Data Recovery and Disk Utilities Forum @R-TT

I just did an Image Copy on my "old" XP system, and restored an entire C drive onto a new computer (which used to have a bootable partition as delivered from the store with XP, if that matters) ... taking all the default choices in RDrive-Image
All seemed to go well, and I can see all my files & data & Windows directory that were restored, but I can't get that drive to boot. When I power up the PC, I get a solid black screen with a blinking text cursor in the upper-left corner of the screen, then it just stays that way.
Any ideas?

1. On which disk is pagefile.sys placed in the original system? If it is not C, do the disk and pagefile.sys on it exist in the system?
2. Which settings did you use to restore the disk on the Restore/Copy Parameters?

I just realised you transferred the image into a different system. XP reportedly won't boot even for some upgrades like a Motherboard. (Well yes, obviously M$ didn't want a disk image to be a means to get around having a registered copy of their product.)

I'm unsure if XP's recovery console could help with repairing the installation, but I imagine they are ways to get around the upgrade. I seem to remember being astonished when I heard someone successfully used a hard drive installer (it was 3 or so years ago, and I've no memory of what its name was) to ghost from their old XP drive to new drive in a newly upgraded system.

I don't think the OP's issue is with XP itself. It sounds like a boot loader problem if he's not even getting to the XP splash screen. I have the same problems when I do an initial clone of a Vista boot drive. I have to boot up with the Vista install DVD and "repair" the MBR to match the physical configuration of the new disk.

Yes, that's most likely culprit. The new drive's partition that used to have the XP ntloader, is now overwritten with the image. I'd assume that the image doesn't have loader, and like many systems, the loader was in it's own little partition, especially if the old system was dual boot.

What I was highlighting though, once the loading problem is fixed, the machine will (most likely) recycle the startup message of what mode to start in, ie normal, safe, last ... ect - (choose safe) and it'll go through the motions and then reboot, if the system is different enough to what he imaged.