I just imaged a drive from a smaller partition to a larger partition, and ran into an error that I haven’t seen before. The error was a stop-style error on boot that said the following:

Windows could not start because of the following ARC firmware boot configuration problem: did not properly generate ARC name for HAL and system paths. Please check the Windows documentation about ARC configuration options and your hardware reference manuals for additional information.

Full story continues…

I’ve also noticed that the documents on the web seem to indicate that this is due to software drive overlays, but this wasn’t the case for me. Drive overlays are evil.

I booted from BartPE and manually edited the Boot.INI to try and fix it. This didn’t seem to do the trick as I was presented with the following error upon reboot:

Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem. Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware. Please check the Windows documentation about hardware disk configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional information.

I found the solution in the Microsoft KB Article 314477. Basically the gist of it is as follows:

1. Boot to repair/recovery mode of Windows XP Setup.
2. Select your Windows installation and type in any admin passwords.
3. Type bootcfg /rebuild at the command prompt.
4. Once your Windows Installation is found, you will be asked if you want to add the installation to the boot list, respond with Y
5. For the Load Identifier, type what you want the OS to appear as on any boot lists. For now, just respond with “Windows XP Repair”
6. For the OS Load Options, just leave it blank and hit enter.
7. Restart the computer, and select the first boot option shown at the selection list.

To clean everything up, go to the Start Menu, Control Panel, then System. Go to the Advanced tab and select Settings under Startup and Recovery. Click the Edit button under System Startup.

This will pop up NotePad with your Boot.INI displayed. Simply remove any extra lines under [operating systems] that are not labeled with “Windows XP Repair”. If you’d like, you can also change the “Windows XP Repair” to the Microsoft recommended “Microsoft Windows XP Professional” or “Microsoft Windows XP Home” as applicable.

For more info on editing the Boot.INI, check out the Microsoft KB Article 289022.