I have a system running a single IBM 30Gb hard drive. It was separated into 2 15Gb partitions; C: and G: . The C: drive contained Windows 98SE (FAT32)and has run fine for over a year. The G: drive was partitioned off and Windows XP Home (NTFS) was installed w/SP1 several months ago and has been running fine since then. After several weeks, assuring myself that the dual-boot setup was functioning correctly, I Ghosted the complete Hard drive using Ghost 2003 (Systemworks 2003) and it was successful. About two weeks ago I started having random problems with the BIOS recognizing the Hard drive and when that would happen, I would resort to the freezer trick to get the machine to boot with no problem. This would go for several days and then no recognition again. I ran the IBM drive utilities till I was blue in the face with no errors found, so decided to wipe the drive and reload the Ghost Image. I wrote zeroes to the drive and rebooted to the Ghost CD's and reloaded the image. However, the NTFS Partition (Logical part of Extended Partition) was not given a Drive letter and now I can only boot to 98SE. I have tried to run BOOTPART but that just gets me to XP Setup as it doesn't see the drive. I have checked with Partition Magic 8.0 and it shows the C: drive but shows the old G: drive as *:.
Anybody have any suggestions as to something I missed or how to fix this? I wondered if I should have setup the partitions and formatted them prior to reinstalling the Ghost image, but haven't had time to do that yet. Haven't been able to find anything specific in the Ghost documentation as to a step I missed or something I did wrong, but ...............? Any ideas?

1. one small suggestion: break up your block of text into smaler sections. they'll be ewasier to read.

2. after restoring the image, both o/s'es should boot.

3. i know many people who run those ibm drive fitness tests with no errors but still have bad hard drives. their problems magically disappear when they get new hard drive.

4. so, replace the drive.

5. am i correct to assume to selected "disk-to-image"? and NOT "partitiuon to image" as it sounds like you did? if you selected "partition-to-imgae" you would only get one partition.

6. you sent the image to a cd burner?

7. partition magic comes with a utility that will change/assign drive letters. "drive Mapper" is mentioned near the bottom of this page:  

http://fdisk.radified.com/fdisk_02.htm

8. you could try booting from your windows xp cd and selecting 'R' for repair to repair the installation.

9. sounds like you only have one partition.

10. compare the size of the image to the size of your w98 partition to the size of the wxp partition. does it look like the image contains BOTH partitions?

Say 'Hi' to Stormy for me.  :)

Stormy's sleeping now, chased too many chipmunks today.  As for your reply, 1:??, 2: only the 98 partition boots, 3: drive is ok, it's not the notorious one for failing, 5: disk-to-image is correct, 6: cd burner, burned ok, verified ok also by Ghost, 7: PM Drive Mapper appears to only allow that task when booted to NTFS Partition, wouldn't do it from within FAT32 partition as NTFS Partition not recognized and is given a drive letter of *, 8: tried the Repair console till I was blue in the face, kept sending me to Setup, which would fail because of various directories it couldn't (?) delete, 9: I have two partitions, in fact there was a feature in PM where I could browse the contents of the second partition, so I know it's there, just can't get it to boot, 10: yup.
Long story short, I did a disk-to-disk image of a dual-boot, single hard drive system, via CD-R.  Having reloaded the image to the same system, the NTFS partition fails to boot.  Supposedly it seems that I did something wrong when I initiated the Ghost program, either missed a selection or a switch, that's what I'm trying to rectify.

Even non-notorious drives go bad. If it was having trouble being recognized, that's a sign it's going bad and might be a reason you're having trouble with the xp partition.

how far does it get into the boot sequence?

have you tried re-restoring the image? can't hurt.

98 partition boots all the way to desktop, and is working satisfactorily.  xp partition goes thru logo.sys page w/green crawler, then goes to two-tone blue screen with xp logo in center and orange bar at bottom, and hangs there.  Safe mode = same thing.  Have tried re-restoring image several times with similar results.  The thing I don't understand is the Image was verified, but yet it appears I missed something in setup.  Have used ghost numerous times before but this is first on dual-boot system.

That screen comes up for only a second on my system before the desktop appears.

Can you run some disk utilities from w98 to make sure the media is not damaged?

You could try using another hard drive, just to see what happenes.

I don't know what else you could try.

