Imperialdata
asked on
ACER Laptop Image Restore Problems
Hi. I have an Acer 1680 series laptop with XP Home Edition. I have put in a new 80Gb drive where the old failed drive was a 60Gb. I partitioned it 40Gb / 38Gb(remaining space) and proceeded to load the 3 image disks which ran Norton Ghost to install a Fat32 (!) image to the c drive. On rebooting, the drive is not recognised as I have just a flashing cursor on booting. I have checked the bios settings, they are fine, set to boot CD-Rom then HDD. Mounting the drive in another PC I can see a successful Ghost session to the primary partition but it is not booting in the laptop. Any ideas?
Merete
have you checked the bios boot order ?
ASKER
Yes, as I said, CD-Rom then HDD. Have also tried HDD as first boot device.
ASKER
The recovery disk procedure:
Load bootable System cd which prompts for Disk 1 & 2 of the Recovery CDs.
At the end of the Ghost restore, it prompts for the System CD again before restarting. This just drops into the 'Wipe or exit' menu as it did on first load, I suspect it should do something else. There are a couple of directories on the C: which I think should be automatically deleted, maybe these contain the clues:
Sysprep containing go.bat
Sysinfo coontaining 360.cmd, insertcd.exe and os.ini
Sysprep's go.bat reads:
rem regedit /s c:\sysprep\RONCE.reg
rem copy c:\sysprep\discover.reg c:\winnt /y
rem convert c: /fs:ntfs
sysprep -reboot
I thought maybe the rems were added once run but since the windir is c:\windows maybe the file has not been run?
A few files are in the root directory too like preload.tag, preload.aaa, xph.tag
Load bootable System cd which prompts for Disk 1 & 2 of the Recovery CDs.
At the end of the Ghost restore, it prompts for the System CD again before restarting. This just drops into the 'Wipe or exit' menu as it did on first load, I suspect it should do something else. There are a couple of directories on the C: which I think should be automatically deleted, maybe these contain the clues:
Sysprep containing go.bat
Sysinfo coontaining 360.cmd, insertcd.exe and os.ini
Sysprep's go.bat reads:
rem regedit /s c:\sysprep\RONCE.reg
rem copy c:\sysprep\discover.reg c:\winnt /y
rem convert c: /fs:ntfs
sysprep -reboot
I thought maybe the rems were added once run but since the windir is c:\windows maybe the file has not been run?
A few files are in the root directory too like preload.tag, preload.aaa, xph.tag
see if these can help you. This one is is just finalised. EE of course .
https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/21900860/Access-to-XP-recovery-console-on-OEM-supplied-laptop.html
Operating system not found after adding new partition
http://www.velocityreviews.com/forums/t227273-operating-system-not-found-after-adding-new-partition.html
ASKER
Can't see anything there that helps Merete
ASKER
Do ACER ever lock the bios to the hard drive? If so, how can this be removed?
could be the ghost was not correcly backed up, if the hdd was faulty and you used Ghost to backup?
Flash the bios? what hdd is this a sata did you install the sata drivers first?
can you provide any more information about the make and model of the computer previos hdd ? new hdd? they should be exactly the same as the original?
OEM??
xp pro sp1 sp2 ?
What did you use to partition it?
why fat32/ not ntfs/
I have this in my database maybe you could use some steps from it?
This procedure was performed on FAT32 drives. Install Windows 2000 to a different partition than Windows XP. Allow the computer to boot into Windows 2000.
Repairing the Windows XP Boot Loader
NOTE: Some users have reported that Step 1 is not necessary, but in testing I found that it was. Since the C: drive is FAT32, you can use a Windows 98/Me boot disk and skip
Step 1, if you wish, but you may find that you need to do it anyway.
1.
Boot your computer with the Windows XP CD. When prompted to Setup or Repair, choose Repair. In the Recovery Console, enter the following commands:
2.
FIXBOOT, answer Yes
3.
CD \
4.
ATTRIB -H NTLDR
5.
ATTRIB -S NTLDR
6.
ATTRIB -R NTLDR
7.
ATTRIB -H NTDETECT.COM
8.
ATTRIB -S NTDETECT.COM
9.
ATTRIB -R NTDETECT.COM
10.
COPY X:\I386\NTLDR C:\
11.
COPY X:\I386\NTDETECT.COM C:\
In the last two commands, X is the letter of your CD drive.
==========================
Norton's Ghost 2002 is a Symantec software "solution" that provides several options for making a complete copy (or "image") of a hard disk or partition. This image contains all the information required to recreate the partition on a new drive or to restore the partition on the same drive. From DOS, Ghost makes a compressed copy of FAT (Win95 through Win ME), or NTFS (Win XP/2000) partitions, and saves them to another partition or hard disk, or to removable media, including CDR/RW's and Iomega Zip/Jaz disks.
