WinXP home Drive cloning issue...

[chugbug]

Hello,

I'm trying to clone my Windows XP home drive. I've gone through the
copy/backup process but when I try to boot from the drive I get a no
OS present message.

I tried booting both independently by swaping drives and by adding the
new drive to the boot sequence in my main drive boot.ini file.

I'm pretty well versed on pc's and should be able to work though this,
but after going though all the known issues (fixing the typo in the
boot ini file, and checking the drive location), but nothing seems to
work. With all the time I've spent to date on this I would have been
better off just reloading the os and all the software, but now it's a
pride thing.

Is there something else I'm not doing?

One other thing I notice now (I walk awaw from it about a week ago, so
I don't know if I had this originally or not but could be a key)...
When I open the XXClone program now I get a "No Disk" message with a
set of message paramiters). It shows twice (I have to click through
two popups to close it with each one having a difference set of
message paramiters). It leads me to wonder, am I suppose to be
installing a windows disk in the CD drive for some reason? But I
thought the reason for using the XXClone was so you didn't need an OS
CD.

I'd appreciate any suggestions.

[DES]

Hi,

You've gone down the online manual?
http://xxclone.com/ixcman00.htm
Paying particular attention to the Cool Tools Items 1-3?
http://xxclone.com/ixcman40.htm
If item 3 was done the clone volume should have been added to the
source disk boot.ini for you? Some software uses the VolumeID as copy
protection making duplication of that a good idea to avoid re-
installation on the clone.

I suggest examining this online manual in detail first and suspect the
problem may become obvious? And examine the volumes in Disk Management
to see what Windows thinks of the 2 disks. MBR copied, both System,
Active, etc. The destination System Hive may be loaded into the Source
registry under HKLM as some False Key and the 2 HKLM\System
\MountedDevice\ keys compared to make sure the Drive Letter and Volume
Label assignments for the 2 disks were swapped on the destination for
the test boot. Everything assumes partition layout is normal, no
source hidden recovery partition, etc.

DES

[chugbug]

Hi DES, thanks for the quick reply to my question. I seem to have
several things going on and maybe they are all related...

I did go down through the manual list the first go around, as well as
using the cool tools options (1 & 3). But since the first failed I
decided to run a new backup last night (used option 3 incremental) and
tried a new reboot this morning (using the test boot created in source
boot.ini). I didn't get the "no OS present" message this time, but
now get the "hal.dll" damaged message, that I see is a misdirect and
isn't actually a damaged file. So that's where I'm at now.

Drive location... I also checked the BIOS to double check that the
drives location was being listed correctly. According to the BIOS,
the new (target) drive is listed as Slave 0 while the current C drive
(source) is Master 0 which is how they are physically connected to the
IDE cable and mobo. XXClone has the target drive listed as drive 1
when it added it to the source drives Boot.ini file, which from what I
understand the primary slave drive is listed.

Program startup error message... Interestingly, I do have another
issue, but I'm assuming it is OK. When I open the XXClone program, I
get two "no disk" messages each with its own set of paramiters.
Besides these two HDD's, I have two other HDD disks connected to this
computer as well as two removealbe USB's. So I'm assuming the "no
disk" message is because it's trying to access the two USB drives and
not an important error associated with my booting problem because the
program does then bring up the correct drives in the Source and target
volume lines afterwards. If this not a correct assumption, and part
of my overall problem, please let me know.

Lastly, if it is helpful, at the beginning I reformatted the new
(target) drive, and it is a single (80GB) drive with only the one main
partition. Is there an issue with a larger IDE drive such as this
(other than the SATA drive that is a 500GB drive, all other drives on
this pc are under 80GB)? I did an extensive search on the two but
didn't find anything relavent.

Thanks again for your assistance. I'm going to do more research on
the hal.dll issue, but if there is something you could suggest, I
would appreciate any suggestions you might have.

Cordially...John

[chugbug]

Hi DES, I tried another boot this afternoon to try and see if I could
pinpoint any partictullar thing that's causing my problem. Here are
two updates to add:

1. The "no disk" message is gone. After I went into the boot.ini
file and deleted the extra entries I added for testing the drive
locations, then opened xxclone, I didn't get the "no disk" message
anymore. So that must have been from those two additional entries
rather than the program trying to access other (USB) drives.

