Win 7 imaging problem

[craigr1982]

Hey folks, hope you can help me.

I've recently bought a SSD to use purely as a boot drive (for now) and want to copy my current win7 partition onto it. I've got a copy of Acronis Drive Image and made the backup and restore easily. BUT

Everytime I boot from the new drive I get BOOTMGR not found, ctrl, alt del to restart. I've tried using my Win7 disc for the repair screen but it says words to the effect of.

"This disc is not compatible with your version of Windows 7 so unable to repair."

Its the same disc I used to install it when I first got it. Anyone know of a workaround?

I don't really want to do a fresh install as I have loads of customizations and software installed already, which is why I tried imaging in the first place.

 

[nepas]

errr I may be wrong,but its not a backup image you made is it?I thought you needed to clone the drive.

 

[AMDFTW]

just use ghost fella

 

[alienware]

Right I can help you with this.

The reason this is happening is because of the way Windows 7 works. It puts its boot partition on a 100mb or so lump of drive and most cloning apps can only do one partition. I have exactly the same issue using Acronis.

Why it won't let you use your disc to replace/repair the boot partition? god only knows.

 

[nepas]

I used EASEUS Partition Master and it cloned my drive fine,but tbh I have used Acronis before and that worked fine as well.

 

[Diablo]

As Alien says, look for a 100MB partition on one of your disks, (if you have three or more disks it may not have made it on the same disk wierdly). You need to clone both bits.

 

[thestepster]

i know the pain of a fresh install mate i had to do it on my ssd, but you wont get trim on the drive with it being cloned

 

[alienware]

As Alien says, look for a 100MB partition on one of your disks, (if you have three or more disks it may not have made it on the same disk wierdly). You need to clone both bits.

With Acronis you can't. It sees both of the partitions but you cannot check both of them, only one at once. This might have been resolved in later editions but I don't know. I really hate Ghost now because like all other Norton products they are full of fat and bloat.

The first time it happened I did a complete reinstall and was really bloody mad

Second time I just booted the cd, clicked repair and it rebooted and repaired. I also created a boot recovery disc but I can't for the life of me remember how the heck I did it lol.

OK I have just had a pokeroo and realise what's going on. When you create a backup image it works fine and clones the entire drive. However, when you go to restore the image this happens.

Note you get a choice. Either the drive *or* the MBR. And you can not select both, only one or the other.

I don't know if it is even possible to do the MBR and then the image, but I highly doubt it. It's either a bug in the one I have or it simply wasn't designed for Windows 7. Either way it didn't matter. It took me about 30 mins to repair with my boot DVD.

However, and here is the kicker. I don't know if this dude is using a naughty loader. If he is? well, that could be the reason why Windows is giving him that message. I know that loaders mess with the boot files and all sorts of other stuff.

I am not using a loader. I don't need to as I have genuine keys.

Now you can try going to a recovery console if it will let you and running

/fixboot

/fixmbr

Basically those are the commands that Windows will run if you do a startup or repair. That's basically it.

(BTW I am not pointing the accusing finger, more trying to be helpful.. If you are using a loader dude then re-run the loader and remove it.. This is totally possible.. I had to help a mate out who got a Technet serial from a so called friend and then found out six months after building an install that this friend had sold the serial to numerous others and it was banned)

i know the pain of a fresh install mate i had to do it on my ssd, but you wont get trim on the drive with it being cloned

This is true. However if you clone an SSD to an SSD then you will. And I think I have worked out why now.

Windows detects the SSD during a fresh install. If it detects one it knows it is an SSD and it does all of the needed gumpth that SSD need. Enables TRIM, disables Defrag, changes the size of virtual memory according to the drive ETC ETC.

I think the reason TRIM failed on me when I initially clones my old mechanical drive to the SSD was because it came from a mechanical drive. Meaning the entire structure of the drivers was wrong, the TRIM command was there but as far as Windows knew wasn't needed ETC ETC.

 

[craigr1982]

Cheers for your help folks.

I realise I won't get TRIM support which might be the kicker for me to do a fresh install but as for the other problems.

With acronis I can choose both the C drive and it's MBR and I've tried both with and without the MBR and still get the same issue.

I have no small partition hidden or otherwise. the only change I made to the boot is having it dualboot with XP but that was setup way back when. Could that be why the repair is failing maybe?

 

[thestepster]

yeah that looks like a good place to start mate

 

[alienware]

Cheers for your help folks.

I realise I won't get TRIM support which might be the kicker for me to do a fresh install but as for the other problems.

With acronis I can choose both the C drive and it's MBR and I've tried both with and without the MBR and still get the same issue.

I have no small partition hidden or otherwise. the only change I made to the boot is having it dualboot with XP but that was setup way back when. Could that be why the repair is failing maybe?

A clone in Acronis should be just that - an exact clone. However I am beginning to suspect either 7 does something when cloned or there is a problem with Acronis.

The only way to get your install working again is with the repair option and if that's not working then there isn't a way sadly

 

[Diablo]

Acronis has both options for me. I've used it hundreds of times to repair my install, and cloning from RAID 0 to SSD I still have Trim support. It detected it first go and then went installing drivers etc. Which acronis are you using?

 

[alienware]

True Image Home 11.0 build 8101

I don't think I had these issues with Vista but then tbh I only used it once or twice. I will admit I have had it for about two years now.

 

[craigr1982]

Im using true image home 2010.

ive found a recovery disc image of windows 7 so im going to give that a go too.