Ghost is incredibly powerful, but has some limitations. Ghost can make and restore an image of a NTFS disk, but Ghost can't save the image to a NTFS partition, so you'll need to have removable media or one FAT 32 partition on the same or different computer to back up NTFS partitions. Ghost also is capable of making copies from one computer to the hard disk on another computer via a TCP/IP network connnection, parallel port connection or USB connection. Ghost cannot save to USB/Parallel port cd writers or zip drives, but you can save images to your hard disk and move them to the usb/parallel device using other software. Ghost does not allow you to make partial or selective backups, but once a backup is made, you can add files to the backup image using the Windows based Ghost Explorer.
Read on>>
http://www.epinions.com/content_66533822084
Flash the bios? what hdd is this a sata did you install the sata drivers first?
can you provide any more information about the make and model of the computer previos hdd ? new hdd? they should be exactly the same as the original?
OEM??
xp pro sp1 sp2 ?
What did you use to partition it?
why fat32/ not ntfs/
I have this in my database maybe you could use some steps from it?
This procedure was performed on FAT32 drives. Install Windows 2000 to a different partition than Windows XP. Allow the computer to boot into Windows 2000.
Repairing the Windows XP Boot Loader
NOTE: Some users have reported that Step 1 is not necessary, but in testing I found that it was. Since the C: drive is FAT32, you can use a Windows 98/Me boot disk and skip
Step 1, if you wish, but you may find that you need to do it anyway.
1.
Boot your computer with the Windows XP CD. When prompted to Setup or Repair, choose Repair. In the Recovery Console, enter the following commands:
2.
FIXBOOT, answer Yes
3.
CD \
4.
ATTRIB -H NTLDR
5.
ATTRIB -S NTLDR
6.
ATTRIB -R NTLDR
7.
ATTRIB -H NTDETECT.COM
8.
ATTRIB -S NTDETECT.COM
9.
ATTRIB -R NTDETECT.COM
10.
COPY X:\I386\NTLDR C:\
11.
COPY X:\I386\NTDETECT.COM C:\
In the last two commands, X is the letter of your CD drive.
==========================
Norton's Ghost 2002 is a Symantec software "solution" that provides several options for making a complete copy (or "image") of a hard disk or partition. This image contains all the information required to recreate the partition on a new drive or to restore the partition on the same drive. From DOS, Ghost makes a compressed copy of FAT (Win95 through Win ME), or NTFS (Win XP/2000) partitions, and saves them to another partition or hard disk, or to removable media, including CDR/RW's and Iomega Zip/Jaz disks.
Ghost is incredibly powerful, but has some limitations. Ghost can make and restore an image of a NTFS disk, but Ghost can't save the image to a NTFS partition, so you'll need to have removable media or one FAT 32 partition on the same or different computer to back up NTFS partitions. Ghost also is capable of making copies from one computer to the hard disk on another computer via a TCP/IP network connnection, parallel port connection or USB connection. Ghost cannot save to USB/Parallel port cd writers or zip drives, but you can save images to your hard disk and move them to the usb/parallel device using other software. Ghost does not allow you to make partial or selective backups, but once a backup is made, you can add files to the backup image using the Windows based Ghost Explorer.
Read on>>
http://www.epinions.com/content_66533822084
ASKER
Thanks for the tips. Have tried fixboot and NTDETECT/NTLDR, still no joy. Still just giving me a flashing cursor when reading the HDD
For more info:
ACER Aspire 1681LCi
XP Home from supplied Acer recovery disks which have the ghost image on them
Used the Western Digital utillity to prepare the new 80Gb WD drive, partitioned 40/38Gb both as NTFS.
Ghost copied the image as Fat32 and then seemingly it should have run the convert util for NTFS.
Still think that the System CD should have given me more options than the 2 I got at the end (Load image or exit)
Baffled at the moment. I would install from a standard XP OEM disk but there are other software packages bundled in the image which are required (Office etc).
For more info:
ACER Aspire 1681LCi
XP Home from supplied Acer recovery disks which have the ghost image on them
Used the Western Digital utillity to prepare the new 80Gb WD drive, partitioned 40/38Gb both as NTFS.
Ghost copied the image as Fat32 and then seemingly it should have run the convert util for NTFS.
Still think that the System CD should have given me more options than the 2 I got at the end (Load image or exit)
Baffled at the moment. I would install from a standard XP OEM disk but there are other software packages bundled in the image which are required (Office etc).
To quick post back your hdd should have a 2nd partition recovery, if you boot from the cd choose r for recovery then the d partition I think not sure.
Will see if I can find the manual, do you have the manual?
