Can't Boot from Cloned Drive

[mmntech]

I cloned my primary Windows XP hard drive using Miray HD Clone Free. Since I'm building a new rig, I'm putting my current primary SATA drive into the new system. I cloned my XP install to a PATA drive I had lying around so I could keep using my old rig. The clone finished without a hitch and all the files seem to be on the second drive except for one problem; it won't boot from the cloned drive. It just goes to a black screen. It still boots fine from the primary drive. Anybody know how to fix this?

Technical details: both drives are 80gb in size, single partition. One is a Samsung SATA, the other is a Maxtor PATA drive, both 7200rpm.

 

[pjkenned]

Did you set the new drive's partition to "Active"? Lots of people miss that step.

 

[mmntech]

Edit: Sorry, got mixed up...

It's seeing the cloned drive as a page file drive and seeing the primary drive as the system drive. It doesn't seem to want to boot to the primary drive now if I disconnect the cloned one. Both are active. Odd.

 

[RebateMonger]

If your BIOS wasn't set to use IDE Emulation for SATA drives, then your current Windows is configured to boot to a SATA controller/SATA drive. If you hook it up to an IDE controller/drive, then you'll get black screens or constant reboots.

You should be able to connect the IDE drive (as the boot drive) and then run an "XP Repair Install" from your XP Install CD. That'll rebuild Windows on the IDE drive so it's set to boot from an IDE drive controller.

Edit: If you perform a Repair Install, be sure that your XP Install CD is at least SP1. I'd recommend slipstreaming it (if necessary) to at least SP2). You can do this easily with NLite.

 

[mmntech]

I tried repair but it doesn't seem to want to cooperate. Oh well, the data on the drive is still readable. I'll put the drive in my external enclosure and just copy the data over after doing a clean install. I just don't have the paitience to f around with this stuff anymore. lol. It's never as easy as they make it out to be. Last time I use HD Clone.

 

[PingSpike]

I had that page file thing happen to me once in a similar scenario with dual drives like that. It was like 5 years ago, but I believe I ended up hitching up both drives so I could get into windows and then had to manually set the page file location to the correct drive or something like that.

 

[Sharpie]

Did you write the master boot record? The first 512 bytes of the disk needs to be written. Im not sure which tool you are using for the clone, I remeber having a problem with this once before.

 

[Binky]

You could try doing a fixmbr on teh new drive. Google it, boot from XP cd.