Restore anywhere completes, but system just boots to black screen

[Dirk_S]

Hi all,

We're just evaluating Symantec's product, and attempted doing a restore using restore anywhere onto new hardware.  The restore completes successfully, and the restored system boots - however, after the initial Windows XP boot screen (with the progress bar), the screen then just goes black.  Harddrive activity continues for quite a while - however, no display ever returns, and the system doesn't appear on the network.

Anyone have any idea on what might cause this, or what the next steps to try to diagnose/fix this might be?

Thank you,

Dirk

[David_F]

You may want to review the following technote to determine the stop error that might be causing the system to go black. You may also want to see if you are able to use the F8 option go into safeboot mode; it may still fail to continue but if the progress goes further you are likely looking at a legacy driver from the old system being loaded causing the system to fail the migration steps (i.e. next steps should be PnP detection and then the mini-setup wizard). If that is indeed the case look in using the -DED switch by holding down the SHIFT key when selecting the restore anyware option in your next restore attempt. If the symptom still persists look at setting the boot.ini option to log the next boot and to use BASEVIDEO options. Use the log to determine what the last item attempted to load. Go back into the recovery environment, use regedit from a command prompt to load the restore system's hive and set the driver and their coresponding services start value to 4 and reboot. 

How to identify the Blue Screen Error Message when Windows continuously restarts after using Restore AnyWare (RAO)
http://support.veritas.com/docs/293616

[Dirk_S]

Thank you for the information David - I'll try working through those steps, and see what I can find out.

[Dirk_S]

Okay, here's the update so far (it's been a while since I've been able to work on this):

1) Safemode exhibits the same behaviour

2) Using the DED switch had no visible effect - the resultant system has the same behaviour

3) Based on another suggestion, I tried the PFD option as well, and supplied the LAN driver when prompted - I now have a link light on the network adapter, but still can't reach the system over the network.

4) BASEVIDEO seems to have no effect either - I still have no video after the initial Windows XP splash/loading screen.

Working on the logged boot option - will see if that tells me anything.

Dirk

[David_F]

In your troubleshooting this issue, what version of the recovery disk are you using?