Question Windows XP on cloned dual-boot SSD won't boot

amb

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Sep 3, 2011
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I have an MSI laptop originally equipped with a Western Digital WD3200BEVT 320GB SATA HDD, with Windows 7 Ultimate x64 and Windows XP Professional SP3 on different partitions set for dual boot (with EasyBCD). It was working perfectly and able to boot into either OS via a boot menu.

I just used Acronis True Image WD Edition to clone that HDD to a new Western Digital WDS500G2B0A 500GB SATA SSD. The process went without a hitch and I installed the new SSD in place of the original HDD. The boot menu appears normally and I can boot Windows 7 with no problem, but it fails when I tried to boot Windows XP. The Windows XP startup splash screen appears, but then the computer simply resets itself and goes to BIOS POST again.

The Windows 7 partition is drive C, the Windows XP partition is drive D. I can see both partitions when booted on Windows 7 and the filesystems are OK.

I tried swapping back to the old HDD and it still boots both OSes successfully.

I also tried re-doing the clone with EaseUS Todo Backup, and the same thing happened.

Why can’t the new SSD boot Windows XP? I tried searching the web but I can’t find a solution to this yet.
 

amb

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Sep 3, 2011
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18,510
@silvershade Thanks for the reply.

I can't boot into Windows XP safe mode on the SSD. It resets to POST the same way as a normal boot.

I ran "sfc /scannow" while booted on Windows 7 and it succeeded. Can't run anything under XP because it won't boot.

What could be incompatible? The OS "shouldn't" care if the drive is a HDD or SSD, they are both SATA, with 512-byte sectors, and I see other people running XP on SSDs just fine (XP not having TRIM capability notewithstanding).