You could enable boot logging to see exactly where it's failing.

Stormysdad wrote on May 10^th, 2004 at 5:48am:

98 partition boots all the way to desktop, and is working satisfactorily.  xp partition goes thru logo.sys page w/green crawler, then goes to two-tone blue screen with xp logo in center and orange bar at bottom, and hangs there.  Safe mode = same thing.

Ah, sounds like the telltale sign of munged-up partition signatures!  It's not an error in Ghost, it's an idiosyncracy of all the NT-family OS's (2NT/2K/XP/2003).  

The old registry had recorded the fact that the XP partition was "G", which it identified by the partition signature.  But the partition signature has changed - that's for certain because you zeroed out everything before restoring.  So now the copy is looking for that signature, can't find it, says "oh, well" and gives the XP partition a default drive letter, but unfortunately it's not "G".   Now you've got a problem because "G" is embedded in the registry and the boot process can't find it, so it hangs - no error msg, it just hangs - usually at the blue "Welcome" screen or the user login screen.

As evidence of this, boot into the recovery console and run diskpart.  I'll bet it doesn't show your XP partition as "G", it's probably something else like "D".  You can read more about partition signatures in the "misc notes" section on my webpage at www.goodells.net/multiboot.

FWIW, that's why I *never* use the Microsoft method of dualbooting.  I always use the third-party method because I can make the XP partition "C" and can always restore it to "C" (because XP starts there by default) if/when the signatures get munged.

At this point, I'm not sure how you would fix that, but I have an idea that might work in theory.  What is your partition layout?  If I read correctly, you have PartitionMagic, two primary partitions and no extended partition, right?  

While I do have PM8, Winders setup the boot sequence.  98SE was first, then I partitioned the drive using PM8, then loaded XP onto the second partition.  I had the 98se partition as Active  Primary, and the XP partition was Logical on the Extended partition.
You've given me some info to gnaw on for a while and some things to check so if you don't mind I'd like to pick your brain,wouldn't the registry be restored with the GHOST Image?  How do I run GHOST in the future on this setup so it restores accurately?  I can't find anything about it at Symantec's site other than the statement that "Ghost supports dual-boot systems."

excuse me for jumping in, but certainly the registry is contained and restored in a ghost image. i think what dan is saying is that your problem is that you wiped the drive, which caused the partition signature to change. you want to find a way to assign that partition the drive letter 'g'.

Stormysdad wrote on May 10^th, 2004 at 8:08pm:

...wouldn't the registry be restored with the GHOST Image?  How do I run GHOST in the future on this setup so it restores accurately?

Jade's right.  The registry is stored/restored along with the Ghost image.  The problem is the partition signatures have changed after Ghost created the image.  Ghost is accurately restoring the registry, but in a manner of speaking, the "rug has been pulled out from under XP" after the fact.



Stormysdad wrote on May 10^th, 2004 at 8:08pm:

I had the 98se partition as Active  Primary, and the XP partition was Logical on the Extended partition.

Okay.  You still have the Ghost image, so there's no harm in trying this, and it won't cost you anything.  Let's call your Win98 partition Pri-1 and your XP partition Log-1.  Then:

(1) Using PM8, shrink the size of Pri-1 by about 300MB or so.

(2) Using PM8, create three logical FAT/FAT32 partitions (Log-1, Log-2, Log-3) of about 100MB each in the newly unallocated space in front of the XP partition.  The sizes are not relevant - we're just taking up drive letters here.  This will make XP now Log-4.  

(3) Disconnect all CD drives, zip drives, and external drives.

(4) Boot from a Win98 boot floppy (aka, "Startup Disk").  Execute the command "fdisk /mbr".

(5) Remove the floppy and boot from the hard disk.  Choose XP from Microsoft's boot menu.  See if XP now boots up as "G".

(6) If that works, you can reboot and run PM8 again.  Remove the three 100MB partitions and resize Pri-1 back to its original size.  Reconnect any CD drives, et al.