With DEL I do know if using this you will lose some stuff and have to re-install updates as well.
Will see if I can find the manual, do you have the manual?
With DEL I do know if using this you will lose some stuff and have to re-install updates as well.
is this yours?
Product Line: Mobile Systems(MS)
Model: Aspire 1680
Date Created: 2004/07/23
Date Last Modified: 2004/07/23
User's Manual Part Number:
It says for linux??
http://csd.acer.com.tw/acer/URMUL1.NSF/1af87a750eeeb70f0825628f006e0bfc/f6783f35d9743d7148256eda003c2e66?OpenDocument
Product Line: Mobile Systems(MS)
Model: Aspire 1680
Date Created: 2004/07/23
Date Last Modified: 2004/07/23
User's Manual Part Number:
It says for linux??
http://csd.acer.com.tw/acer/URMUL1.NSF/1af87a750eeeb70f0825628f006e0bfc/f6783f35d9743d7148256eda003c2e66?OpenDocument
ASKER
There is no recovery partition. I'm loading a Ghost image from CD anyway. Manual is not really advanced enough to cover this problem. Have emailed Acer help and they have not replied.
Norton Ghost can be used for resizing partitions as it always restores the image using the size of target partition. For example to extend the size of C : partition on my laptop. The laptop has a 30G drive that was split into three partitions:
C: 12G(NTFS)
D: 7G (FAT32)
E: 9G (FAT32).
I did not have a version of Partition Magic 8.0 that can do this trick and Partition Magic 6.0 did not have the capability to extent the NTFS partition. So I proceed using Ghost in the following way (please note that partition moving operations are pretty dangerous staff ):
So you areattempting to install windows onto a new hdd?
These are extracts fro subject references:
Backup all the drive (partitions C, D, and E) on USB drive using Norton Ghost one partition at a time
Backup the whole drive into one image into USB drive (this will be the rescue image in case I mess something)
Delete content of partition E: by quick reformat
Create image of partition C on partition E: using Norton Ghost.
Delete partition D using Windows XP disk manager
Delete partition C and recreate it to the larger size 12+7=~19G using Windows install disk
Restore the image of C partition from E: drive to newly created partition using Norton Ghost 2003 booted from floppy.
http://www.softpanorama.org/Unixification/norton_ghost.shtml
Description
"Norton Ghost works by creating an exact image of a PC's hard drive, effectively taking a "snapshot" of all the files -- hidden, visible, and active -- that make up the operating system, applications, and configuration settings. The image can then be copied to any number of PCs, thereby creating completely identical installations."
http://www.cit.cornell.edu/training/materials/facstaff/labimsw/labimsw.html
Pre-imaging info
http://ghost.radified.com/ghost_1y.htm
C: 12G(NTFS)
D: 7G (FAT32)
E: 9G (FAT32).
I did not have a version of Partition Magic 8.0 that can do this trick and Partition Magic 6.0 did not have the capability to extent the NTFS partition. So I proceed using Ghost in the following way (please note that partition moving operations are pretty dangerous staff ):
So you areattempting to install windows onto a new hdd?
These are extracts fro subject references:
Backup all the drive (partitions C, D, and E) on USB drive using Norton Ghost one partition at a time
Backup the whole drive into one image into USB drive (this will be the rescue image in case I mess something)
Delete content of partition E: by quick reformat
Create image of partition C on partition E: using Norton Ghost.
Delete partition D using Windows XP disk manager
Delete partition C and recreate it to the larger size 12+7=~19G using Windows install disk
Restore the image of C partition from E: drive to newly created partition using Norton Ghost 2003 booted from floppy.
http://www.softpanorama.org/Unixification/norton_ghost.shtml
Description
"Norton Ghost works by creating an exact image of a PC's hard drive, effectively taking a "snapshot" of all the files -- hidden, visible, and active -- that make up the operating system, applications, and configuration settings. The image can then be copied to any number of PCs, thereby creating completely identical installations."
http://www.cit.cornell.edu/training/materials/facstaff/labimsw/labimsw.html
Pre-imaging info
http://ghost.radified.com/ghost_1y.htm
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ASKER
Well, I ended up using the an XP disk to reinstall and loaded alternative software on. Ghost image could not be loade3d to another partition unfortunately
Because the restore disk had a password protected Ghost image and Acer tech support ignored my 4 emails this was necessary, but had they helped out it would not have been so. Thanks to Merete for the suggestions, all points coming your way.
Because the restore disk had a password protected Ghost image and Acer tech support ignored my 4 emails this was necessary, but had they helped out it would not have been so. Thanks to Merete for the suggestions, all points coming your way.
Thank you Imperialdata hope it all works out for you.
Regards M
Regards M