Install larger HDD on Fujitsu Amilo 6100 laptop which then won't boot

[euston]

I attempted to substitute a larger HDD (20GB for 10GB) on a Fujitsu Amilo 6100 laptop. I Ghost cloned the replacement drive from the old one. The BIOS setup program shows that the larger HDD has been correctly recognised but the system won't boot. I'm missing something here. What is it please?

Always expect the unexpected and imagine the unimaginable.

 

[Freestone]

Is the partition on the new drive marked as Active and not Hidden?

 

[euston]

Thanks for your interest, Freestone. The partition is the only one on the drive and is NTFS (the OS is Windows 2000 of course). I used Norton Ghost 2003 to do a disk-to-disk copy from the 10GB HDD to the 20GB HDD, an operation I have carried out successfully on many previous occasions. The partition status should therefore be the same on both drives. I'm simply baffled.

Always expect the unexpected and imagine the unimaginable.

 

[Freestone]

What error message are you getting?

I mentioned Active and not Hidden as I did not know if you cloned the old drive to the new. The few times I have cloned, the tools (Partition Magic and Acronis True Image (I think - it's been awhile) ) offered to hide one or the other drive's partition so two partitions would not show as Active if both were left in the system.

I don't have Ghost, only True Image. Can Ghost show the status of the new drive's partition?

 

[euston]

I don't get an error message. Windows just doesn't start, not even the very first screen where the white blocks run from left to right across the bottom of the screen. I put the 20GB drive in a USB external drive enclosure and all the files are there, including boot files. I ran the disk check and it passes with no problems.

As far as I am concerned, Norton Ghost 2003 does disk-to-disk copies, i.e. clones. I've used it many times to upgrade to a larger HDD in this way and never had a problem before. There must be something about the particular laptop but my insufficient knowledge doesn't allow me to detect the subtle but vital clues that others might perceive.

Always expect the unexpected and imagine the unimaginable.

 

[Freestone]

I will ask again. Can Ghost show the status of the partition on the newer drive? You must ensure that the newer drive's partition has been set to Active. If it isn't, it won't be bootable.

 

[GrimR]

You can use 3rd party fdisk tools to set or check if the partition is set to active as Freestone is asking. e.g EBCD

 

[wolluf]

and I've known ghost to not set new partition active in this scenario - so suspect freestone is right.

It also sometimes messes up the boot sector for some reason - so if you make it active and still no good, boot into recovery console and run fixboot (and fixmbr just in case).

 

[euston]

PartitionMagic 8.05 says that the partition is NTFS Active Primary.

A peculiar thing about the Fujitsu Amilo 6100 is that the HDD and CDD are both on the primary IDE channel (bit of penny pinching here?).

The HDD jumper config is set to 'master'.

I will do as Wolluf suggests but this may take some time as the relevant laptop is normally 40 miles away from me.

Thanks for your thoughts chaps.

Always expect the unexpected and imagine the unimaginable.