Help with error message following restore

[engineerguy3809]

Imaging a Dell Inspiron e1705 Laptop (originally had a 90 GB drive) into a new 500 gb drive.

The original drive had the usual 3 "Dell" partitions where one partition is the "Restore to Factory" data, the second is the "Dell Diagnostics" and the third is the actual NTFS Windows Operating System (in my case XP SP3).
I don't really care about the original Dell "Restore" partition or the Dell "Diagnostics" partitions.
Therefore, I was trying to restore ONLY the OS (my original "C:" partition) into the new drive.
During restore, I checked the box for Scale-to-Fit and did a restore into the new drive.
IFW said it completed successfully.
When I rebooted, the following error was generated.

Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem.
Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware.
Please check the Windows documentation about hardware disk configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional information.

The new 500 GB hard drive is the only Hard-Drive in the laptop and the BIOS correctly lists it as the first boot device.
If I physically remove the drive from the laptop and connect it to another computer using a USB "dongle", it appears that all folders and files appear like they restored correctly.
However, Windows will not boot from the partition.
Can anyone advise or clarify what I did incorrectly (or failed to "check" or failed to "uncheck") in order to make the target bootable when I restored the image?

[Brian K]

engineerguy3809 wrote:
>
> The original drive had the usual 3 "Dell" partitions

> When I rebooted, the following error was generated.
>
> Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration
> problem.
> Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk
> hardware.
> Please check the Windows documentation about hardware disk configuration
> and your hardware reference manuals for additional information.
>


engineerguy3809,

It is a boot.ini error. You get this error when boot.ini in the active partition is pointing to an empty MBR slot (is pointing to a non-existent partition, rather than the one where Windows is installed). Because you didn't restore the other Dell partitions you need to edit boot.ini. Easy to do from BIBM.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=234

Your boot.ini will probably show partition(3) in two places. Edit both places to partition(1)

[engineerguy3809]

Brian K

That was the answer.
Much obliged!

[TeraByte Support]

FYI, there is a "update boot.ini" option that will update the Partition(x)
references for you for that partition being restored.

"engineerguy3809" wrote in message news:8222@public.image...

Brian K

That was the answer.
Much obliged!