Hello all!
I'm having a problem installing a new hard drive in a compaq 1800t laptop. It's specs are as follows:
Pentium III 450mhz
320mb RAM (originally 64mb added 256)
Fujitsu MHH2048AT 4.5 gb
Windows XP Home (upgraded from 98 I suspect because all the compaq stuff is still on the hard disk)
I use sysprep images to cut down the time it takes to install windows. I do this often without problems. So I have a 12gb drive I am trying to use in the compaq, it's specs are:
Hitachi DK23AA-12 12 gb (from a IBM thinkpad A20m)
I copied over my sysprep partition using Acronis disk director to the 12gb drive and put it in the compaq. After post I get a blank screen with a blinking cursor. I put the 12gb in another compaq laptop (persario 3000) and it booted into win xp fine. Next I balnked the 12gb drive, thinking something might be left over from the thinkpad, and started over. This time I checked the bios first. After post but before going into bios I got this message:
Save to disk file not found ... etc.
I found out this was refering to a way compaq used to do hibernation before it became part of XP. So I copied the "SYSTEM_SAV" partition from the old 4.5gb disk to the 12gb disk thinking the machine was looking for someting there. Still only getting blinking cursor. Next I blanked the 12gb again then copied both original partitions from the 4.5gb drive to the 12gb. This time, booting from the 12gb, I get this message:
NTLDR is missing ...
So I downloaded fixntldr from here (this site rocks!) and got the original win xp home partition to boot running on the new disk. So what I'm trying to figure out is what is missing from my sysprep image that is keeping it from booting on the 1800t and yet boot on another laptop. It should work, both laptops use the same hal and the boot.ini is correct. Anyone have any knowledge about early compaq bios, I suspect it is looking for something not part of my sysprep image.
