PC not booting after recovering Ghost image

[Joan M]

Hi all, I got one customer that made an image of one computer I programmed years ago using GHOST. Somehow they have got a problem and the computer is not starting... so they decided to recover the image they did years ago. The problem is that after recovering the image the computer don't boot. There are other computers in their factory that use the same operating system (XP embedded) but different softwares installed... Would it be possible to clone a working operating system and then replace all the files from the GHOST image to the newly cloned HDD? How would you proceed in this case? Thank you all!

www.robotecnik.com[^] - robots, CNC and PLC programming

[OriginalGriff]

Load the clone disk as a second HDD on a working system to start with to check the image is OK at all. Then I'd reinstall your software and just copy its data and config files over. Otherwise, you are depending on all the DLL files and suchlike being available and in the right place, and after all this time it'#s not likely that you would remember those details. A reinstall should add all required files and the data / config data should have it back where it should be.

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[RickZeeland]

If it's a Norton Ghost image it probably is not an exact duplicate of the disk, see: hard drive - Recovering deleted files from a ghost image - Super User[^] Also see: Extract files from a Norton Ghost archive - Super User[^]

[Nelek]

If they did a partition clone instead of the disk clone and you have played it back as a disk image, then you might have broken something in the boot sectors. If I am right... you might reinstall WinXP in that drive and then play the image back as a partition this time. About the second point, norton had the "Norton Ghost Explorer" (IIRC) where you could open a ghost image and work with the files as a windows explorer, being able to move things to a secondary USB (if you had the nfull version with all the drivers) Good Luck

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[ElectronProgrammer]

I would: - check if the image is of the entire disk and not of a partition, and check if the image is intact. - check that the image belongs to that computer. XP embedded is somewhat different from the regular XP - check the hard drive S.M.A.R.T. and search for bad sectors. The drive can be faulty. - try to boot from a XP embedded floppy or CD and repair the boot. Something might have changed, like the connector on the motherboard where the hard drive is connected, or the hard drive might have been replaced and the serials (on the drive and on the image) do not match, causing a boot failure.

Joan M wrote:

Would it be possible to clone a working operating system

It might work if the hardware is the same on both computers and you, probably, would need to repair the boot. If I remember correctly, XP embedded did not store drivers for hardware that was not present during installation except for plug-and-play (like USB) so, if you use a PC with different hardware you will most likely have to install all the drivers. Good luck