Stuck At Windows Screen

epidemik

epidemik

Active Member
When I start up, my computer get stuck at the blue screen that usually says windows is starting or something. Instead, it just has the Sold Blue on the top and bottom, and the blue gradiant in the center with the windows logo. it doesnt say starting up and it wont start up.

I just changed HDs so my boot drive may not be set to c...it is set up as master though and the jumpers are right so wouldnt that automatically make it c. Im new to this hd switching stuff. I used ghost to clone it then made it the master.

Any idea whats going on?
Thanks

BTW, i may be able to use the old HD, im not sure, it hasnt been reformatted yet.
 
The main problem seen with cloning any installation of Windows is the need for a brand new mbr. Cloning works best with server editions and not the average stand alone OS. Creating disk images for backing data is one thing while Windows needs a fresh install to see that all things are installed properly. A cloned copy is subject to having things missing during the process.

The copy of Windows loaded will always see the drive it's installed onto as the C drive. It then offsets all other partitions and drives installed by assigning each one seen as a logical drive it's own letter other then C. To see Windows running on the newer drive there you will need to install a fresh copy along with all programs to see that made bootable with the active primary there.
 
Whats MBR?

Grr so I have todo a fresh install to upgrade to a larger HD?
I thought i read somewhere that if you cloned it with Ghost it would work.

I have the 4gb wich i fresh installed to a few months ago. Then just yesturday, i got a 20GB. I cloned the 4gb to the 20GB using Norton Ghost. Then tried to boot off the 20GB

Just to tell you
 
The cloning of drives is usually seen at large companies where all dirves and hardwares are identical. The main problem right from the start there is the difference in drives in size and maybe drive speed in rpm as well. XP and Vista incorporate a new hardware profile process which takes a snapshot of the hardwares installed as seeing a brand new master boot record(mbr) created upon installation.

You simply saw a 4gb primary transferred onto a 20gb drive without an mbr to work with. A clean fresh install of Windows is what you need there to see it up and running again. Simply keep the 4gb slaved for copying files from it after you see this done. The thing needed there to see working results is to repartition and format the drive to see the actual 18+gb of space you will see available for use and then install Windows to a new primary.
 
This sounds like a pretty old system. Some older motherboards will not support a 20 gig hard drive. It all depends on what model board you have. Some of the older ones will not let you run anything over 8 gigs.

Do you know what motherboard you have? Is this in a pre built system like a Dell? If so let us know the model number of the system.
 
On many older board the LBA setting for larger drives has to be set in the bios or a small software to bypass the bios limitations was used. Generally that was seen with seeing a 9X version of Windows installed to a large capacity drive over 55gb like DrFat32 released by Western Digital. Had a 13gb in an I486 work without problems. Newer ATA100 drives are also backward compatible to ATA66 boards while Socket A boards are mostly ATA100 already.
 
Its Asus something. Ive had a 20 GB drive on it before but the drive failed. Also my slave is 20GB so i know it take 20gb.

Well, i guess i gotta reinstall :( i hate having to download all my programs again but i dont have enough space to keep the installers. Thanks for the info guys.
 
If the 20gb is at least a 5400rpm WD model no problem. The old ATA33 and 66 drives might see a problem while you still saw a small 8gb work. Your problem there was trying to clone one small primary to a larger drive as well as a lack of seeing the mbr created on the 29gb. A clean install always works best anyways. When downloading a practice of backing things up to a folder or removable media can save alot of time.
 
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