True Image Nightmare (XP not booting)

Last week I was asked to delete the 98 boot partition on a dual-boot
system, and allocate the freed-up space to the remaining XP boot
partition. I used Acronis True Image to image the XP partition, then
deleted both boot partition's and restored the XP partition from the
image. Whilst it should have been straight forward, it turned out to
be a f**cking nightmare, 'cos XP froze before reaching the logon
screen afterwards.

I've come across the problem where XP won't boot before, usually down
to the fact that the GUID that it's allocated to the C: partition is
different to the new C: partition's GUID, so it allocates the next
available letter to the 'new' partition, and therefore XP can't find
the files it needs because it expects them to be on the C: partition.

I would have thought that True Image should copy and restore this GUID
when imaging a partition, but it didn't seem to.

Running FIXBOOT and FIXMBR from the XP recovery console didn't fix the
problem, and after hours of panic, I found a webpage that advised me
to boot from a 98 Boot floppy and run fdisk /mbr to fix the mbr on the
C: partition. This wasn't made any easier by the fact that the floppy
drive in the PC in question didn't work, so I had to remove one from
another PC and connect it up temporarily, but much to my relief, it
worked. I don't know how common this scenario is, but I've come across
it enough times to wish that the recovery console provided a way to
sort this out. Perhaps a command that clears the GUID's in the
registry that are already assigned to partitions would allow XP to
designate the first partition as C: on the next boot.

Just posting this in case it helps anyone in the future, 'cos I'd hate
anyone else to go through the stress I did.

DJ
.

Relevant Pages

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    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: BootIt NG high level steps - best approach??
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    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
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    (microsoft.public.windows.vista.hardware_devices)
  • Re: how to change out system disk?
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    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)