Hi there I have a problem. I'm pretty new to Win XP and used to have a pretty good grasp of Win98se. I could sort out networking problems, reinstall anything, understood how to and what NOT to remove from the registry., and wipe the hard drive and reinstall etc. Now, I wanna replace my Primary Hard Drive. It's about three years old now, it's got about 1Mb of bad sectors, it makes noises that make me feel slightly uneasy . . . It's gotta go. It's also ATA-100 and I wanna get more outta the new MD I’m about to buy and a 3Ghz-P4. So, My problem is this. My computer for the first time EVER is running great. It simply does not crash and I got everything the way I like it. Now, I've tried 2 different makes of drive copying software. The best success I had was with PowerQuest's Drive Image 2002 using the Drive copy function. Now, I copied my old drive to a lovely new MAXTOR ATA-133 80GB drive, took out the old on, changed the jumpers, unplugged the old drive, you get the picture. I turned on the computer and it started to boot!! I was jumping up and down, until it got to the bit just before the desktop appears.(the Login section) It would just say "Logging off" and would crash/hang and I'd have to press the reset button. So it was a proper crash, ctrl-alt-del would do nothing. So the old drive had to go back in and that was that. Gutted. Can anyone please help me? I was told that I'd actually have no chance of getting anywhere near where I did, but I just thought "no way, there must be a way" . . is there . . .??? P.S. I know there are issues with this to do with A : The Administrator privileges and B : Something to do the “No DOS” side of XP and how the F.A.T. is organised or something.-->BUT I know almost nothing about these deep subjects. Thx D.

It should have worked as far as I know, but the bad sectors may have caused the prob with a straight copy. I would try again, but if possible, make an image this time on a third drive/partition if u have one, and restore the image to the new drive. Good luck.

Hi Keef444. I did originally try drive image itself. It didn't work at all! Also, I thought the bad sector thing may have been the reason but was told it would have had no effect at all as the software would "ignore" that/those area of the drive as it wouldn't be being used for data anyway . . . make sense to you? But, i have no idea why drive image didn't work. That's what it was designed for . . . . ?!

Hey The problem is you hooked up a 133 HD to a 100 Motherboard. There is also a great free program called drvclonerXP that will make a byte by byte bootable copy of your HD. Do a google search for it. Good luck

You are right about bad sectors being ignored, but I would still try making an image - it just seems to work better !! If Drive Image doesnt work for u, then try Norton's 'Ghost' prog. This is my preferred one of the two and even the most basic version which fits on a floppy disk can successfully image an XP installation !! Good Luck !!

Hey "Stump" My MB is ATA133 compatible. Had the Bios flashed a while ago. Drive worked fine in every other way. sorry. thx for other info though. will check that out. D.

Thx Keef444. Will try that instead. and also Stumps other proggie d.