Attempted to upgrade HD and got "Error loading operating system"

Hi,

I have a Sony Vaio VGN-FE21B (I got it in the UK). Specifications attached.

To date the only change I have made is to replace the memory with 2x1GB sticks so now have a total of 2GB RAM.

I've just attempted to upgrade the HD from 80GB to 320GB.

The new drive is a Western Digital 320GB 2.5" SATA. The old drive is a Hitachi Travelstar 80GB. I also purchased a Transcend SATA 2.5" USB 2 enclosure to assist with the transfer.

First attempt, using a BartPE boot CD with Norton Ghost to ghost the old HD to the new HD. All went well as far as I could tell.

Physically swapped the drives over and booted and got "Error loading operating system". Booted from BartPE again to check if the drive was accessible - it was. Assumed corrupt MBR so downloaded mbrfix.exe ( http://www.ambience.sk/fdisk-master-boot-record-windows-linux-lilo-fixmbr.php) and ran that against the new drive and tried to boot again - same error.

Tried another product, Acronis Migrate Easy 7.0 ( https://www.acronis.co.uk/homecomputing/products/migrateeasy/) which again seemed to work OK but when I came to boot, same error. Again tried using mbrfix.exe with no effect.

Any help would be very gratefully received.

Cheers,

Dale

 

What about Acronis True Image? Also make sure that the partition is set to active etc....

 

Can you say more please - what does "true Image" do that "Migrate Easy" doesn't? How does one set a partition to active and which partition should be set? Cheers

 

OK - according to disk management that partition is 'active' - the main drive partition is 'system' but I assume active automatically becomes system when in the main drive bay?

 

My recommended technique is to download the trial version of the latest Acronis True Image, install it and make a bootable CD then use the bootable CD to do the cloning (cloning is an option among the imaging functions).

John

 

Thanks for your ideas... but how are they different to what I have already tried? I do appreciate the help but it takes a long time to clone the drive... so I guess I'd like to know it has some chance of working prior to committing the time.

 

The latest Acronis TrueImage should have a few more bugs fixed and is Vista compatible.

BTW, did you install Vista (your specs say XP)? In this case you do need the latest TrueImage since Microsoft changed the boot files and the older software doesn't know what to do with the Vista boot files. I know from experience a year or so back that the previous Acronis cloning software couldn't properly clone Vista or dual boot Vista-XP.

John

 

I'm still using plain old XP - Media Center Edition actually.

 

You could try the various fixes discussed here.

Otherwise leave a new clone process running overnight.

John

 

My current HD has 3 partitions, a Recovery Partition, an Active Partition and a Healthy Partition - I assume that the recovery partition doesn't cause any problems for Acronis to copy? The new HD has the same 3 partitions - just larger.

 

I can't remember how well it handles the recovery partition. That probably depends on the partition format used by the manufacturer (some use a customised version of TrueImage). If it has been copied OK then it probably is OK.

That's a separate problem to the boot issue. One thought: did you try booting with the old HDD in the external enclosure? I once had a nasty problem where Windows was still looking on the old HDD for the paging file.

John

 

I'm fairly sure its not getting to the point of looking for the paging file... its not making it to the boot.ini file as far as I can tell.

 

Further... I tried XXClone to repair the bootability of the new disk. No change. Then I tried the following: http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windowsxp.general/msg/8855796167331b7c - again no change. I'm thinking that if this last option doesn't work I'm at the end of the line? Do I try another type of drive? Or do I give up and use the new drive as an external drive?

 

Have you tried True Image yet? You have two of us suggesting this to you.

Sorry I have no idea what "Migrate Easy" does, or how it works etc.... But seriously, try True Image. Make the Bootdisk and do it from there. Make sure you select that you want to clone all your partitions.

 

Hi
I had a similar problem after changing the HDD to a different port.I went to recovery console and typed bootcfg /rebuild.
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/r_c_cmds.htm#Bootcfg

Give it a try.

 

Migrate Easy is another piece of software from the same people as True Image - I'd bet that the clone functionality has the same code base.

That aside, I'm fairly confident that its not related to the cloning process because as I mentioned I used a Windows boot disk, ran the recovery console and rebuilt the boot bits similar to as suggested by RAMBO29.

Logically this leads me to think that its not the data that is the problem here but some incompatability at the bios/boot level - if such a thing is possible.

If you really still think that True Image has a chance where rebuilding the boot data using Windows recovery console failed then please let me know your logic and I'll give it a go...

And thanks for all the ideas... its just I do have to be logically selective because there are so many ideas and so few hours in the day - thats if I want to earn any money as well!

 

Yes, MigrateEasy is the same base as the cloning function within TrueImage and, according to the manual, the current version has been updated to support Vista. Therefore it should have worked OK.

Otherwise I wonder whether you need to look at the jumper settings. Could you create a Linux Live CD and boot from that with the new HDD in the computer and check that it can read the HDD OK.

John

 

Check in the BIOS to make sure that the BIOS didn't monkey with the boot order when the drive was removed (small chance, but worth a double-check). Also, what I've found that works in this situation (I've done it myself twice on an old _Sony vaio Z1A) is to boot from the old hdd, then use Acronis True Image to clone the old hdd onto the new hdd, mark the correct partition on the new hdd as "active," and then remove the drive letter assignment (I'm not entirely sure that makes a difference, but I think it prevents one from ending up with the system partition being labelled as something other than "c:"). As I said, I've done two hdd replacements on the vaio this way with no ill effects.

Additionally, have you checked the new hdd to verify that it isn't defective? It's possible that there's a bad sector sitting right where one of the necessary boot components is - I've also had that happen on the vaio.

 

The only logic I have behind using True Image is because that is what I have used quite a few times. It's free, so it doesn't hurt to try. But it is time consming, so I understand your reasons for not wanting to.