Hello all,

I've cloned my drive using Ghost as the original one was making unpleasant sounds (lots of head resets, bearing whine, knocking around, typical failure signs) - I used a Compaq spare 5.1 Gb (the original is a 6 gb) and copied using Ghost. I put the spare 5.1 back in.

Now, it won't boot. After POST, The cursor just flashes, no action at all. Booting from a Win98 floppy will work, I can see the directory structure of the hard disk - everything is there. I changed the active partition to the hidden Compaq one (which does work, it can be accessed by pressing F10 - the setup sees the new drive as well) and it will boot directly into that. Changing active partition back to C: will bring back the flashing cursor issue. I tried SYS C: from the boot diskette, it transfers the system but the problem persists. I did fdisk /mbr and the only change was that it now says MISSING OPERATING SYSTEM. Sys C: from the boot drive does nothing to fix that.

Ultimately, I can see the stuff I need, I can back it up to a ZIP disk and just reinstall Windows 98 SE (it's mainly a retro gaming rig, nothing important is on it and I'm glad I got the Compaq utilities on the hard disk) but why is it behaving this way?