Hi,

I recently crashed my hard drive and in going through the steps to recover ran into an error at the end and am writing for advice.  I will begin with a couple of questions and then detail the steps I took.  I would appreciate both suggestions regarding my questions and ANY comments on the steps I took etc.

For a user without Windows XP pro install disks but merely the recovery disks, is it necessary to restore the manufacturer's recovery partition before using Ghost/Partition Magic on a brand new drive to restore to the Ghost image previously created?  IOTW if there is a FAT32 Recovery partition and both an NTFS boot primary partition with XP and an NTFS extended data partition, can one simply create the partitions on a virgin drive with partition magic, make one active and use Ghost to restore the image to the active drive without creating recovery first?  When I tried to do this I received an error that

Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \<WINDOWS ROOT>\SYSTEM32\hal.dll

which upon researching indicated this is generally a problem with either a missing or moved hal.dll or a missing or corrupt boot.ini file but I am unsure and would appreciate any suggestions.

Here are the detailed steps I took and I realize the order was somewhat questionable in at least one point but this was my first attempt:

1.  Install new drive (250GB SATA similar Seagate vs. Samsung to old dead drive) and enter setup and ensure the drive is recognized.

2.  Reboot with Partition Magic 8.0 install CD/DVD and create logical data partition at end of disk and primary partition with remainder at front both NTFS.

3.  Use a Ghost 2003 boot CD (from Nightowl's directions) with version .793 to restore original boot partition image with XP Pro and software programs to primary partition from a USB 16GB pen drive.

4.  Reboot to Partition Magic to make primary partition Active (almost missed this).

5.  Reboot normally - get missing hal.dll error.

Yes I am replying to my own post.  While I still look forward to any comments or advice, I wanted to update the situation to mention that after doing a full recovery with the HP recovery disks and repeating my steps with Partition Magic (now shrink and create new DATA partition - no need to activate now) and then restoring the image to C: from Ghost everything worked fine.  The odd thing is that the Recovery Partition ended up at the end of the drive as opposed to the beginning so I am confused how this could have been a boot.ini issue since I thought XP would look in the first partition on the drive for it.  The modify date on the Recovery version of boot.ini was current, however, while the version on C: was a year old.

Any explanations would be most welcomed!

if you got a Seagate  or Maxtor Hard disk use this tool to prepare
and transfer the image or clone.
it is basically ACRONIS TRUE IMAGE 10 free FOR Seagate customers.


http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=seatools-win-eula&vgnextoid=d0d51d4dad651110VgnVCM100000f5ee0a0aRCRD

if you got recovery CD with ghost image on it *image.gho
boot with it and at menu press ESC key to come to A: prompt
A: prompt is Ram drive if you do a
DIR you will see ghost.exe the
put a clean (formated FAT32) floppy in Floppy drive
then:
at A: prompt
COPY ghost.exe B:
and it will copy ghost .exe to your floppy which is now B:
then boot with a window 98 with Cd rom support boot disc
http://tinyurl.com/boot98
then put the floppy with ghost,exe in floppy drive
at A: prompt type :
ghost.exe
and press enter on the key board.
you get ghost interactive navigate to CD rom drive to see the ghost  image on the CD assuming it is a ghost image you are trying to recover.
HP uses PC Angle LE
http://www.pcangelle.com/WW70AWP/WW70AWP.EXE/CONNECT/PCALE
to recover.
Powered by Win PE and the file technology, PC ANGEL LE is loaded on 60% of all PCs retailed in the US & several millions more deployed by brand-name OEMs.

Ben

Ben,

Thanks for the reply.  I am a little confused.  The recovery disks that I speak of are the ones provided by HP in order to return the hard drive to its original condition at purchase.  They will recreate a FAT32 Recovery Partition and the primary C: boot partition.  As I had only ghosted the C: boot partition I attempted to skip the creation of the FAT32 Recovery partition on the brand new replacement drive.  I had no trouble booting with the Ghost CD I created via Nightowl's directions and transferring the backed up C: boot partition image to the brand new drive.  But when I tried to boot from the now restored hard drive I found the error I mentioned about the hal.dll file missing and thus wrote here in hope of some understanding of the role the FAT 32 Recovery partition plays in day to day operation, etc., and whether one typically ghosts it as well and restores it in the process of replacing a drive.

Tom

Typically, a ghost partition restore to a new hard drive will result in a C: partition that will not boot, because a partition image does not contain all of the boot sector.
Only a disk image will contain all the info necessary to make a bootable C: partition.

I use only FAT-32 partitions for Windows XP, so if I have to re-create a boot sector, I can do that with FDISK on a boot floppy.

Good Luck,
Shadow  8-)

OK, Shadow, does that mean that the strategy to split between system and data partitions and Ghost the system partition for recovery is flawed under NTFS?

Is one best to simply keep the data and system files integrated on one partition and just ghost the entire drive?  I thought the split was more efficient but I did not realize that the system partition was not enough for a recovery to a brand new drive.

In your reply you describe using Fat-32 and FDisk.  For a brand new drive what order would you take in recovering with these two, FDisk first or Ghost image restore of the Windows XP Partition?

Thanks.

