I have an old Dell Dimension 8250 that I recently upgraded the hard drive in using a disk cloning utility. The OEM drive contains a Dell utility partition that it seems I have no choice but to clone along with the OS partition containing Windows XP Professional SP3. After cloning, all seems to go fine for a while. With Acronis True Image the system will work for a couple reboots and then upon subsequent booting gives me a flashing cursor and refuses to boot afterwards. I also tried DiskClone Pro which, after cloning had been working fine up until today which makes a week. I've tried replacing the hard drive but the results are the same. Each time I reclone, it works for a while but then mysteriously dies with a flashing cursor at boot. I've tried fixing the MBR with the Windows repair console but it doesn't help. I've also tried doing a repair installation of Windows but that also fails when it reboots to finish the installation, resulting in a flashing cursor. I am guessing there is some problem caused by the Dell utility partition that makes the clone ultimately fail, but no cloning utility I've been able to try gives me the option of selectively cloning one partition.

Does anyone know a solution short of formatting and installing Windows from scratch? I really want to avoid doing this because, aside from the major headache reinstalling everything would present, some of my applications were purchased and downloaded online and the installers are not readily available. I just cannot justify putting this much work into a system that that is going on 6 years old.

Thanks for any help!
Stu