Here's an intresting one.

I used Notron Ghost 2003 to back up my old IDE 20Gb drive to DVD then installed a new 200Gb IDE drive. Formated it by installing windows XP Pro which worked ok. I then used the backup DVD and put all the data back on.

When I rebooted just after the pc checks if it needs to boot from the CD's it stops dead and states "Error Loading OS". Now I put in the backup DVD to reinstall it but forgot to put the Notron boot floppy disc in and it boots straight in to windows and my PC is as it was with the old drive!

Wierd or what. Now I'm guessing that the MBR has some how been altered but I have no Idea how to fix it, if this is the error. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated as I really don't wnat to have to reinstall 35Gb of data.

Regards,
Bruce.

You can format the MBR by loading a bootdisk/cd and then on the drive you want to restore the MBR to use fdisk /mbr

You might also wish to get ahold of a linux bootdish, and use Linux's fdisk to make sure the OS partition is marked as active.

It's possible that the Norton ghost image isn't good. Even when you verify an image, it's still possible that it isn't a perfect image. Heaven only knows what files might be corrupt though.

If you have the 20GB drive still, you might consider booting it and using it to partition the 200gb drive. If you get something like Acronis True Image or Partition Magic, or even Ghost, you can probably do a direct copy of the partition over to the new drive. In some situations the partition copy comes first then you extend the partition, and in other situations you'll create a partition on the new drive first and then migrate your old drive.

Hope this helps.