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I'm stumped.

I'm migrating a Win XP Lenovo T500 to an SSD:

  1. I copied the XP partition using EaseUS to the SSD.
  2. Aligned the boot sector using Gparted
  3. The MBR needs to be rebuilt (fair enough)

However, all attempts to use the Windows Recovery console hang (both via a boot CD and even when the console was installed as a boot option).

I've tried using a bunch of tools to rebuild/replace the MBR, but no dice. They all say the MBR has been fixed, but I cannot load Windows from the SSD.

The HBCD's boot from windows option works just fine however. I'm confused as to what HBCD can do that my drive can't. How can I get that functionality on my SSD? Is it a MBR fix I can mirror?

The SSD is extremely fast when I do use HBCD to boot up... but it would be nice to not need a token-based access to the machine! :)

Note: I know, windows 7 may be worth a fresh install, but I'm trying to avoid the cost and hassle if possible.

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It looks to me like the problem is that Lenovo requires a custom bootloader on Thinkpads in order to provide functionality to the ThinkVantage button: How do I recover the MBR on a Thinkpad t420?


I guess I need to recover the MBR to the SSD first, copy over the old partition from the HDD and then realign everything to take advantage of the SSD.

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