Tom

Hello again,
first useful information regarding HP computer and laptops:

HP Desktop recovery:
http://support.thetechguys.com/layout.aspx?ID={4784288d-1dbf-4c84-9f5f-1d1e83e4ba1f}&CatID={6a009103-498a-4dad-80fc-ee2f39bbf04c};

HP Notbook Recovery:
http://support.thetechguys.com/layout.aspx?ID={bcb3312d-01ad-469f-a829-a7c3fc217885}&CatID={a2763028-e235-4a34-b228-1d90810e5744};

the other thing I wanted to say some Manufacturers use boot managers eg IBM and windows vista .
I am not sure about HP
but I always use disk to image option with ghost
as dos only sees fat partitions then one needs to use an NTFS partition for windows XP and a hidden fat partition for the image and because it is hidden it shows as none DOS partition .(a bit vague and unsure here)
any way the practical conclusion is that if one uses Partition magic
to resize the recovery image partition the recovery proceeder say with Packard Bell will not work. at later stage when one decide to recover pressing F11 key as the image will not fit and all partition sizes are wrong.
any way I am glad you managed to sort your problem.
as I said that free true image program is good if you got Seagate HDD
as it also got Bart PE  Plugin if you see what I mean .
also it offers to make a bootable CD for recovery.

I like Ghost 8 as it has command line arguments and parameters.
and basically is a work of a genius.

Regards Ben
:)

TomJ

first restore your partition image of C:, then make it active, then run fdisk /mbr. this will write a new MBR (on either fat32 or ntfs) and it should now boot. this is how I have done it, resoring to a new blank drive. I make partition images on all my XP systems.

TomJ,

I'm confused too. Do you now have two partitions on your HD? WinXP first and the Recovery partition second? Were they in the reverse order on the original HD?

The physical order of the partitions on the HD doesn't determine boot.ini numbering. See "ARCpaths and boot.ini"

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/notes.htm#10

So it's possible for a WinXP partition on a 4 primary partition HD to be the first physical partition yet have a partition(4) boot.ini.

You can view partition table numbering with ptedit32.exe.

ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/PTEDIT32.zip

ckcc,

Your post reminded me of this interesting thread where we learned a lot.

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1155827177;start=0

Yes Brian, that was all interesting... I need to read it all again.

TomJ wrote on Dec 15^th, 2008 at 3:40pm:

OK, Shadow, does that mean that the strategy to split between system and data partitions and Ghost the system partition for recovery is flawed under NTFS? Is one best to simply keep the data and system files integrated on one partition and just ghost the entire drive?  I thought the split was more efficient but I did not realize that the system partition was not enough for a recovery to a brand new drive. In your reply you describe using Fat-32 and FDisk.  For a brand new drive what order would you take in recovering with these two, FDisk first or Ghost image restore of the Windows XP Partition? Thanks. Tom

Tom,
I apologize for seemingly missing your questions.

I keep all my HD's (except the one with Vista installed) in FAT-32 mode.  I like having total control over all my data, even from a DOS boot disk.

Several times over the years I've had a problem with a HD that either required total replacement or at least a Low Level Format to clear up a problem.
In any case the drive is as blank as a new factory fresh drive.
I make primarily Partition Images, which contain everything from drive C:....OS, programs and data.  
In my situation I'd be shooting myself in the foot, so to speak, by splitting up my OS and data on different drives.  (It really serves NO good purpose)

Anyway, I always set up a new drive the same way, as I have for oh so many years now.
I first boot up my system with the new drive installed as MASTER and my Windows ME boot floppy in the A: drive.
From my ME Utilities menu I first pick "FDISK" which I use to partition my new drive into two partitions.  One small one to be C: (20 or so gig's) and the rest (whatever) into a D: (storage) partition.

Then if that's successful, I go ahead and DOS Format both partitions.
That writes all the little tracks and sectors on the HD and verifies the surface and that the drive is working 100%.
Any bad sectors found by "Format" will be blocked out and added to the bad sector map, present on every drive.

Even though FDISK and Format do not have enough digits in them to accurately display the real disk size, both operations can be done quite nicely.  Format will report a smaller disk size when it starts, but it will continue formatting right out to the end of the partition.

The largest HD I'm currently using is a 200gig SATA2 Maxtor drive.
I set it up with FDISK and Format just like I've set up every other drive for the past 10 years.  NO Problem!

With the partition table and boot sector written by FDISK and Format, a Ghost restore of a Partition Image goes off without a hitch and the newly Restored drive boots with NO problems.

For all the above reasons, I seldom make an entire DISK Image of my hard drive.  For me, it's redundant.
(and where would I store such a large Image File?.....That actually requires another hard drive)

But, for those whose drive is in NTFS mode, a disk Image is very important.  A disk Image includes the Boot sector, not copied in a Partition Image.  An External HD works great for such backups.

I hope all this makes sense.  :-/

Happy Holidays Everyone!
The Shadow  8-)

I have created a spanned ghost image on a virtual drive H:\ using ghost 2003.
I then burned the spanned image to two dvd disks.
I go to another computer Dell G270 and load the bootable dvd. Thank you NightOwl.

The dvd disk boots fine and loads Ghost .exe. This is where the problems begin.

The ghost programs tells me it needs to know where the next image file is after it loads the first image file I selected in the program. The spanned images read as cd images and not dvd images in the Ghost application drop down box.

It then wants to save a ghosterr.txt file. It can't find the file and says there is an inconsistency and I need to contact Symanted support.

I am then sent back to A:\

Please help.