Unbootable new system

[ArBiTaL 24]

Hi all,

Basically, the problem is: I have a server, which acts as a webserver, printserver, etc. The onld one i had was just a basic dell workstation, 400Mhz / 256 ram / 60GB hard drive.

However, I bought an upgraded one: a P4 1.6 / 320 and I thought: I'll just move the old hard drive straight across to the new machine.

However, in short, Windows doesn't like this. It always Bluescreened on startup and wouldn't boot. I assumed this was because it was finding that the installed drivers (for the P2 400) were different from this new machine.

Installing a new hard drive and installing windows fresh onto it worked fine, however. The problem is though, losing this data / reformatting is not an option, since i'd never be able to get the server reconfigured like it was.

I now have a backup of the data on another hard drive (which seems to be half way through a windows installation, but won't work on the new system either way) and I keep moving it between the two systems, in the 400 as a secondary disk to move files and back forth, and a bootable one on the 1.6.

I've tried many different things, all to no avail: Taking all the drivers from a newly installed disk on the 1.6 and overwriting the backup OS with them, just deleting drivers, etc.

I believe that the windows XP feature on the disk that deletes and rewrites all the system files may fix it, but as far I have not been able to invoke it (It only appear on the windows bootup installer if certain system files are missing or something, and I haven't been able to make it appear).

Any idea how to make this restre option available for the windows boot disk? (Not "Automated system recovery" that requires a floppy disk (in the file loading stage) and not recovery console: the other, automated one)

or any other general ideas how to fix this?
Please help ^_^;;;;


Thanks,
Arby

 

[ziggo0]

Your in just the situation I love to be in.

1. Have you tried to put the drive back into the old rig and backup lets say, across your network to another computer? That would work quite well.

2. Try putting the drive into another comptuer. Boot from the other computers original OS and let the drive you just put in act as a secondary drive, copy the files over then later on, once the drive you put in is refomratted and ready to role, copy over the network.

3. If what i stated above does not work because your documents are behind a NTFS/User protected folder, you can try using this program called NTFS DOS Professional to convert the drive to Fat32 and take the files that way. I had to do that once and it worked great. Got right past that NTFS file protection

 

[Oklahoma Wolf]

This is XP right?

Have you tried an XP repair install? I've successfully moved XP boot drives across different systems before, but it's tricky. If the IDE drivers for the new system aren't installed beforehand this is one cause of this - a repair install might help. I have fixed this a couple times on my own hardware without the repair install, but my memory is not being cooperative in reminding me how I did it.

Easiest way I can think of getting around this is to put the drive back in the old system, and once in Windows force the new IDE/SCSI drivers to install in the add new hardware wizard.

Here's the MS support article: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314082

Hope this helps you some... good luck.

 

[ArBiTaL 24]

ziggo0 - Well, the problem is, it's not *just* copying the files over. The entire, exact contect of the drive need copying, including the windows folders and etc. Unfortunately, if i do that, i get these errors.

Oklahoma Wolf - Is the repair install that automated procedure when you boot from a windows disk that deleted a load of system files and re-installs them? If so, it won't boot with that option, unfortunatly. However, I'll try that reg fix in the link you provided and report back. Thank-you

 

[Oklahoma Wolf]

I'll be interested to hear how that works - I don't think I ever tried it.

 

[ArBiTaL 24]

Update: Unfortunately, this cannot work since you have to be booted to that drive to apply the registy fix, and I cannot boot to that drive. Just after the post stage it flashes up a message too fast for me to see and restarts the computer in a continuous loop.

How do you make it give the repair install option though?

 

[Oklahoma Wolf]

Here's a site explaining the process: http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

 

[ArBiTaL 24]

That's great, thank you for your help