed somewhere.

If it were my machine, I'd simply try the entire cloning procedure
again...maybe someone else here has a better idea ?

Yes I agree that the cloning program's partitioning process somehow screwed
up. When I first loaded the partitioning program after the cloning, it
reported several errors & offered the option to correct them. I chose "yes"
and the fixes seemed to be corrected because the pop-up errors never
appeared again but the partitions still have exclamation points, cannot be
manipulated & win 7 won't boot.
I guess I'll just wipe the drive, create the partitions without the cloning
software, restore all the partitions from the old drive except for the data
partition and restore the data partition from a recent file back-up (not an
image).
Thanks for taking the time to troubleshoot my fiasco.

Rich

 

[philo]

<snip>



Yes I agree that the cloning program's partitioning process somehow
screwed up. When I first loaded the partitioning program after the
cloning, it reported several errors & offered the option to correct
them. I chose "yes" and the fixes seemed to be corrected because the
pop-up errors never appeared again but the partitions still have
exclamation points, cannot be manipulated & win 7 won't boot.
I guess I'll just wipe the drive, create the partitions without the
cloning software, restore all the partitions from the old drive except
for the data partition and restore the data partition from a recent file
back-up (not an image).
Thanks for taking the time to troubleshoot my fiasco.

Rich

Well I did not do anything to help really, but I hope you get it all
sorted out now.