The theory: Step 4 makes sure all hard disk signatures are invalidated.  If the partition signatures in the registry no longer match, XP rebuilds the drive table when it boots up.  I believe the rebuilding follows the legacy DOS method of first: active primary; next: logicals sequentially; last: additional primaries.  Thus, C = Pri-1, D-F = Log-1 to -3, and G = Log-4 (XP).  Once XP has recorded the new signatures in its registry, D-F can be removed and the registry will still keep a valid signature for the XP partition.  Note the XP partition must not be moved once the signature is recorded or it will become invalid again.  That's why Steps 1-2 carve out the temp partitions from the end of Pri-1 instead of from the beginning of Log-1.

Remember, I don't use Microsoft's lame method of dualbooting, so I haven't tried this, but I think in theory it might work.

BTW, what were D, E, and F originally?  I suspect a couple CD drives?  A zip drive?  A removable drive?

Very clever.

I think it be better, if possible to shirt the logical partition FROM THE INSIDE. By that I mean the leading edge. This way the new partition should be logicals, whereas, if you shrink the primary, they might become primaties, and some systems have trouble with more than 1 primary partition per hard disk.

Just a thought.

I'm willing to try your suggestions, but it will take me some time to try them.  give me a few days.  Thanks for the info.
If I understand correctly, I shouldn't have wiped the drive, just formatted it, saving the mbr?

wrote on May 11^th, 2004 at 3:28am:

I think it be better, if possible to shirt the logical partition FROM THE INSIDE. By that I mean the leading edge. This way the new partition should be logicals, whereas, if you shrink the primary, they might become primaries, ...

That's absolutely right, Kevbo.  The temp partitions need to be logicals because additional primaries will get letters *after* all logicals, and we want them to be assigned *before* so XP will be pushed to "G".  However, PM8 will do that as a matter of course if you specify the new partition should be a logical.  Even though the space reclaimed from Pri-1 is initially outside the extended partition, when you tell PM8 to create a new *logical* partition it will automatically stretch the front edge of the extended partition so the new partition is enclosed within it.



Stormysdad wrote on May 11^th, 2004 at 4:51am:

If I understand correctly, I shouldn't have wiped the drive, just formatted it, saving the mbr?

Yes, I believe that would have worked.  The partition signature XP looks for is derived from the DiskID (4 bytes between the MBR code and the partition table in the master boot sector) and the starting sector number of the subject partition.  Merely reformatting the existing partitions would not have changed either of those numbers, so the partition signature would have been unchanged and the cloned registry would have been happy.  (Note: I'm talking about partition-to-partition cloning here.  I don't do disk-to-disk cloning, so am not sure if that method would change either number.)

Good luck, and let me know how it turns out.  I'm curious to know if the theory would actually work.

I'm curious, too.

on: May 9th, 2004, 4:30pm, stormysdad wrote:

Quote:

About two weeks ago I started having random problems with the BIOS recognizing the Hard drive and when that would happen, I would resort to the freezer trick to get the machine to boot with no problem.

What is the "freezer trick"?

When the BIOS can't see the HD, it can be a result of several things, one  of which can be a worn out boot sector on the disk, usually accompanied by cyclical clicking coming from the hard drive.  While I didn't feel this drive was old enough to be showing signs of heading south, it just wouldn't boot.  The freezer trick is to put the HD right in the freezer for a couple-three hours, then take it out, hook it up and fire her up.  The temperature change is enough to change the physical surface of the drive and 'voila' it boots.  Works like a champ, unless your drive had definitely gone south.  Even then it's a last chance thing to try to get the drive to boot one last time to try to save data.  BTW since I zeroed the drive and reloaded the image, the HD hasn't missed a beat except for XP not booting.

Thanks :) stormysdad

BTW, who/what is stormy?

Stormy is a black cat we found as a kitten, abandoned in a hotel parking lot on a day with lots of storm activity (green skies, flooded parking lots, etc.).  He was cowering under a semi-tractor and according to the staff he had been hanging around a couple days and they couldn't catch him.  My wife, being the cat magnet she is, had him in 15 minutes, and the rest is history.  He has grown up to be quite a good looking cat, built like a brick s**thouse and a good cuddler.
Thanks everybody for your good suggestions, will try to implement them and try them out, it'll just take a little while.

Stormy sounds like a wonderful addition to your family :D

I like kitties... all sizes.

Years ago, I came within a half day of getting a newly born mt. lion kitten to raise... didn't even have its eyes open yet. The folks who found them didn't realize they needed to be fed every couple hours and they died.  :'(

Probably for the best  :'(