Strange Problem with a Desktop PC

aimo3

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I have this desktop PC on which WinXP Pro is installed. It has a hidden partition for restoring the system to the factory settings and applications.

I restored it to the factory settings to give it to a user. I thought I'd first clone its HD to a couple of HDs that I have. So I used an Acronis bootable CD and cloned the HD of the PC (HD #1) to HD #2. When I put #2 in the place of #1, Windows boots successfully, but strangly #1 does not boot, although it gets detected in the BIOS!! It asks to insert a bootable media!

I said OK, let me try to clone #2 to #3 and the cloning was successful too.

As of this moment #3 is Windows-bootable, but both #1 & #2 are not, despite the fact they are detected in the BIOS!

I don't know how it will be tomorrow!

Any one has experience such an issue?
 
You can only boot to one hard drive at a time. How are you selecting which drive to boot up into?
Use your bios to select the first boot device to boot into or if your bios allows it, try selecting one of the F keys (f9, F10, F11...ect) and select the drive you want to boot up first

On another note....did you clone the entire drive or just the C:/partition?
 
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You can only boot to one hard drive at a time. How are you selecting which drive to boot up into?
Use your bios to select the first boot device to boot into or if your bios allows it, try selecting one of the F keys (f9, F10, F11...ect) and select the drive you want to boot up first

Really?!!!!!!
I don't think you understood anything!

On another note....did you clone the entire drive or just the C:/partition?

The entire disk, but that's beyond the point.
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The problem again:

When I cloned from 1 to 2, 2 became bootable but 1 is not bootable any more!

When I cloned from 2 to 3, 3 became bootable but 2 is not bootable any more!

I connected 1 disk at a time.
 
Really?!!!!!!
I don't think you understood anything!




The entire disk, but that's beyond the point.
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thats a good way to not get help.. he is listed as a super techie, soo.. i think he does know what he is talking about, or at least somewhat :p i think you described the situation not entirely clear..

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The problem again:

When I cloned from 1 to 2, 2 became bootable but 1 is not bootable any more!

When I cloned from 2 to 3, 3 became bootable but 2 is not bootable any more!

I connected 1 disk at a time.




on the problem, you said you used acronis? is there some type of option to make a disk bootable or not after you cloned it, or made the clone from it? im not too terribly familiar with cloning hdd's, but the 3 times i have had to it worked flawlessly.

edit: tried to figure out how to split the quote bubble.. fail..
 
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As you said, perhaps my description was not clear to him :p

on the problem, you said you used acronis? is there some type of option to make a disk bootable or not after you cloned it, or made the clone from it? im not too terribly familiar with cloning hdd's, but the 3 times i have had to it worked flawlessly.

I used Ghost instead of Acronis, and it went perfectly. All the disk are 100% identical. Perhaps, I missed the correct option.
 
I've heard from some of my friends that Acronis is better to be used as a backup rather than a bootable cloning tool. For that they (And I) use Norton Ghost.
 
I prefer CloneZilla myself ;).

Anyway, the OP's issue is probably stemming from Acronis not copying over the bootloader information.

Happened one time with me when I used CloneZilla as well; except I was doing a Disk-to-Disk clone for somebody and something went wrong part way through, and it removed the bootloader from the original drive, put it on the secondary drive, but no information was on the secondary drive.

This is why I always do a Disk-to-image clone, then an Image-to-Disk restore. That way in case I mess something up, I always have the original, untouched drive to go back to.
 
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