2. When I rebooted and tried to boot into the other fictional lines I
added, I got the same hal.dll damaged file error. Is that suppose
to happen?

3. When I delibertly misspelled Windows to force an error as metioned
on the manual, I stll got the same hal.dll error. Is that suppose to
happen?

Thanks...John

[Dan Anderson]

Hi John,

A suggestion would be to post the contents of the boot.ini files, both the one on the original source hard drive and the one on the drive with the xxclone copy, as well as identifying the boot priority order that you are applying to the drives in your bios setup (which should determine which boot.ini file is being accessed).

Dan

________________________________________________________

[John E. Brady]

Hi Dan,

 

Thanks for the reply.  I don't know if you can receive this via email or not, if I don't hear back, I'll post on the forum again.  Listed below is the information you suggested I post (both boot.ini files and drives as listed in the BIOS (location, not the boot sequence).

 

BIOS setup... I'm not sure I understand what the boot sequence in the BIOS has to do with booting the drive if you are using the Boot.ini file to direct to the OS you want to use?  Are you suggesting the cloned drive needs to be added to the boot sequence in the BIOS?

 

Cordially...John

     John E. Brady
  Stop by and visit:
      JEB's Pens
   www.jebspens.com
Hand-turned Pens/Pencils
  Custom Fountain Pens

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The boot.ini files are shown below:

C drive Boot.ini file:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP (New Volume) 76.33 GiB" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

New Drive Boot.ini file:

[Boot Loader]
Timeout=10
Default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

[Operating Systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP (New Volume) 76.33 GiB" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

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[Dan Anderson]

Hi John,

It's good that you posted your comments to the forum for a shared communication.

My impression is that both of your boot.ini files should work okay regardless of which of the two hard drives (source or target) is set up as the first priority boot drive, with the understanding from earlier comments that your target drive contains only one partition.

However, your bios seems to indicate that you have three hard drives (one WDC and two Maxtors).   Assuming the WDC is your source drive, that raises the question which of the two Maxtors was your target drive and what would be the sequence numbering 0-1-2 for the three drives as determined by the bios and the boot order?   

In other words, there may be some confusion when your source-drive's boot.ini refers to rdisk(1). 

You might try changing the rdisk(1) boot menu option to rdisk(2) and see what happens.

Dan

__________________________________________________________


-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	RE: [xxclone] re: WinXP home Drive cloning issue...
Date:	Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:54:39 -0500
From:	John E. Brady <j...@jebswebsite.com>
Reply-To:	xxc...@googlegroups.com
To:	<xxc...@googlegroups.com>

[DES]

Before there was an xxclone, I used to have a 3 system disk setup of 6
partitions each. Disk0 (C:-H:), disk1 (I:-N:), and disk2 (O:-T:). For
each disk when boot the other 2 were then relegated like first and
second clone. Obviously xxclone can't, and shouldn't deal with stuff
like this. It all had to be managed manually by touching the
MountedDevice keys of the designated clones. So the boot disk was
always C:-H: and the other two the other two groups of 6. And relying
on the Volume Labels to keep track of who was actually who. Don't
recommend it all. The point in mentioning this is, first it worked,
but second the boot.ini was never touched. Just left that as original
and did the booting "otherwise". That machine had a raid controller
configured non-raid and could select either channel as boot in it's
BIOS extension, or the IDE-0 Primary ahead of that in main BIOS. Now,
in getting Windows to start recently from a USB connected disk on a
laptop that didn't have direct USB boot capability I used the plop
boot manger. An Open Source boot manger where you can start on CD\DVD
then direct the boot to continue on whatever it discovers. Don't know
what that xxclone boot disk is good for, I was interested in USB
capability at the time, but perhaps it can redirect the boot as well?
In my case I already had the Drive Letter & Volume Label assignments
swapped on the clone in preparation for physically swapping the
drives, part of xxclone's Make Bootable I believe.

DES

[chugbug]

Hi Guys thanks. Sorry, I should have elaborated on the BIOS picture.
I posted it to prove that the drives were shown correctly in the BIOS,
but since I didn't mention it, you wouldn't have known that. The
Maxtor shown as Slave (6Y080U) IS the 80GB drive I'm using as the
target/clone. The other Maxtor drive (53073U6) is a 30GB data drive
on that pc (assigned to E in Windows). I would disable it but it has
my work stuff on it and I need to access it to work on between my
sessions fooling with the cloning.

