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I had a failing HDD on an old WinXP SP3 machine, and used Macrium Reflect 7 Free (plus SpinRite 6 and Beyond Compare) to salvage the OS and data and clone/copy them onto a new HDD. Multiple steps later (see below), every time I try to add the Macrium Recovery option to the boot menu, I lose the ability to boot into Windows XP (\ntldr missing or corrupt) and I get another nonfunctioning Macrium Recovery option added (required device is inaccessible). Same error code for both, 0xc000000e.

I do have one functioning Macrium Recovery option on the menu, so every time this happens I can go into it, run bootfix, and reboot - whereupon I can again boot into Windows XP on the new disk, but no longer have a boot menu at all. The next time I try again to add the recovery option, I have one more nonfunctional Macrium Recovery option added to the list - I'm up to 4 nonfunctioning ones and one functioning one, now, in addition to the nonfunctioning entry for Windows XP.

I suspect the problem has something to do with the copy of Macrium Reflect that was installed on the old HDD, which is still present (I keep finding files on the old disk that somehow didn't make it onto the new one, so I'm keeping the old disk around until I'm sure I have everything I need off of it). After cloning/copying to the new disk, I switched the SATA cables back and forth on the motherboard a couple of times, as I re-lettered the partitions and gave the ones on the old disk new volume names so I wouldn't get them confused, added a new logical drive on the new disk using AOEMI Partition Assistant, and converted the new C: partition from FAT32 to NTFS (with a contiguous MFT) so that I could create a Macrium Rescue disk. This is a Dell PC and didn't come with Windows installation disks, so I've been using the recommended WinPE 3.1 for my Macrium rescue media. I also think I successfully added the Macrium Recovery option to the boot menu, and I'm not sure which disk I was booted from when I did so, but I think probably I was booted from the old disk when I did.

My first indication that something was not right was after I successfully booted to the new disk after converting C: to NTFS, and tried to create a backup image of it. It persistently hung trying to take a VSS snapshot. When looking into that, I discovered one of the Macrium driver files (I think it was wimmount.sys) was missing on the new disk. Copying it over manually didn't help, and neither did running a repair installation, so I uninstalled the trial edition from the new disk and installed the free edition again from scratch. Now I was able to successfully image the disk, at least. However, I wasn't seeing my boot menu when I rebooted the computer. That's when I launched into trying to create it again, and started getting duplicate entries on the boot menu, with only one of them actually working.

I've been at this for a while, now, and I'm getting frustrated. I don't know where to look for the configuration files that actually put the entries onto the boot menu. They have to be Macrium files rather than Windows files, because boot.ini still shows what was put there by fixboot. ntldr and ntdetect.com and boot.ini are all present on both the new and old disks (C: drive and what is now the P: drive), so I'm not sure where the boot manager is looking for those. There is a bootmgr file on the new C:, but none on the old boot partition (now P:).

Anyone knowledgeable in WinXP and Macrium Reflect have any suggestions? I'd like to end up with a boot menu that includes one entry for Windows XP on my new HDD, and ONE entry for Macrium Recovery.

Thanks,

Rebeccah

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  • They say MRF7 is compatible with XP but have several machines install fails, I would look for another solution besides MRF for XP.
    – Moab
    Commented Jan 9, 2021 at 14:58
  • @Moab, any recommended alternatives to MRF7?
    – Rebeccah
    Commented Jan 10, 2021 at 2:19
  • I use an old version of Acronis True Image 9, but is no longer available from Acronis.
    – Moab
    Commented Jan 10, 2021 at 5:32

1 Answer 1

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Resolved.

Eventually, I figured out that what Macrium is doing is adding the Microsoft BOOTMGR boot loader (which comes with Windows Vista and later), and a BCD store, to use in conjunction with the NTLDR boot loader that comes with XP, and then adding an entry for the Macrium Reflect System Recovery to the bootmgr boot menu. I also happened to find the BCD data by searching for "Macrium Reflect System Recovery" in the registry after adding the Macrium Reflect System Recovery to the boot menu one more time. I could see a bunch of identical entries corresponding to the recovery entries on the menu that didn't work.

Many thanks to NeoSmart for these Knowledgebase articles that helped me to understand what is going on:

https://neosmart.net/wiki/easybcd/dual-boot/windows-xp/

https://neosmart.net/wiki/0xc000000e_selected_entry_could_not_be_loaded/

Probably because there are two copies of ntldr on my computer (one on C: on the new disk and one on P:, which was C: on the old disk), Macrium or bcdedit wasn't able to set a device for Windows XP in the BCD, so that entry in the boot menu didn't work. Then, every time I ran bootfix to get back my ability to boot to XP, it removed the BCD information from the registry and switched to booting using boot.ini alone, but it never removed the names for the deleted entries from the bootmgr boot menu.

I ended up downloading EasyBCD Free, which easily let me see and remove the empty boot menu items. Then, by entering C: as the device for the Legacy boot manager, I was able to get that entry to launch ntldr, which launches Windows XP.

Yay!

Rebeccah

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