winxp doesnt start after hdd upgrade

[petrolej]

Hi
I am new here. And desperate. I would love to throw the whole pc out of the window now But it's my friend's computer. Why am I so stupid and can't say no when somebody needs help with PC

My friend's Western Digital HDD started to run very slowly,
I bought two new HDDs (Samsung and Seagate),
I copied the whole old WD HDD to the new Samsung with DriveImage XML
In Disk manager I set up the Samsung as active
I set up BIOS to boot from the new Samsung.

PC worked , system was running from Samsung G:
but the pagefile was still on WD C:

I disabled the pagefile on WD C: and set it up on Samsung G:
Than I changed the WD disk letter from C: to P: and restarted computer

Now when I start it up it will start booting but then it will freeze showing the windows XP logo
on the blue background

What can I do?

I can't even start it in Safe mode. Neither restoring to previous state doesn't help

Thanks a lot
Peter

I have
WinXP SP2
Motherboard Asus P5K SE

[satyre]

Remove the WD HDD and run it on the new HDD alone. See what happens.

[petrolej]

Remove the WD HDD and run it on the new HDD alone. See what happens.

I already tried. the same result

[YeOldeStonecat]

Try cloning with P.I.N.G. instead
Partition Image Not Ghost

If you're not going to use Ghost or Acronis TI...PING is one of the better more reliable "free" ones.
Drawback being..it won't resize partitions on the fly..but there are plenty of other free utils which can do that.

[satyre]

Then avoid using the drive image. You took the drive image of the old drive, isn't it?

Install the OS from the XP disk on the new HDD and run it. If it doesn't then look into some other hardware problems starting from the Motherboard.

[petrolej]

Try cloning with P.I.N.G. instead
Partition Image Not Ghost

If you're not going to use Ghost or Acronis TI...PING is one of the better more reliable "free" ones.
Drawback being..it won't resize partitions on the fly..but there are plenty of other free utils which can do that.

I might try it. I chose DriveImage XML, because it allowed me to do "hot cloning" in Win Xp (or how do you call it). when i used the bootable programs (mostly from ultimate boot cd), they wouldnt see the SATA disks

[petrolej]

Then avoid using the drive image. You took the drive image of the old drive, isn't it?

Install the OS from the XP disk on the new HDD and run it. If it doesn't then look into some other hardware problems starting from the Motherboard.

Yeah I did. I wanted to avoid reinstalling OS and all programs. It's not my pc and I bet half of the drivers and installation CDs is lost.

[YeOldeStonecat]

The issue you encountered is one of the reasons I prefer to "clone" outside of the OS. I've used some cloning programs from within Windows before..but still, my guy just feels better doing it outside of the OS.

I had to recently use PING on a very new laptop from a nursing agency..some Fujitsu model, must have had some oddball SATA controller, TI and Ghost versions would complete the clone, but the laptop wouldn't boot from the new drive. PING ended up doing the job well.

[petrolej]

The issue you encountered is one of the reasons I prefer to "clone" outside of the OS. I've used some cloning programs from within Windows before..but still, my guy just feels better doing it outside of the OS.

I had to recently use PING on a very new laptop from a nursing agency..some Fujitsu model, must have had some oddball SATA controller, TI and Ghost versions would complete the clone, but the laptop wouldn't boot from the new drive. PING ended up doing the job well.

I used PING. I liked, it recognized SATA NTFS disks without a problem. BUT i have the same result. After restoring to new disk. Windows seems to start until it reaches the screen with windows logo on blue background and stops.

Anyway I am giving up. It still works with the old HDD.

Thanks for your help guys.

[YeOldeStonecat]

I just reread your thread..notice in the first post that you messed with the letter assignment of the WD drive.

Question...will the WD drive boot up fine all by itself..with no other drives attached?

If so...run a full checkdisk with repairs on it..and then try to clone again.

And if it cannot boot by itself...well..that's most likely the reason the new replacment drive won't boot either. You want to clone a "healthy" drive, not a "sick" one.

[petrolej]

I just reread your thread..notice in the first post that you messed with the letter assignment of the WD drive.

Question...will the WD drive boot up fine all by itself..with no other drives attached?

If so...run a full checkdisk with repairs on it..and then try to clone again.

And if it cannot boot by itself...well..that's most likely the reason the new replacment drive won't boot either. You want to clone a "healthy" drive, not a "sick" one.

Yeah PC with the WD as a booting drive is booting up ok. Though it was giving me the "S.M.A.R.T. status bad backup and replace" error. But the computer would run ok, just slower (it was too slow for videocapture). I assumed that it's some HW failure and the data is "healthy enough" for cloning.

Strange thing is, that it was running even when I cloned the WD to the Samsung and made it boot up from the Samsung (It was G:, but I set it as active in WinXP Disk Manager and set it as booting drive in BIOS). Then I changed the letter assigment of the WD drive from C: to randomly chosen P: just to make sure that Windows is not running from it. As I understood it, it shouldn't have had any effect since it wasn't system disk, but it had tremendous effects. I got more grey hair, I used more swearwords than in last month altogether and the computer woudln't boot up from the Samsung anymore.


I dont have the PC anymore, I am leaving town, but I might try your suggestion next week. Or I will just reinstall everything. Or wait until some other friend than me tries to fix it.

Thanks for your advices

BTW if somebody will read this thread in the future...
Here is good explanation of the S.M.A.R.T. error message http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000184.htm