Several months ago using the tips on this and other forums for diagnostic purposes I created a XP Pro installation with a specific application that runs from a USB flash memory stick, specifically a Kingston G3 4GB stick. This works fine as all computers have the same mainboard etc. Given sooner or later the flash drive will develop a fault due to the number of read / write accesses I want to make a copy of it. I have the same series Kingston G3 stick but 8GB rather than 4GB. I have cloned the pen with the DOS version of Ghost 2003 and today also tried Snapshot. Whatever I do I can not get the cloned pen to boot past the screen which has Windows XP and the scrolling bar. Every time the computer reboots instead of the desktop appearing. I have tried all the usual tricks I know - FDISK /MBR from a Win98 boot floppy ( which has always solved this problem before apart from one awkward setup where I was cloning an IDE drive to a SATA and the XP installation was on drive E )FIXBOOT and FIXMBR from the Windows XP CD recovery console All the live options in FIXBOOT from the Paragon Rescue Kit V11 CD Either I get the same or corrupt the USB stick so it will not even start booting. I have tried booting to safe mode too but again instead of the desktop appearing the PC reboots. Now I have run out of ideas any suggestions will be appreciated.
I have fixed this the long way with a Windows repair using my custom ' XP for USB ' cd. The problem with this method would be in the future if I needed to make a USB pen for someone to take to a customers system either by cloning another pen or from a Ghost image but I didn't have access to this specific hardware platform. Yes they could take a CD and run the repair but it takes a couple of hours due the the slow access speed.