MTOW
24th Aug 2005, 09:34
I run XP Pro SP 2 on a P4 PC. The system is fully updated; (I downloaded the latest Office and Outlook patches yesterday, [could that be part of my problem?].)
My hard drive was close to full, so I bought a larger hard drive and tried to clone my current setup onto the new hard drive. Simple? It used to be a no sweat operation using Nortons Ghost, but this time it has proven not to be.
In the past, I've used a Norton's floppy and put the source drive in as the slave and the target HD as the master. (This overcame a paging file size problem that occurred if I had the target as slave.)
This time, after the cloning, I got the message (from memory) "Windows could not run because the Windows root/system32/hal.dll file is missing or corrupt", so I copied that file from the old system into the new… and got nowhere. Same message.
So I tried Acronis Tru Image 7... and it spat the dummy 50% of the way through checking the partitions (the third check), coming up with an error message saying that partition config has changed, press any key to reboot. On one attempt, I deleted all partitions from the new HD and let True Image start from scratch, but got the same result every time.
I use HD cradles for easy HD swapovers, and I thought one of the cradle connections might be dodgy, so I removed them and went back to a traditional straight cable to motherboard connection. Tried the Ghost floppy again - and this time, got as far as the Welcome Screen on the cloned copy, where the system stalls with a small Windows XP logo where the password field should be. The mouse will move the cursor, but everything else is frozen.
So I tried a Maxtor Disk Copy floppy I've had for some time - with exactly the same result - the blue Welcome screen and the small XP logo. Even a start in Safe Mode results in the same unresponsive page. (In each case, except with Acronis Tru Image, I’ve always used the partition to partition option when copying.)
So, thinking I’d try using Ghost within Windows, I tried installing a new copy of Nortons Ghost that came with my Laptop. Same result – the unWelcome page.
Tried removing my password and copying again. Same result.
Tried safe mode boot and booting from the new copy – works fine, but only while the original copy is in place.
Any suggestions that will save me having to go the nausea of a fresh install and another call to Microsoft to authorize it would be greatly appreciated.
My hard drive was close to full, so I bought a larger hard drive and tried to clone my current setup onto the new hard drive. Simple? It used to be a no sweat operation using Nortons Ghost, but this time it has proven not to be.
In the past, I've used a Norton's floppy and put the source drive in as the slave and the target HD as the master. (This overcame a paging file size problem that occurred if I had the target as slave.)
This time, after the cloning, I got the message (from memory) "Windows could not run because the Windows root/system32/hal.dll file is missing or corrupt", so I copied that file from the old system into the new… and got nowhere. Same message.
So I tried Acronis Tru Image 7... and it spat the dummy 50% of the way through checking the partitions (the third check), coming up with an error message saying that partition config has changed, press any key to reboot. On one attempt, I deleted all partitions from the new HD and let True Image start from scratch, but got the same result every time.
I use HD cradles for easy HD swapovers, and I thought one of the cradle connections might be dodgy, so I removed them and went back to a traditional straight cable to motherboard connection. Tried the Ghost floppy again - and this time, got as far as the Welcome Screen on the cloned copy, where the system stalls with a small Windows XP logo where the password field should be. The mouse will move the cursor, but everything else is frozen.
So I tried a Maxtor Disk Copy floppy I've had for some time - with exactly the same result - the blue Welcome screen and the small XP logo. Even a start in Safe Mode results in the same unresponsive page. (In each case, except with Acronis Tru Image, I’ve always used the partition to partition option when copying.)
So, thinking I’d try using Ghost within Windows, I tried installing a new copy of Nortons Ghost that came with my Laptop. Same result – the unWelcome page.
Tried removing my password and copying again. Same result.
Tried safe mode boot and booting from the new copy – works fine, but only while the original copy is in place.
Any suggestions that will save me having to go the nausea of a fresh install and another call to Microsoft to authorize it would be greatly appreciated.