I re-assembled the PC today including putting back in the HD which was a clone of the other machine's one. I'd already loaded in a fresh copy of XP on the first HD. Just out of interest, I tried booting from the second drive and it worked. Got a message saying I have three days to re-activate it as so much hardware has changed.
So why would it work now - but not without the first HD?
Have you got them on different interfaces (i.e. one on ATA another on SATA for example)?
The 'main' machine I cloned the drive from has SATA HDs, and I cloned to an ATA HD on the previously unused IDE buss. The 'broken' machine is ATA only.
Just wondering if Boot.ini could have ended up with a drive or partition number that did not match the layout on the new machine.
(if this is the case you can edit the ini manually or get bootcfg with the "/add" option to allow other partititons with an OS on to be added to the boot menu).
Finally got it sorted. Apart from the re-activation thingie.
Main problem was the cloned disc was G but everything on it referred to C, as that was the one being cloned.
So tried again with a fully formatted blank HD. After it was cloned, unplugged C&F from the main machine and booted from the clone, which now came up as C. Shut down, and transferred it to the other machine, again as the only HD. It then recognised that as C and everything is now tickety-boo, after loading in the correct drivers etc for the different MB, and changing the network settings. Only a couple of apps have needed loading in again - most work ok.
As regards re-activation, same as Geoff. It won't work via the 'net - so I'll have to do it by phone.
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