I'm testing out Storagecraft with full disk encryption with Truecrypt. I backed up from within Windows Home SP3 on an encrypted laptop  (An Acer model, IDE), which worked fine.

 Next I tried a hardware independent restore to a new hard disk in a desktop PC (A Dell inspiron 530s). I selected to restore the original Windows MBR, and ticked the HIR box.  The restore worked to the extent that all the files are there.

 But when I try to boot the restored hard drive I get an "autocheck not found" message quickly followed by a BSOD with a c000021a code - like the one desxcribed here: http://forum.storagecraft.com/Community/forums/p/2279/10738.aspx#10738  - but all the files mentioned in that post are present and correct.

 I've rebooted off the SC CD and re-run the HIR wizard, and get the same result.

Any suggestions?  Maybe I should go back a step, and do the backup/restore on an unencrypted disk first.

Can you post your HIR logs? Please remove your Windows product key if it appears at the top of the log.

ctsrutland:

c000021a code - like the one desxcribed here: http://forum.storagecraft.com/Community/forums/p/2279/10738.aspx#10738  - but all the files mentioned in that post are present and correct.

The error that Windows is generating may be a generic error, but it is most likely a Windows security procedure that is tripping the system up. Which files did you check, and how did you check them?

Thanks.. I've repeated with a new unencrypted backup, with the same error message.  I pointed the HIR wizard at Dell's chipset drivers.

I looked at the BIOS settings, where the SATA mode is selected as 'IDE'

I think I've attached the HIR log for you.

 I could do a repair installation of XP, but that defeats the object of the exercise.

 I was hoping to recommend Storagecraft to my customers on the basis of an affordable HIR option.. shame I'm having problems! Perhaps I'm just unlucky with the hardware I've chosen to test it on?

This case is extremely rare, in fact yours is the only case that has been reported by a user so far. I've only seen it once myself.

The log you attached looks like the job summary. Rather, I need the logs that you will find in the root of the drive that you ran HIR on: C:\HIR logs most likely.

Thanks.

 Thank you for your help.. here's the proper log file. I assume you don't want the other three files uploading as well?

In one sense this doesn't matter too much, as I'm only testing, but on the other hand I was hoping to have a tool I could recommend to people who want a bullet-proof backup, so it would be nice to know what's going on. I could try restoring to the PC I'm using now instead as another test, if I can do without using it for a while.. I'll have a go at that tomorrow.

The HIR log shows that it failed to access some files inside the driver.cab and service pack files. This is the same behavior as the previous post that you viewed, and the same OS. I believe you have the same problem. You should have 4 archives in your service pack files: drivers.cab and 3 service pack cab files. HIR will use these to patch some necessary files in system migration, if the correct file for the correct service pack is missing, it will report this and fallback to either a previous service pack, or an existing file.

 System Optimizers may destroy these windows files because they "are not" critical to the operation of the machine. But in reality they only free up a very small ammount of space. (This was the situation in the first case)

There were also many other minor warnings in the log, but they were also due to the fact that HIR couldn't find the proper windows files in the installation. Though wouldn't cause this BSOD. The storage controller drivers loaded properly from the floppy into the legacy environment, and HIR accepted them as well, so I don't see that as an issue. I believe the fix here would be to place the proper hal.dll and ntoskrnl.exe for XP_SP3 into the \Windows\System32 directory. Microsoft must trip the system and cause the BSOD if there is an altered kernel - as a security measure.

Try mounting the image of the system, and copy the hal.dll and ntoskrnl.exe out of the system32 directory, and place them into the migrated system's System32 directory.

 OK.. thanks very much for your help.  I may have run Ccleaner on it, but I don't remember anything else... though it's possible I may have tested some odd bit of software in the past I suppose.

 Looking at the drive, driver.cab, sp2.cab and sp3.cab are present in c:\i386, but only sp2.cab is in "windows\system32\driver cache" which must be where it's looking? I'll try your suggestion tomorrow.

Yes, that looks like the problem. You could even pull those files out of the sp3.cab and put them down in System32. You might diff the files too - between \Windows\System32\ntoskrnl.exe and sp3.cab ntoskrnl.exe as well as hal.dll. From what you've described i'm fairly sure that they're different and that is causing this issue. Good luck.

 That worked. I copied sp3.cab and driver.cab to c:\windows\drive cache, re-ran the HIR wizard, and everything worked.  I've no idea why the files weren't in that location to start with.  My confidence is restored!