Windows Odd screen on XP boot (imaged disk)

Hey guys,

It's getting a bit late for me so excuse the brevity of this post, but I wanted to get it out there in case any night owls saw it and could help.

Having a bit of a nightmare fixing a family computer. It was a basic Dell machine that was getting long in the tooth, so I gutted and rebuilt it to the following spec from some old and new parts:

Celeron D
Asus P5B
Corsair DDR2 2GB (?) can't remember speed/timings
ATI X800 GT
Corsair CX430
Win XP Pro 32-bit SP3

Now the issue I'm having is that the existing drive (a Seagate ST380013A, ST380011A or ST340014A from memory) was OEM Windows, so I rebuilt a brand new (kosher) install of XP Pro on a spare Seagate ST9100828AS that I had, copied the data over from the old IDE drive, imaged the SATA drive back to the IDE one using DriveImage, reconnected the IDE one and keep getting this screen:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/33/img20130403213713.jpg/

...which to me seems like an error. Is it possible that imaging from the SATA drive back to the IDE means that the disk drivers are now too new for the older drive and the PC can't boot to Windows?

Jumper on the IDE is set correctly, new SATA install boots in my system no problem when swapped in, all data is copied fully and I'm banging my head off numerous hard edges.

Grateful if anyone can offer respite.

 

will it boot to safe mode?

 

I don't understand why you would have installed it on one drive to image it to another. That makes absolutely no sense. Why didn't you simply install it on the drive that would be used?
Also it is not clear, but it sounds like you may have installed it on a different system all together then? If so there is no wonder it doesn't work unless it was identical hardware.

 

No - won't boot to safe mode. Can get to BIOS but no other boot options.

It was installed to a different disk to avoid overwriting the data on the original, as the disks were in separate physical locations and backing up the data was impossible at the time. As for the point about hardware - that's actually irrelevant. I've done that a number of times successfully as the Pro licences especially allow you to boot with a different config, but then ask you to update the drivers. It's the OEM installs that cause the problem (and i've even managed to work around this once with a call to a helpful MS dude). This is how companies roll out images across multiple setups.

 

Further to the above, have turned the machine on this morning after leaving it overnight and the screen persists. What's getting to me (and I think is also key) is that I've not seen this screen before, nor does any error message appear.

Unusual.

 

Did you sysprep it?

 

Ah, do you know what? I didn't! God knows why not. Guess I got used to the Win 7 process and forgot. Can I do it after the event, or is it back to square one?

I don't remember having to do this on the previous XP images I used though. Just changed the boards and CPUs out and put the disks back in.

 

As you've changed the storage controllers I'd say you'll need to boot of the CD & do a repair install over the top to fix it (2nd repair not the 1st cmd line one).

You should still sysprep win 7 images as well.

 

it needs ide drivers. just do a repair has saspro suggested.

 

+1 for the repair install

 

Cool - thought it might be drivers. Will try the repair install over the weekend as suggested and re-post once I have an answer. Thanks for your input, chaps! Will also revisit the sysprep suggestion once this is ironed out.

Stay tuned...'cos I might need more help!

 

Once the repair install is done you shouldn't need to worry about sysprep. You just need to remember it next time.

 

Didn't work, unfortunately. CD went in, booted to Windows console, didn't choose R to repair but hit Enter to go through to next screen with existing installation, Windows started installing some bits then BSOD'd out with a 0xd0 error, but upon reboot appeared to be fine - it asked whether to start normally or i safe mode, but either option resulted in a continual reboot loop.

So rebooted from CD, went through same repair process as above which this time completed successfully, but upon restart it just kept looping again. The difference this time was that the mobo logo screen came up, we chose not to press any key to boot from CD, then the XP logo with it's blue scrolling progress bar came up, then the reboot cycle started again.

Couldn't boot to safe mode either.

Now really cross.

 

Disable automatic reboot and post the bluescreen details

 

Perhaps switch ahci/raid off in bios? Or switch to Legacy/IDE? (Depending how it's displayed in bios).

 

Hi saspro - thanks for continuing to monitor this. Unfortunately I can't post the bluescreen details as I can't replicate the issue. It now just loops constantly. Seems like the error only happened when trying to install something during the repair but then did not occur again.

Hey kenco - thanks also for chipping in. I'll try that tonight and repost once I have a result.

 

Hit F8 as it boots and disable the auto restart option.
This should sit it on a blue screen when you can take a photo of the screen

 

Okay - tried the F8 option but it only provided the boot options menu ie. HDD, DVD etc..

Selected the HDD anyway but it just followed the same loop.

 

Ok.

Press F8 until you get the boot option menu, select HDD then keep hitting F8 until you get the option for safe mode etc.

The option to disable automatic restarts is in there

 

Okey doke. Did as you say, but no dice.

Got to the boot options screen, selected the HDD, kept pressing F8 but the next screen was this:

http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/2130/bootchoice.jpg

So went with debugging mode and the loop just started again.

Angry. But not at you guys!