[RESOLVED] Restoring XP
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Thread: [RESOLVED] Restoring XP

  1. #1
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    Resolved [RESOLVED] Restoring XP

    What ho one and all,

    I am posting on my wife's computer because I have gotten myself (more specifically, my computer) into a bit of a pickle. To give some back-story.

    Running XP; around Nov 2017, I made an Acronis True Image of C: to a second hdd. Verifyed it and all was well.

    During Christmas, I upgraded all the hdd (three of them), and using that image, restored it to the larger (new) C: partition. Set everythiug up as I like it and all have been running sweetly for the past month. I also made a second (newer) image of the new C:

    Because I receive wacky Firefox up-grade message on some sites that I visit, were the video was not playing, last night, I upgrade FF from 38.5 ESR to 52 ESR. It is almost OK, but I found that two of amy most used add-ons do not work; RoboForm and Evernote Clearly. This pisses me off, particularly RoboForm.

    In the past, if I have unidstalled FF, reinstalled and copied my profile, it has not worked, so not wanting that hassel this time, I used the most recent image to restore C: and verify.

    All is good until I reboot and I get past the Welcome screen but the next one (Windows) just freezes. I tried restoing the earlier image and the same. I have put the image onto one of the older (empty) hdd and the same. Just freezing on the windows screen.

    So I figure, try the original XP disk and use Recovery Console / fixmbr. That would be fine, but I never get to Set Up; it just goes into the installatiom and installs XP from new.

    So I don't know where to go next. May be the mbr is damaged but that has been imaged when I made the image? But I have had one month of no problems.

    When I have run ATI form the CD to restore, I do get a message 'Failed to read sector **** on disk 4.' But I have no disk 4 installed?

    The other message I have received when the screen freezes on the Win screen says 'The system has reached max size allowed for the system mpart of the registry. Additional storage requests will be ignored.'

    What does that mean? I have never seen it before.

    There is nothing wrong with the hdd as it has just finished reinstalling XP and looks fine. I am sure there is nothing wrong with either image, it just will not boot past the Win screen.

    Thanks and toodle pip

    Rex

    Grateful for any suggestions as I don't know what to do next.

  2. #2
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    Post #8 at the link below has some information on the Registry error, but I don't think it will actually be useful in your case.

    https://forums.techguy.org/threads/s...-space.856336/

    The error is almost certainly related to the non-boot issue.

    If I were going to try to restore an Acronis image, I would boot from the Acronis bootable CD/DVD with ONLY the hard drive I wanted as the boot drive and the drive containing the image file(s) (and the CD/DVD drive) attached to the computer. Make sure that the boot drive is drive 0 (the first one on the list). After the restore, disconnect any hard drive(s) other than the boot drive. You may still need to repair the boot record. You should have the Recovery Console installed for that process.

    Links:

    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...-in-windows-xp

    https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tut...overy-console/

    https://neosmart.net/wiki/fix-mbr/

    https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-repa...ows-xp-2624513


    With all of the experimenting and software installation and uninstallation that you do, you should really consider using Virtual Machines for your testing. That way, if something goes wrong, you just delete the test VM and make a new one from a backup copy. No bare metal restore or OS installation is needed.

  3. #3
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    You may be right but I have installed newer versions of FF in the past, not like it and restored everything with an ATI image.

    It seems that in creating the image, from which everything has been working(!) something is damaged, hence the non-boot.

    Will formating the os partition before resting the image, create an mbr. This assumes that it is the mbr (if it is damaged) and that the image does not have the damage.

    The other point is, but as I say, it has been working for one month, the original partition was 60GB with around 40 gb used. That is how it is listed when I fire up ATI from the recovery disk. But the restore dialog shows a 60 gb image, with 40 used, to be restored to a 100 gb partition. Presumably that should not make any difference.

    It has been working restored from the same image for the past month.

  4. #4
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    Attempting to repair things (but not too hopeful!) by using Recovery Consol.

    Have run fixboot but I am concerned about running fixmbr. The message says that this commend may make other partitions unreadable.

