need help with Hard Drive upgrade

K

kerk

New Member
Hope someone can help me. I cloned my laptop hard drive from a 10GB to a brand new 40GB drive. When I installed the new drive, my laptop worked perfectly for a day. Suddenly, when trying to boot, I just got a black screen with a cursor blinking at me. I've tried re-seating the drive, pulling the power and battery, and repairing windows with the repair cd. Nothing works. I put the old hard drive back in and the laptop boots. The files on the new drive are visible when I connect it via usb. Also, I have to replace the old drive because I am getting the SMART msg of impending failure.

Any help out there? I am out of ideas.
 
First you need to see a Welcome to the Computer Forum! http://www.computerforum.com/70672-official-welcome-thread.html along with a chance to review the http://www.computerforum.com/52038-forum-rules.html

Cloning any installation of Windows or another OS like Linux works best when the new drive is identical. If that's XP there you would need to create a new primary partition on the 40gb and install Windows all over again in order to see XP create the new hardware profile. The cloning process may have also had some of it's own glitches due to an incomplete duplication. Whenever a drive is added or swapped nothing works better then a fresh installation of the OS and the programs used.
 
I read the rules before and I'm sure I have not broken any of them. This is a legal copy for personal use that will be the only copy of the software.

The OS is XP Pro and I considered creating two partitions, but went with one and what is perlplexing is that I was able to rstart the lap top a dozen times before the boot stopped. The restarts were mostly due to windows updates that I had to catch up on. Once I started getting the SMART alert, I turned off the automatic windows update.
 
Unlike the previous versions of Windows XP Home and Pro alike are wrapped around the hardwares on the system it's installed onto. The boot drive that Windows is installed onto can be considered a major hardware since that's where all of the installed files go on. Since the clone was from perhaps an older 10gb 4,200rpm ide or sata drive to a new larger, faster 5,400 or 7,200rpm drive you just a made a major swap there.

The method of booting up with the installation disk to the recovery console and entering the "Fixboot" and "Fixmbr" maybe your only option if one of the updates isn't hanging from a bad install or invalid boot information new seeing lockups. If you don't have the repair install option available then your last option is to delete the current for a fresh installation of Windows. You may see Windows running normally on the current cloned partition but the clean install on a new one would be your best move. Do this will you can still access the old drive for files you want to keep.

Once you see a fresh copy of Windows all updates should go on without problems following the installation of the validation tool. To put it simply the clone there is failing on you. With a clean copy of Windows on you have a new mbr as well as a fresh set of board drivers off of the original cd or better yet the support site. Having multibooted different versions and swapping drives in and out that's your best move. Do you have just a recovery disk? Those are usually matched to the make, size, and type of drive as well as the other hardwares.
 
Thanks for the response. Yes I have the recovery cd. I tried to use it with the new drive but after doing the "repair" option the screen just went blank with no action or cursor.

I am in the process of re-cloning the drive in the hopes that I can boot up like the first time and then maybe use the repair cd to fix whatever may be wrong. It will take a couple of hours before it is finished. I'll post the results.
 
No dice. The laptop won't boot with the new drive and it won't boot from the cd at all. The cd spins for a couple of seconds and then just stops.
 
Oops spoke too soon. The cd was just thinking. It came up bur for some reason I couldn't go into the repair console. It kept asking for a password, which I have never used and just hitting return did not work. So I tried to reinstall and it went through the whole thing up to the reboot. On the reboot, blank screen and blinking cursor. I can't believe it!
 
Now you are running into the problem with recovery disks locked to the original drive. On most systems with preinstalled OSs there are backups stored on the original drive often in a hidden partition. The recovery disk won't work on a new drive since the product key and other information is predetermined for the 10gb drive. You will need a new Windows installation disk to see a fresh installation go on the 40gb you just bought.
 
You are kind of stuck in a bind there without it. All you can really do there until you can grab an OEM release for system builders at least is try to backup as much as you can to removable media in the event the 10gb quits before then. If you had a cd writer available you could download a Linux distro to run on the 40gb to see if that drive is working normally. This is one main reason that I never buy anything with a preinstalled OS. Once something goes... :eek: ! foobarville even to upgrade. :(
 
Luckily I have backed up "My Documents" on my desktop. I have a connection via wireless networking. Is there any way I could back up the other programs/drivers that I've loaded on my laptop? I can't think of how I could do that.

I'm going to try one more thing tonight. I found in the system help how to get around the admin password, so I did that on my old drive. Now I am going to try the cloning again and hope that I can get into the Repair Console and try the fixboot. I'll lst you know.
 
Recloned and now I can get the repair console so I tried fixmbr and fixboot but it still won't boot. Anything else I can try now that I can get in there?
 
The main problem with the new clone still is that installation is still glued to the old drive. That's how XP works. You could try a repair install with the recovery disk to see that has a Windows installer or is just a restoration tool for backups stored on the 10gb. The article at the link gives a great amount of detail on how to proceed if the recovery disk is actually for Windows. http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

As far as drivers and programs installed you would have to have the original software disks or download for both driver sets and downloaded programs saved in folders for copy onto another drive or removable media. One way of storing backups of updates for Windows and hardwares along with utilities and other types of programs can be seen on one drive here. Three W.Explorer windows were opened to how you go from the root into the main folder and proceed into even more.

storagefoldersqu2.jpg
 
The most common drawback seen when cloning to a larger drive would be seeing a 10gb partition on the 40gb drive. The image created for this is based on the 10gb size of the original. But you are not going to really get anywhere on a new drive anyways without a fresh partition along with a full fresh copy of Windows to work with. Cloning is mainly done by companies that have any number of identical systems to maintain under a corporate license there. You are simply going to have to shop for a full install disk.
 
Yeah, I guess you are right. Thanks for all the help. Maybe I'll look on eBay. I might find a better price there.

I wonder why the new disk booted up ok the first day though?
 
One reason simple reason may have the initial lack of detection of the 40gb drive by the old installation. Once Windows tried to install the new drive the boot intregrity was lost. If your current disk was at least equal to an upgrade you could first install an older version of Windows for the upgrade. But that's not going to be the case there.

Just remember to download the updates for the system when using a new install disk. $26 for XP Pro OEM http://cgi.ebay.com/Brand-New-Micro...092368078QQcategoryZ41888QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

You can find Vista priced for far less then XP Home or Pro version except the XP Pro 64bit edition.
 
Hey thanks for the link. I didn't know xp could be had so cheaply. I'll check the Vista prices while I'm at it. I normally keep the automatic update turned on so I should be good there.
 
Looking at different listings, some of them come with a coa and some do not. What is a coa and do I need it?
 
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