Fixboot cannot find the system drive

[dnovalkowski]

Hey guys. Having an issue with an xp home dell laptop that won't boot after doing a drive to drive clone with DriveImage XML from a hdd that was connected via USB. Initially after the clone, I couldn't boot even with the Hiren's 'boot first hard drive feature'. But after trying a few things, doing a chkdsk seemed to change this so now I can boot it with hirens. But just can't get it to boot on its own. I have gone into the Recovery console to try Fixmbr and fixboot. Fixmbr seems to go through the motions but fixboot returns 'cannot find the system drive'. Which I thought that was strange. Ive used fixboot in a lot of instances before without that result. Any ideas how to get this comp booted?

 

[mr m]

Did you use an equal or larger capacity drive than the bad original for the image and did you use the original XP PC to restore that image? Was the original drive IDE? If the replacement is SATA that might explain the boot issue.

I've used DriveImage XML in the past and have had varying rates of success with it. Sometimes the system would hang during the cloning. Other times I had driver issues because of using a different system to create the clone but that behavior is expected.

I finally coughed up the dough and bought RecoverMyFiles V5.

 

[mr m]

I just found this:

http://www.runtime.org/driveimage_faq.htm

I restored my boot drive, why does it not boot?

A. To boot from a drive:
The boot partition should be located on the first drive (DISK0), which is usually the master drive.
The boot partition should be the first partition on the drive.
The boot partition must be a "primary" partition.
The boot partition must be "active".

 

[dnovalkowski]

I used an equal size hard drive and I used an xp CD that I got from my digital life but not the original the original drive was IDE.

 

[dnovalkowski]

I just found this:

http://www.runtime.org/driveimage_faq.htm

I restored my boot drive, why does it not boot?

A. To boot from a drive:
The boot partition should be located on the first drive (DISK0), which is usually the master drive.
The boot partition should be the first partition on the drive.
The boot partition must be a "primary" partition.
The boot partition must be "active".

I believe all of those are true in this case

 

[GEGeek]

Just for clarification - you did a drive to drive clone or created an image file from the original saved to the USB drive?
GEGeek

 

[Mr.Mike]

So no BIOS screen shows up? If it does, make sure the primary is set up correctly. Since it wasn't mentioned, have you made sure the right partition is selected for boot?