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I used DriveImage XL to do a disk-to-disk clone of an old copy of Windows XP. I took it from a failing hard drive that had two partitions (one for Windows, one for storage) and cloned it onto a new hard drive, where the Windows partition is the only one. I did this whole process from within the Windows environment, so the clone hard drive's partition letter is 'H', whereas on the old hard drive it is 'C'. I am not sure if this has anything to do with my issue.

The computer fails to load Windows when I try to boot off of the new drive. It simply shows a black screen with a blinking cursor, then reboots and repeats the process all over again. I have a feeling the cloned copy of Windows cannot be found, but am not sure what to do next.

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2 Answers 2

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Sounds like the boot partition is the first partition on the drive.

It also needs to be a primary partition and marked as active in the partition table if you haven't already checked.

You will have to fire up DriveImage-XML and set a new Disk ID so that Windows will forget the H: designation and reassign the drive letter properly.

Tools->Set new Disk ID and read the instructions

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  • Unfortunately setting a new disk ID didn't work for me - it had no effect. And it was already marked as a primary and active partition.
    – valsidalv
    Commented Aug 5, 2014 at 2:08
  • point to it in the bios as the first disk to boot to, have the boot junk on the front of the disk the bios points to to boot from, check the boot.ini to see where it points to, which is less of an issue if it boots to it via the bios because it then is the first disk. Thats all I poorly remember.
    – Psycogeek
    Commented Aug 5, 2014 at 3:15
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    The only other thing I can remember having to do in the case of a non-bootable DriveImage-XML Windows XP clone was to boot with the recovery disk and do fixmbr and bootcfg /rebuild
    – Fiasco Labs
    Commented Aug 5, 2014 at 3:29
  • I will try that out when I get a chance (and if I find my XP cd). Everything in the BIOS was set correctly, as well.
    – valsidalv
    Commented Aug 5, 2014 at 13:28
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When you cloned the partitions, did you make sure that the partitions were marked as bootable? maybe a tool like fdisk can help to make the o.s partition bootable.

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