    Does this mean that it may change the drive letters but not damage the data, or does it mean that it could make all the data in the other partitions unreadable?

    I don't know what is wrong but at the moment, I am not totally convinced that two different ATI images are both corrupt, particularly since one of those images was used to create the new hdd and it has been running well for the last month.

    Thanks

    Rex

  5. #5
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    I don't know that the images are corrupt, however, you are using a different method to restore them than you used to create the partitions on the new drive initially. You may want to try re-running the same process that you used to create the partitions on the new drive to begin with. This will involve backing up the other partitions that you are NOT restoring, but you should be doing that anyway, just in case of disaster. Once you have everything restored, make a new image backup of ALL partitions on the drive for future use.

  6. #6
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    I'm sure the image is not corrupt.

    At the moment, I have tried everything; recovery consol with changing the boot.ini attributes, deleting and recreating it, fixboot and fixmbr. And still, it stops on the XP page, after the Welcome screen.

    I do have everything backed-up to a second hdd, particularly all my docs, so not unduely concerned. That happens on the fly, so they are always safe.

    I am sure that I made the recent image to the second hdd, replaced Disk 0 with a larger one and restored that image. All was well.

    The only thing that is differnet, and I have never seen it before, is the ATI message ragarding not finding the memory cluster of **** on disk 4. No idea what that means since there are only three hdd on board.

    Getting close to giving up an installing a fresh XP. That will be a PITA!

  7. #7
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    Before re-installing XP, I would try the fixmbr, as long as you have all of your data backed up. That may just fix the issue. If not, and you have backups of the non-OS partitions, it would still be faster to wipe the drive and re-try the ATI restore that you used to put the OS on the drive to start with. That would be much faster than a re-install.

    A Repair Install should also be possible by booting from the XP setup disc:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHgoedWcL3g

    https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-perf...nstall-2624915

    https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&....0.J20wF3LAHlw

  8. #8
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    Yes! Yes! Yes!

    Bloody marvellous! jdc2000, thank you so much for the page one advice of recreating the steps. It is all back up and running. There were two issues, the first was that all the work to up-grade the hdd was done using ATI as a program and not from the rescue disk. The second was that when I formatted and partitioned the new (1tb) hdd, that was done on a desktop caddy. Then I restored the image of the old C: to the new partition, using the caddy.

    This time, I was trying to restore the same image from a partition on Disk 0. So I followed your advice. Restored the image using the disk (I had no choice) to a spare hdd in bay 2. Put that into bay 1 and it was now Disk 0 and booted. Yes, XP came back in all its former glory. So I made another partition on Disk 0 and created an image to that partition. Then I put the original 1tb hdd into bay 2, formatted the OS partition (to clena it) and using ATI from C: restored it.

    Again, switched the disks so my original Disk 0 is again Disk 0 and wowie zowie, back up and running.

    I would buy you a drink if I lived locally.

    Many, many, many thanks for the suggestion.

    Rex

  9. #9
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    That explanation makes sense. Windows, and the PC BIOS can get confused when you make a drive the boot drive when it is connected to one adapter, then switch it to another and try to get it to boot.

    When I set up a new hard drive as a boot drive, I always make sure that it is the ONLY hard drive connected to the computer, and that it is connected to the drive interface/connector I will use when it is the boot drive. Then I install Windows and update Windows. Once that is done, I can then make an initial backup image, and then install (one at a time) any other drives I may want connected. When the system is fully set up and operational, I make another backup image.

    If you have another PC, I would seriously consider setting up a Virtual Machine copy of your Windows XP system that you can use to experiment with, so you do not have issues with your production computer when trying new software or trying to fix issues. It might save you lots of time and effort.

    It also helps to have a spare hard drive in your tool box, just in case.

  10. #10
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    Agreed.

    One of the purposes of installing larger hdd, apart from the fact that photos (and the RAW files) start eating a lot of space, was to have sufficient space on C: to install a VM.

  11. #11
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  12. #12
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    Thanks, downloading it now.

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