I don't know if I ever stated, but my goal here was to replace my main
drive, not just to have a cloned backup, although if I was able to do
this sucessfully, I was going to use it to make and keep a good clone
in case the new drive fails (which is used from an old pc). I've not
had any issues with this system in the 4+ years I rebuilt it, and
other than some recent perodic crashes that I found are related to the
drive being full (when I free up more space, the crashes disapear),
it's been very dependable (runs 24/7). I don't have that many
programs installed, and I have all my disks, but since the system is
stable, I thought I'd go the clone route rather than a new install--
it's those ton of Windows updates that I didn't want to have to deal
with installing all over again. But since my system isn't
cooperating, it looks like I'm not going to have a choice in the end.

One last thing... BIOS boot sequence... I have a question about
changing the boot sequence in the BIOS. I didn't change anything in
the BIOS boot sequence. I set it up to bypass all the external drive
(floppy and CD's) and only look for the C-HDD (Master 0) for the boot
to speed up. If change the boot sequence and add the clone drive to
boot after the C-HDD, won't that only matter (allow it to go to the
clone drive) if it doesn't find C bootable? Or is that addition
necessary in order for it to boot sucessfully from that drive when
directed by the Boot.ini file?

I'm not sure if my BIOS will allow me to select the actual HDD to boot
from, but if it does, would it help any if I moved the clone drive to
the first boot instead of the main source drive-- just to test the
boot on the drive? I didn't think it would make a difference since I
couldn't boot from the drive when I physically switch the drives.
Since that didn't work, I'm assuming my problem has more to dow with
the clone drive not having something copied to it properly.

Lastly... I did this at the beginning of the process, but would it be
helpful if I reformatted the drive again and start over? One other
small tidbit I should mention was that I started with XXClone ver
1.0.0. When I realized I have the very first version, I check and
found a newer version (2.00.1). Is there something in the updated
version 2 that would be significantly different that would allow it to
be sucessful if I start over that the original version didn't?

I don't know what else to do, so I figured sometimes it best to wipe
clean and try again. If that doesn't work, and there are no other
suggestions, I'll just start a new install.

Thanks again for your help, I appreciate the time you gave me.

Cordially...John

[DES]

It's not necessary to modify the BIOS boot sequence to boot a clone.
"Normally" it's setup to try the floppy first, in case you're having
trouble and want to use a boot floppy (hint). Then try the CD\DVD
drive, in case you have anther boot loader there (like that plop boot
loader, hint, hint), or a live cd of some flavor. xxclone doesn't
account for all the possible Source & Destination setups, others here
have better experience with multi-boot etc.

You might try making a clone with something else just to see if the
problem falls out? CloneZilla is decent (and free), though it uses the
Linux drive & partition designations, you should get through that
fine. It'll ask about the MBR and the answer is yes. If the clone is a
"true" copy of the source it should just start when placed in the
source's position. Make it, move it to the source's position
(electrically), and start, with all the other drives disconnected
first. xxclone's test boot assumes the source & destination are still
connected as cloned. It actually starts on the source then passes the
boot off to the clone via it's entry in the boot.ini. All the rest is
only to enhance your experience so to speak. Oh, and the newer version
of xxclone accounts for Windows 7\Vista's completely different boot
sequence. No more NTLDR and boot.ini; now it's the BCD store, and
GUID's for you disks (and it's a Lot more complicated)!

I wonder... you're not forgetting the IDE Master\Slave jumper when
moving disks around on cables are you? Try Cable Select. How easily I
forget the improvements of SATA.

DES

[Dan Anderson]

Hi John,

I had seen your Jan 19 comments (not copied herein) elaborating on Bios sequences etc and maybe restarting your xxclone process from scratch with a reformatted hard drive and a different version of xxclone, etc but you appear to be overlooking the very simple test that I had mentioned in my Jan 18 email ("you might try changing the rdisk(1) boot menu option to rdisk(2) and see what happens").

Dan

___________________________________________________


-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	[xxclone] re: WinXP home Drive cloning issue...

