Michael, just as a point of information, I have an old XP Home Edition
Restore CD which came with a PC whose hard drive died after 3 months
in service. E-machines replaced the CD, under warranty, and I used the
Ghost image on the Restore CD to rebuild the OS back on a virgin drive
as it was originally on a different piece of hardware....
Some time later, I used the same CD to recreate the OS on two
other hard drives. Maybe I'm naive, but a new, formatted drive is
a fit place to restore an OS from a Drive Image of PowerQuest's. True,
the Ghost history I'm relating was not PQ's Drive Image, but to me
the principle is the same; it is all apples, not apples and oranges.

But is there no way to allow my present, functional system to boot
cleanly and uniquely to its OS, to delete and obviate the option to
go to Recovery Console?
WBL

Michael Solomon (MS-MVP Windows Shell/User) wrote:

William, I said this is all I could conclude from this and I did raise the
possibility of this issue at the very outset.

That said, you're assertion is not quite correct.. Images are used all the
time to recover from system crashes and similar situations without issue but
that is to the same physical drive. However, when you image to a new hard
drive, one that the OS didn't see when it was first installed, because it
was not connected to the system at the time, you are changing the parameters
of the setup. If you understand XP's activation and anti-piracy scheme, it
makes perfect sense. Usually, they can get around this by doing a repair
install. I also told you at the outset, I wasn't sure this could be done
for precisely that reason.

It makes perfect sense if the new hard drive is not included in the original
hash created during System setup. If a user changes motherboards and
nothing, else, they usually have to do a repair install as well.

I'm not certain if this is the issue here but it fits all the criteria and
it's all I can conclude from the information.

My suggestion is to take this to the hardware board as they may have
experience with this and may come up with something else as the reason.
But, they need to be aware of the fact, the cloned drive was not connected
to the system when XP was first installed. They may say, it makes no
difference it should work. On the other hand, they may see the same thing
I've seen and given the error messages come to the same conclusion. This is
all that I can tell you as I've never tried to do what you are doing and I
haven't seen this exact situation elsewhere.



--
William B. Lurie