Question

WinXP Pro soft hangs after ghosting to smaller drive

Asked by: Silverbrain

Hey all, customer computer im working on, his primary drive was starting to fail (160GB) and to resolve it I ghosted (Ghost 2003) over to a new 120GB drive. The computer boots up, WinXP Pro starts going, gets to the GUI just before prompting a login and soft hangs (mouse works, numlock works but nothing happening.) I put in his old drive to check I didnt copy over the condition and that boots into windows fine.

Safe mode, the exact same thing happens to me, GUI but no further. Have another computer in the shop and for grins I used PQMagic on it, shrunk the hard drive partition in half...same ill effect to XP...so something has to be going on with the size of the partition that XP must check.

Booting off CD with 3 different versions of XP Pro (oem, retail, msdn) none of them give me the option to repair the OS.  I do have ERD 2003 at my disposal if needed.  

The only difference is the size of the hard drive...what can I do to rectify this issue w/o having to reload?

TIA - Jason

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Asked On
2003-12-17 at 14:05:16ID20828760
Tags

ghosting

,

drive

,

smaller

Topic

Windows XP Operating System

Participating Experts
3
Points
250
Comments
5

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Answers

 

by: stroobaPosted on 2003-12-17 at 14:24:36ID: 9960315

Hi,

Try using Sysprep before cloning the disk.
You will find  it on the installation-cd Support\Tools
in the file "deploy.cab"

Hopes this works

 

by: gemartiPosted on 2003-12-17 at 17:56:58ID: 9961259

 

by: gemartiPosted on 2003-12-17 at 18:02:14ID: 9961287

This may also be useful...as strooba indicates above:
How to Use Sysprep with Windows Product Activation or Volume License Media to Deploy Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;299840
SUMMARY
This article describes how to use the Sysprep deployment preparation tool in conjunction with Windows Product Activation or Volume License Media.

 

by: Netman66Posted on 2003-12-17 at 18:03:32ID: 9961289

You cannot Ghost to a smaller drive.  Use a partition manager to shrink the source drive to below 120GB and then Ghost it.

The drive geometry is not the same therefore Ghosting to a smaller drive will not succeed.

 

by: SilverbrainPosted on 2003-12-18 at 09:58:13ID: 9966068

Using Sysprep did exactly the trick, had to reactivate it and re-enter the cdkey, but the system works proper now back into the GUI.  

Netman66, I was able to ghost a 160GB down to a 120GB using ghost 2003 booting from CD FYI, and it did work.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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