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restore image to HP computer will not boot

 

I have a backup that I tried to restore to another disk. When I installed the disk into the HP computer it will not boot. All I get is a blank screen. There is nothing to indicate a problem with the computer itself. I can see the HP bios setup and boot from a boot disk. This is the same problemI had from another discussion I posted “cloned windows xp drive will not boot”. I give up on trying figuring this out and just did a clean install of windows and now it’s back haunt me again.

HP D530 CMT

Wind XP 32 bit

AOMEI Backupper Std 4.0.2


Comments

  • By the way, the disk is set up as MBR partition style. There are no other partitions on the disk, only one.

  • My first guess would be a corrupted or damaged MBR. Here's a good link on fixing it in Win XP: http://helpdeskgeek.com/how-to/fix-mbr-xp-vista/  Need to take this one step at a time and this is as good a place to start as any. Good luck.

  • Ok I ran fixmbr and fixboot and it still will not boot. I made two or three backups and all will not boot. When I started having trouble with this computer a few months ago It did the same thing. II am at a loss on thiswon

  • Can you see the drive you're trying to boot from in your BIOS? If so, make sure it's the first in boot order. Basic stuff but again necessary to eliminate the obvious first.

  • The bios sees the drive and I changed the boot order and it still will not boot.

  • edited April 2017

    Can you boot into Windows with any PC you have? If so, hook the restored drive up to it and see if you can see it in disk management or file explorer. If you can open it up in file explorer you can see what files were restored and which might be missing. If you can see it in disk management, you may be able to check it's health or other attributes. 

    What puzzles me is when I don't have a valid C (system disk) hooked up, after the BIOS processes, I get a message displayed that it can't find a system drive. You said in your first post that all you get is a blank screen. If you're not getting that message you may be dealing with a bad motherboard. If you are getting that message, I think we're back to a corrupted MBR or a corrupted image.

  • edited April 2017

    One more question. Are you putting the image into the PC for which it was made or another PC? This isn't clear in your original post. Usually to restore an image, you put a new HD in the computer and run the restore from a bootable recovery disk and restore a saved image from either a secondary HD, network HD or portable HD. It doesn't sound like this is what you did.

  • I have already hooked up the drive as a slave and can see the files. I haven’t compared them file by file to see if anything is missing but it all seems to be there. I will check disk management attributes again and report back. I unhooked the IDE cable and tried to boot it and got the error message you described. I hooked it up with the cable and the same thing, after the HP boot splash screen it’s just blank.  It does seem like maybe a bad mother board but I have never seen a board go bad like this. I can reinstall windows on it but  Ican’t restore windows from a backup image. As far as how I restored the image I did it two ways. I first restored using a bootable USB with a connected externa ldrive. I also installed the drive as a slave in another working computer and restored from an image saved on the C: drive of that computer with the same results.


  • edited April 2017

    Since you're using the standard version you can't do a restore to a dissimilar PC. That may be what you need to try. You may want to download the 30 day free trial of the pro version and try using that option. It's just a shot, but you might as well try it. Put the new HD in the PC you want it in, use the USB bootable media and restore an image to that drive using the dissimilar hardward function of restore. Then try to boot it up. This is looking more like a bad image.

  •  I installed the drive in another computer and Disk Management reports “D: 38.28 GB NTFS Healthy (Active). I also compared the files. I didn’t look and compare file by file but I right clicked on Windows folder and both image and drive show Windows 5.27 GB, Contain 22383 Files. So it all looks good. I looked at the motherboard and there is a capacitor that looks bad so I’m thinking it’s a motherboard. I’m not clear on why you think restoring the image using the dissimilar hardware function with the trial version would work but maybe like you posted “It’s just a shot” . If you think it’s worth a try I will but for now we need to make a decision weather this is worth the time spent on an old computer.   

  • edited April 2017

    If when you booted with no C system drive attached and got the message it didn't detect a system drive your mobo is probably ok. Since you just get a blank screen with this drive it appears it sees a system drive but can't load it. So I think we're back to a MBR problem. You said before your drive is an IDE. This could also be a slave/master issue. If you try the trial version of pro, you'll need to create the bootable media from it so the restore to dissimilar hardware function shows up there when you boot from it to do a restore.

    If that doesn't work email tech support. I'm out of ideas. Sorry.

  • Did you restore to the same computer?

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