Date:	Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:26:52 -0500
From:	Dan Anderson <dan.an...@sympatico.ca>
Reply-To:	xxc...@googlegroups.com
To:	xxc...@googlegroups.com <xxc...@googlegroups.com>

[chugbug]

Hello All,

Sorry it took a while to get back to this... I'm still working on it,
I just have to do it between work when I have free time.

Dan... I didn't ignore your suggestion. I tried that and other
suggestions mentioned short of trying another cloning program except
for using another boot load manger (PLOP) or cloning program. Bottom
line is I still can't boot from the drive. This week I started all
over again-- recloned and tried to boot:

1. I recloned the drive.
2. I performed the cool tools "Make Bootable" (checking all three
boxes).
3. I reviewed the files on the clone drive and it appeared to have all
the necessary Windows files as is on the source drive.
4. I shut down the computer.
5. I physically disconnected ALL the drives I had installed.
6. I connected the new clone drive as MASTER (0)-- INCLUDING switching
the jumper on the drive so it would be reconized as such.
7. Booted into the BIOS to check the drive location and the HDD
booting sequence (it has a separate option for lising HDD booting
sequence)- it was set as MASTER (0) AND set as the first Drive to
boot.
8. Exited BIOS and booted the (clone) drive. I received the message
"Error loading Operating System".

I also tried booting into the drive from the source drives boot.ini
file. When I do that, I get the same hal.exe error message.

So what am I missing? Someone mentioned with regards to the cool
tools, to pay partictular attention to #s 1&3. Copying the Volume ID
(#3) was the only XXClone suggestion I didn't do. Since the help
files stated this was only necessary for other problematic software
other than Windows, and I didn't want to damage the source drive, I
did not perform this step.

I just don't understand what I'm missing. As I said, all the files
are there (boot.ini file, NTLDR file, Autoexect.bat, Config.sys,
etc). I also check the spelling in the Boot.ini file, and it is OK.

There is only one thing I've done that I'm not 100% sure about... When
I boot into the clone drive through the Source drives boot.ini file,
must the clone drive be set as a Master drive or slave? I had it
setup to do the cloning with the souce drive being a slave on the same
IDE channel as the Source drive.

So do I have to swich it to a Master on the second IDE channel in
order for it to boot that way? That's the only thing I didn't do that
I could try. But since I couldn't boot from the (source) drive when
it was the only one connected, I didnt' see the point of trying that.

Would it do any good to reformat the drive again before I did another
clone?

Thanks...John

[Dan Anderson]

Hi John,

Between your steps 3 and 4, first try to just re-boot into your new clone copy using the XP boot menu, without  disconnecting any wires or changing your bios settings or changing any master/slave settings.

Your 6th last paragraph seems to suggest you have tried that, but I wasn't sure. 

In any case, first you need to get that basic initial reboot-redirect step working before you do anything else.

If that doesn't work (ie. a hal.dll error message), maybe open the source files boot.ini file as a text file and copy/paste the contents into an email for a follow-up xxclone posting.

Also there used to be an issue that there are problems if your destination drive is "dynamically" formatted, and I don't know if that is still a problem.


Dan

_________________________________________________________________________

-------- Original Message  --------
Subject: [xxclone] Re: WinXP home Drive cloning issue...
From: chugbug <j...@jebswebsite.com>
To: The Xxclone Forum <xxc...@googlegroups.com>

[chugbug]

Hi Dan,

Yes, I have tried booting the clone drive using the XP boot while
leaving it connected as it was cloned. That is where I'm getting the
hal.exe error.

I did format the drive using the Windows format option. Don't
remember if I used the Quick or normal format option. It was an old
drive that I had. I think I had just used it for data storage before,
but it's been so long now I don't remeber that anymore either. If you
think my formatting might be an issue, I'll try a better formatting
option and reclone again.

Listed below is the boot.ini file from my source drive with the clone
drive added. The additional boot line (third boot option) is the one
I added at your suggestion to see if the drive location was the
issue. It's pretty straight forward, but let me know if you see any
problems.

Thanks again for the help...John

John E. Brady (JEB)
JEB's PENs
www.jebspens.com
Hand-turned pens & pencils.
Custom fountain pens.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home
Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP (New
Volume) 76.33 GiB" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP (New
Volume)