Can not boot windows XP from cloned hard disk - what can I do?
- by Martin
My configuration:
a PC (some years old) with MSI K8N-Neo-4F Motherboard, 1 GB RAM.
Disk 1 (Maxtor, SATA II, 250 GB): 2 Partitions,
on Partition 1 (48 GB): Windows XP Professional (NTFS)
on Partition 2 (190 GB): data (NTFS)
I wanted to have a larger and faster disk (the PC is incredibly slow and permanently the disk is rattling when I try to open an application or during Windows startup), so I took
Disk 2 (Seagate, Sata II, 500 GB), installed in the PC,
created at first a 400 GB-partition at the end of the disk and cloned the data to it, which worked well
Installed a swap partition and a partition for Ubuntu Linux 12.10 on the first "part" of the disk
so I was able to boot Linux and the old Windows XP with the Linux "System selection" at startup.
Now I wanted to move Windows XP to the new disk,
deleted the Linux partitions
cloned Windows XP to the new disk (with free tools - EASESUS), left both disks in the PC and tried to select the new hard drive during boot as boot partition.
This did not work, the PC refused to boot from this second disk.
I tried many things like
making the boot partition on the 2nd drive "active" in the Windows System Preferences
modifying the boot.ini file to boot from the second disk
- tried to boot from it, but ended with an error message stating that it was not possible to boot from this disk because of a hardware failure or something else or so
removing the original disk and plugging the new one on the same SATA port as the original one
- also booting failed with an error message
repairing the MBR by booting into recovery mode from the Windows XP Installation CD-ROM, selecting the second disk and doing "FIXMBR" which said that everything was fine with the MBR.
after that at least the PC tried to boot from the newer disk and then startup was hanging during the blue screen with the Windows Logo.... no luck.
...
deleting the cloned partition and cloning again - this time with Macrium Reflect Free version... - no success during booting.
I tried a lot of things with no success, so I wonder what I am doing wrong?!
What could I do to successfully clone my Win XP partition to replace the original disk by a larger one which is bootable.
