I bought an SSD to upgrade my laptop, and it came with Ghost 15.0. I installed Ghost and copied C: to the new SSD, installed the SSD in the laptop, Windows started to boot but got stuck at "preparing your desktop". I figured there was a problem with the cloning so I took the SSD out and put my original C: drive back in. I get the same error with it in place, somehow Ghost changed something on the source drive while it was doing the cloning. Now the laptop won't work with either drive.
After searching I found a lot of messages on this forum with similar "preparing your desktop" problems, but none where the original drive was affected.
The laptop is a Dell Latitude E6500, which came with Vista Business.
The SSD is a Samsung 128GB that came with Ghost 15 included in the package.
I installed the SSD in an external USB enclosure, installed Ghost and activated it, connected the USB enclosure to the computer, and did the "copy drive" option under "tools". This took about 2 hours. Then I removed the old HD from the laptop, put the SSD in, and turned it on. It gets to the "welcome" screen, then "preparing your desktop" screen which sits for a long time. Then I get some messages that various DLL's are missing and a blank screen with a cursor. I booted several times with the same result. I thought there must have been a problem with the cloning co I removed the SSD and put the HD back in. Turn on the computer and it first asks me if I want to boot from Vista or from Vista/Server/7. I pick Vista and have the same problem- it gets to a point where it says "preparing your desktop", but eventually it boots to a blank desktop with part of my icons on the screen. I discover that some things will run but other things give me error messages that various modules are not found, etc. For instance disk manager is not found, and I cannot uninstall Ghost. I searched the forums and found that the "preparing your desktop" is a common and known error, but I didn't find anyone that had their original drive killed by installing Ghost.
the "preparing your desktop" is a common and known error, but I didn't find anyone that had their original drive killed by installing Ghost.
I assume you aren't running Ghost 15 SP1. Pre SP1 Ghost Copy Drive was responsible for both HDs not booting due to BCD errors but I can't recall the situation you mention where both HDs had a drive letter issue.
You didn't answer my question, "How did you prepare the SSD prior to using Copy Drive? How did you create the partition?" but from your other thread I assume you did Copy Drive into a partition with a drive letter. Also, doing Copy Drive to a drive in a USB enclosure seems hit and miss. Best avoided if possible.
OK. Let's fix your old HD first.
You need to zero the disk signature and do a BCD Edit and it should be fixed.
Download BootIt BM. There is a 30 day trial usage. Unzip the file and make a boot CD.
double click makedisk.exe, next dot in BootIt Bare Metal, next dot in I accept the agreement, next don't tick Image for DOS (GUI), next dot in Mouse Support Enabled, next dot in VESA Video, next dot in Video Mode 800*600 - 64K Colors, next dot in Partition Work (Don't put a dot in Normal), next don't choose any Device Options, next tick in Enable USB 1.1 (UHCI), next tick in Align Partitions at 2KiB tick in Use Windows 7 MBR, next ignore Additional bootitbm.ini Options, next select your CD burner drive letter (you can use a CD-RW or a CD-R disc) Finish
Boot from the CD
your BootIt CD boots to the Work with Partitions window in the Drives field, make sure it is 0 - BIOS HD click the "View MBR" button. click the "Clear Sig" button. Then click OK on the Notice click the "Apply" button. click the "View MBR" button again and confirm the number in the left bottom corner is 0x00000000 click Cancel Remain on the "Work with Partitions" screen
You didn't answer my question, "How did you prepare the SSD prior to using Copy Drive? How did you create the partition?"
I messed with this for quite awhile- I would go into Ghost and pick the source drive, but could not find the target drive that I wanted. I went into disk manager and found my drive. I tried several different things to make the drive visible to Ghost but until I did the "basic simple partition" Ghost would not see that the drive existed. I didn't think a partition letter was a problem because I've been told over and over that partition letters don't matter, just go into disk manager and change them to whatever you want. I don't remember exactly what options there were or what I clicked on. I did not see anything that had to do with "initialize" a disk.
OK, first step was to repair the original hard drive. I went through all the steps and rebooted. Immediately I got a menu asking if I wanted to boot Vista or Vista/Server/7. I had started getting this message last night after my cloning operation. The computer booted into its normal desktop, with one minor exception- aero seems to be turned off. I remembered seeing both boot options in Bootlt so I booted back into it and deleted the second option. Restart the computer and it boots directly into Vista, no menu. I used a microsoft.com "fixit" to restore aero and so forth.
Later tonight I'll swap in the SSD and try working on it.
I bought an SSD to upgrade my laptop, and it came with Ghost 15.0. I installed Ghost and copied C: to the new SSD, installed the SSD in the laptop, Windows started to boot but got stuck at "preparing your desktop". I figured there was a problem with the cloning so I took the SSD out and put my original C: drive back in. I get the same error with it in place, somehow Ghost changed something on the source drive while it was doing the cloning. Now the laptop won't work with either drive.
After searching I found a lot of messages on this forum with similar "preparing your desktop" problems, but none where the original drive was affected.
I tried the same sequence with the SSD, but when booting the computer wanted to run a chkdsk and found a lot of disk errors. This seemed to want to go on forever so I stopped it and tried to boot again. The computer got stuck in a loop of blue screen/reboot/blue screen/reboot, etc. So I took everything back apart, put the HD back in the laptop, put the SSD in its USB enclosure. In disk manager I deleted the volume on the SSD and made sure there was no drive letter assigned. I couldn't find an "initialize" option in disk manager but I figured I was already past that. I went through the exact same disk copy that I did last night. Then I put the drive back in the laptop and it booted just fine.