[SOLVED] Error booting Windows: Grub? Clonezilla? Other?

[littlebigman]

Hello

I'm still having issues when restoring Windows partitions using CloneZilla (XP enters an endless loop with "Autochk - File not found", and Vista doesn't boot ("Err 17 - File not found"; It looks like this is an error reported by Grub, though).

For those of you used to cloning partitions so you can easily restore an OS to perform tests... are there tricks that must be done to save/restore/boot partitions using CloneZilla?

For instance, CloneZilla provides four options that deal with MBR (-g, -t, -j1, -j2). Grub can also perform some kung-fu (such as geometry(), parttype(), etc.). And with XP/Vista/7 being particular with making any change to the configuration due to activation, I wouldn't be surprised if something had to be done prior/after cloning Windows partitions.

Ideally, I'd like to just boot with a CD, restore the image, remove the CD, and expect the OS to start without having to mingle with Grub every time.

Thank you for any help.

[aetiv]

I have never used Clonezilla, but from the sounds of your situation I would pop in the Win disk and enter the repair mode. Then you can do a fixboot and a fixmbr. Once you are able to get the computer running in Windows, pop the linux emergency disk back into the computer and rebuild the mbr.

I dual boot on multiple computers in my house and this is typically what I need to do when something gets messed up.

[oz]

I use a Linux version of Acronis True Image that runs from a live CD for all my cloning tasks and it's worked perfectly for the last 4 or 5 years. It gives the option to restore any or all partitions found in a cloned image, and it allows for restoring the MBR if desired. Using it currently takes about 4 minutes to clone my entire system, and about the same length of time should a system restore be necessary. I think most of the non-commercial Linux products available to you work about the same way, but I've been using True Image for so long and it's been working so well that I see no reason to switch.

More information about True Image can be found at their official website.

[littlebigman]

Thanks for the help. Turns out Grub seems unable to tell that a partition is NTFS-formatted, and requires this line in menu.lst for XP/Vista to boot:

title Windows
	#Important!
	parttype (hd0,0) 07x

	rootnoverify (hd0,0)
	makeactive
	chainloader +1

Hope this helps,