New Disk won't boot

[deltacharlie]

I have installed a new 60GB 133ATA HDD and cloned my current dual OS's - WIN ME and WIN XP on 2 partitions on the new disk using Norton Ghost. They both check out OK but when I then disconnect my old disk and re jumper the new one as Master on IDE 1 the disk won't boot up.
Obviously I must be missing the relevant system files to boot but Ghost doesn't give any clues as to how to do this. It suggests that the cloning is a simple process after which I will have exact replicas of the source partitions on the destinations.
How do I do this? I have now been trying for several days everything I can think of and still no boot up. Am I missing something very simple here - so simple that the manual for Ghost doesn't consider it worth mentioning?
Even typng in SYS C: at the A prompt in DOS doesn't seem to work. Any clues out there?

[doctorgonzo]

What error message are you getting?
Is this a store-bought PC or one you built?
Did you do an entire disk clone?

[deltacharlie]

This is a PC I built myself and have been using successfully for over a year. I have an Athlon XP 1.27 Gig CPU on a Gigabyte 7VAXP motherboard. The primary drive was a 8.7 Gb partitioned in two equal partitions with ME and XP. I was running out of space and so installed a new 60Gb 133 ATA drive which worked fine as a data drive.
Then I set up two 10Gb partitions on the new drive using Partition Magic 8.0 and cloned each of the two old partitions on the new drive using Ghost.
When I try to boot into it I get a (as far as I can remember) a Boot Disk Failure message at the POST stage and to Insert System Disk and Press Any Key To Continue.
Do you think, perhaps, I should have Cloned the whole disk to the new cleanly formatted new disk or what?

[amigo]

Have you tried the repair install for windows XP?

[kilgoretrout]

Your new disk doesn't have the boot loader in it's mbr even though all the data was copied from the old disk. The procedure you described, cloning the partitons of your old drive and placing them on the new drive, wouldn't have copied the boot loader from the old drive to the new drive. The windows boot loader is located in the mbr which is in the first sector of your old hard drive. Your error message indicates that the bios is looking for a boot loader on the new disk mbr and not finding it. At least that's my theory.

To fix this boot from the Windows XP CD and press R during the setup to start the recovery console. Select your Windows XP installation from the list and enter the administrator password. At the input prompt, enter the command FIXMBR and confirm with y when asked to do so. Then reboot the computer with exit.

That should reinstall your boot loader to the mbr.

[deltacharlie]

Thanks for that. That all sounds entirely reasonable. However, as this is a self build PC where on earth do I come up with an Administrator's password? I have never set any passwords in the PC.

[amigo]

Just press Enter for a blank password.

[deltacharlie]

Thanks guys,
I'll give that a go within the next few days and keep you posted as to how I go.
I'm just totally surprised that there was no mention of the MBR with Norton Ghost. I can't be the first ever to want to do this!!!

[deltacharlie]

OK, I did that and it says it fixed it after giving me dire warnings (what had I got to lose?). Still wouldn't boot up and is now saying that NTLDR is missing! What the......is that??
At any time I'm expecting the message 'OK fella, I'm not gonna let you boot whatever you do'.
I know I CAN start again with a fresh installation but what a graunch. I just wanted all my files and settings intact.

[doctorgonzo]

Type "fixboot" at the recovery console (where you did the "fixmbr" command).

If that doesn't work, try copying the NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM files from the Windows CD (in the i386 directory) to the C: drive.

No, you're not the first person to want to do this, you just did it the "wrong" way. As kilgoretrout pointed out, if you copy partition by partition, you will miss the MBR. If instead you chose to clone the entire disk, Ghost would have cloned everything, including the MBR. That is the correct way to copy the entire contents of a drive to a new drive.

[glc]

If the old drive is still intact, reclone it the way Doc suggested.

[Alfie]

Who is the manufacturer of the hard drive(S)?

[deltacharlie]

Thanks for your input, guys. I did as suggested and cloned the whole disk as I hadn't appreciated that the boot instructions were outside the partitions. It all worked a dream and now I have learned something.
Just think, it would only have taken one sentence in the whole of the manual from Norton Systemworks on Ghost to bring out this fact and it isn't there! Perhaps Symantec could learn something from this, too.