Platform: Windows Xp Sp3 with .NET 3.5 framework Sp1
AMD x2 64 6000+
IDE drive - seagate 120 gb, labeled as CDRIVE reporting as C:
SATA2 drive - western digital 750 gb labeled as cdrive reporting as F:
Using Ghost 2002 to ghost the smaller to the larger.
When I tell the BIOS to boot to the SATA drive first and the IDE drive is still connected, I logon just fine, and run just fine. I know I'm booted up on the correct drive by going to Start -> Run ->cmd and seeing the f:\documents and settings\> prompt.
when I remove the IDE drive and tell the BIOS to boot to the only drive left on the system I get a logon screen, to which I type the credentials, then it immediately splashes a screen stating it is logging off and prompts for the credentials again....over and over again.
When I first did the clone the ghost application didn't use up all of the diskspace for partion 1 of the new drive. I was able to mouse into the field to tell it to use all it could. It seemed to allow me to change the value except for 2K.
I would have thought that telling the BIOS that the sata drive was the first to boot that it would have assigned drive letter C: to the 750gb drive then D: to the 120gb IDE..
You are actually booting from the IDE drive. You should have disconected the original drive before you tried to boot up. You may just want to do it over unless you are willing to try some tedious workarounds. One way would be to open Regedit and load the registry hive from the newly cloned harddrive (the one that won't boot). Now goto the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices and delete it. Now shut down and remove the original drive, leaving only the cloned drive. It should boot. Windows willl recreate the registry key. You will have to reassign any drive letters to other drives, CD / DVD drives, etc.
If your running ghost from a floppy, using DOS to do a: fdisk /mbr is supposed to force Windows to recreate the drive letter assignment. It may be easier than mounting the registry and clearing that key if booth drives are no longer installed. It's supposed to do the same thing.
However, I think there is a good chance it's already screwed up and if the original drive still boots by it'self you should start over.
After the disk copy is done, do not let the system boot into windows. When you exit Ghost, if it asks to reboot choose no. If it's a floppy and it goes back to the A prompt, remove the disk and hold down the power button until the system turns off. Then change the drives around and set the system to boot to the new drive all by it'self. The new drive needs to boot by it'self once or twice before you can add the old drive back for any reason.
Brian the guru posted a very interesting article last week about changing from IDE to SATA. The article basically said that if you first install the SATA as slave and you boot the system and load the SATA drivers then you can image or copy the drive to the SATA drive and it will boot.
I never knew that it would work that way, that a SATA driver installed for a secondary drive would allow the primary to boot as well.
Best of luck,
Dave
Edit- I forgot to mention, if you try to fix it rather than start over you'll need to make the new drive "active" again.
Windows only likes one primary active partition at a time and after a couple boots I'm sure it changed it.
I don't believe I was booting from the IDE drive after the clone, setting the boot preference and leaving both drives connected. My only proof of that is running a dos command shell, and seeing the F: prompt.
In the configuration of both drives connected, the logon screen worked fine.
With just the sata drive the infinite loop would occur.
I'll have to read up about fdisk/mbr.....I get scared running fdisk...but do remember in my dos days doing the /mbr to fix the master boot record...
But anyway, in the end, I got to work as expected by doing the following.
1) reclone the ide to sata, using Ghost 8 (not sure if 8 is newer than 2002), keeping the partition 1 of the sata drive from previous clone.
2) leaving both drives connected, booting to IDE first verifying that it boots, and that the sata drive reported as F:.
3) rebooted again with both drives connected, booting to SATA drive and verifying that it boots, the drive letters stayed he same.
4) rebooted again with just SATA drive and verifying that it boots as expected.
I did an interesting test with Win7 yesterday. After a Ghost 15 Copy Drive I swapped HDs on the IDE cable. The new HD became Master and the old HD was Slave.
Win7 booted normally but in Disk Management the new HD (HD0) was D: drive and it was System, Boot, Page File, Active. The old HD (HD1) was C: drive and was Active.
I placed a text file on the desktop as a marker.
The new HD was then disconnected and the old HD was booted as the Master. The marker text file was present on the desktop of the old HD.
The old HD was then disconnected and the new HD was booted as the Master. It didn't reach the Win7 desktop and eventually froze on a dark blue grey screen which is the equivalent of the WinXP login screen. I checked its registry and sure enough the partition signature for C: drive was the other HD.
I've done a similar test in the past with WinXP.
The message is, don't break the second rule of cloning by letting the new OS see the old OS on the first boot. If you do it will never adopt the C: drive letter on its own.
When you got to that point where the new drive wouldn't boot, did you try to recover it?
I'm curious if the drive could be easily fixed at that point.
Say you cleared the mounted device hive or did a fdisk /mbr and was able to then get the drive to boot, would everything then be OK, or would it have still be damaged by the first couple boots as slave.
After the drive was "fixed" even if it did boot, would all the system variables or some of the registry entries stil be screwed up?
I did fix that HD by the Registry method but only because I was in the registry at the time. Actually I edited the partition signatures and didn't delete the keys. I've created the same error in the past. The easiest and fastest ways to fix it are fdisk /mbr or Clear Sig from BING. You then have to do a BCD Edit or two repairs from the Win7 DVD. The Registry method isn't suited to beginners.
Once the drive letter has been fixed the OS is perfectly normal. No issues at all.
It would almost seem to make since to delete that registry key before copying the drive, then restore it on the original drive after the clone process is done. That way when the cloned drive boots for the fist time, Windows will recreate the correct values in the registry.
Boot into Safe Mode by tapping F8 and choosing Safe Mode from the menu. After you have logged in and you see the "Kiss of death" message, "Preparing your Desktop", press Ctrl Alt Del to bring up a menu.
The menu has...
Lock this computer Switch user Log off Change a password Start Task Manager
Choose Start Task Manager
New Task
regedit.exe
put a tick in Admin privileges
find the key
You can do something similar from the Win7 DVD but you will have to Load a Hive because the initial registry is not the Win7 registry. It is the Preinstalled Environment registry.
It would almost seem to make since to delete that registry key before copying the drive, then restore it on the original drive after the clone process is done. That way when the cloned drive boots for the fist time, Windows will recreate the correct values in the registry.
I haven't tried it with Win7 but I suspect a BCD Edit would be needed to allow Win7 to boot.
Really, the best method is to clone correctly so you don't have a drive letter issue. Someone who knows about Method #2 will know how to clone correctly.