Re: Replacing Hard drive

Kerry and everyone that helped,

I just gave up, Symantec help gave up, leaving me hanging twice and hanging
up on me three times, and all my friends gave up, we tried everything and
nothing gave us a bootable HDD.
In the end we just reinstalled everything and copied the data files over.

But it was not all bad, the Ultimate boot CD is brilliant, thanks for the
heads up Kerry.

regards

Daniel
"Kerry Brown" <kerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx*a*m> wrote in message
news:O65akpx4GHA.3396@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I haven't used Ghost since the 2003 version so I don't know if the problem
is because of Ghost or something else. Many laptops have a non-standard
boot sector to facilitate the "Press xx key" on bootup to start a factory
restore. With Acronis True Image I have found the following works when
imaging a laptop drive to an external drive. Make sure you select the drive
not a partition to image. When you select the drive it will select all the
partitions. When restoring you also have to pick the whole drive not just a
partition. When restoring you have to keep the factory restore/diagnostic
partition the same size as it was on the original drive. Any other
partitions can be resized during the restore. These instructions are
specific to Acronis True Image but I imagine Ghost works similarly. If all
else fails you can download the Ultimate Boot CD

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

Use the MBRtool to write a new standard boot sector. This will probably
break the factory restore function but it will allow you to boot into XP
on the new drive.

--
Kerry
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca


Daniel- Sydney wrote:
Hi Kerry

I did not get any error messages, simply nothing happened after the
Laptop powered up, by the way I did select "copy master boot record"
as an option when copying the files, I tried a repair install of XP,
the OS was found and the repair install went through but when it
rebooted, once again nothing, the Laptop shut down, powered up but
the screen stayed black

I formatted the new HDD again and ran through the whole Ghost thing,
but still no boot, I ran the XP CD MBR but still nothing.

I formatted the HDD again and installed windows to see if it was the
HDD playing up but it booted fine.

I'm all out of ideas

cheers
"Kerry Brown" wrote:

The other suggestion of formatting and doing a clean install will
work but is a little drastic at this point. When it wouldn't boot
what error messages did you see on the screen? Do you have a Windows
CD? If you don't have a Windows CD do you have access to another
computer with a CD burner?

--
Kerry
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca


Daniel wrote:
Well I gave it my best shot, followed all of the direction
and when I put the 80G into my laptop it would not boot, I followed
the Symantec technicians advice and did a boot record restore to no
avail, in the end one Symantec tech hung up and the other left me
hanging, so now I am lost.

I know this is not a Ghost NG but any advice appreciated

regards

Daniel
"Kerry Brown" <kerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx*a*m> wrote in message
news:OLU2pgX4GHA.3644@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
That is the best solution, easier and less error prone than using
CDs or DVDs.

--
Kerry
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca


Daniel wrote:
Okay, I'm convinced, Ill give it a go,
I'm going to have to copy the Drive to an external drive and then
copy it back when I have installed the 80G
Hard Dive.
Will that work?

thanks

Daniel
"Kerry Brown" <kerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx*a*m> wrote in message
news:Ow2GijS4GHA.1252@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
It may sound complicated but once you start actually doing it the
procedure is pretty straightforward.

--
Kerry
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca


Daniel- Sydney wrote:
Thanks to all for your advice but I think it is too prone to
probelms and to me doing the wrong thing,

thanks

"KEKA" wrote:

First and foremost, your version of Ghost must be able to
access the media you saved the image file(s) on.

If he was able to access the media to create the image he will
be able to access that same media to restore the image.

If the laptop is in XP NTFS format (doubtful on a factory
laptop), your version of Ghost has to be able to create an XP
version of NTFS (NTFS version 3) partition for restoration.
There also may a question of the MFT and MBR restoration in
some cases with older versions of Ghost regarding XP and its
version of NTFS.

My 2 year old Compaq came with XP installed on an NTFS
partition. Acer is one of the few OEM's that installs XP on
FAT32 partitions from the factory. If the OP has Ghost 2003
NTFS is not an issue.




.

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