I agree. I used to have a partition 1 that only booted with partition(2) in the boot.ini.


Andrew, I don't think you made any mistakes.

Andrew, I'm pleased it worked out.

Good call NightOwl.

Ghost4me.John

I have no personal experience *unhidding* additional primary partitions, but quoting from PowerQuests PartitionMagic v8.x User Guide, page 64:

Quote:

Dan Goodell wrote on Dec 29^th, 2005 at 3:51pm:


Dan, thanks for that clarification for XP, etc.  I'm still curious as to why the boot.ini had to point to partition(2)?  I'm wondering (guessing) that at some time prior to the cloning, that Andrew had the second drive visible to XP and XP assigned the existing 200GB (later resized to 160GB) partition as partition(1).

If Andrew had started with a completely blank unformatted 200GB drive, cloned from his 40gb to the 200gb, made it active and bootable, then I'm betting boot.ini would have said partition(1).  What does everyone think?

(Just trying to understand this process.  Thanks for all opinions!)

Thanks Brian and Dan for the explanation.  Everything makes sense now.   

Ghost4me.John

I had a problem similar to AndrewChang (actually a bit more complicated--I'll share if someone really wants the mind numbing details--anyone may read into that--*home movies* being shown friends and relatives  !).

It was Dan's webpage reference above that started my down the path to figuring out the issue--and I finally resolved the problem--but here's a tool that finally helped:

Editing the Boot.ini file using BTini

If you expand *Editing Boot.ini*, it explains how to use *PartInfo.exe* to generate a *Diagnostic Report*--after the shown example of the diagnositic report, it outlines how to determine what the actual boot number is needed for the *partitition(X)* in the boot.ini file.

If you expand *If Boot.ini is on an NTFS partition*--there's a link to download the program to edit boot.ini called *BTini*, or click here:

BTini.zip

***********************************************
There appears to be better tools for editing *boot.ini* now:

The Ghost 9.x and 10.x *Recovery Disk*, I think under *Advanced Utilities* has a *Edit Boot.ini* utility.

And there is a freeware program that can be run from DOS from TeraByte called *EditBINI* found here:

TeraByte Unlimited Freeware--look for EditBINI

***********************************************

You can get *PartInfo for DOS* here:

PartInfo.zip for DOS

and how to use it here:

Generating diagnostic reports using Partinfo.exe

I installed Windows XP on a new drive (clean install)
I tried to clone the new XP C: drive onto my backup disk Windows 2000 Pro C: drive.  Both Op sys are formatted in the NTFS. 
Strangely enough, the op sys is NTFS and the other partitions are FAT32 formats. I don’t know why, but everything works perfectly fine this way. 
I used  Symantec Ghost 9.0 (failed) and Ghost 2003 which failed.
I can boot with the clone and watch it freeze just prior the welcome screen. 
I make all of my clones using Ghost 2003 by booting from a diskette so, “ I know the routine”  because of my many successes.

My backup “receiving disk” had Windows 2000 Professional in the C: primary partition. 
All I wanted to do was clone the new XP bootable partition over into the “Windows 2000 partition and leave the other data partitions alone. 

I went back to Ghost 2003 where I shut down the op sys and booted with a diskette. 

I used Partition Magic to diagnose the error.  Failure 1516, “Partition improperly dismounted.”  I ran chkdsk /f as their suggested fix.  No success. 
Chkdsk found no errors. 
I followed all of the recovery procedures, including using Norton Systemworks  2005 Disk Doctor didn’t find any errors.   
A subsequent trial said that chkdsk found several undefined errors, with no descriptions or suggestions how to fix any of them. 

At first blush I thought that maybe the hang up might have been caused by the fact that I did not register XP yet (still going to change my motherboard as part of upgrading my computer) and perhaps MS thought I was doing a mass install (deployment) and locked me out.  The software is legitimate so I registered and tried to clone again with no success.  It takes me 2 hours and 11 minutes to clone just one partition, so a lot of my time is being wasted by FUBAR software.

I haven’t tried cloning the entire disk because 300 gigs (couldn’t pass up a brand new Seagate 300 gig for $79 bucks) will not go into 120 gigs. I have manageable partitions, and Ghost will only let me do one partition at a time anyway. 

I have a love hate relationship with Symantec. When it works (any program, it is wonderful)  When anything goes bad, whether I caused it or not, it is horrible. I have had many “go-arounds” with “Mark Anthony” somewhere in India.  All I got was bad advice and the run-around. Their web-site diagnostic section is miserable with a usual final solution of editing the registry. Been there, done that and don’t want to fool with it.
 
I am at a loss how to get a good backup. I STRONGLY DISAGREE  with those who advocate simply re-installing the operating system as a recovery method.  Backing up the data is a snap.  Re-constructing the op sys is a nightmare in wasted time.  Several times I just cloned my fully operational, spare hard drive over the recently messed up one, plugged it in and was back in business in a matter of minutes instead of hours and days. 

My ultimate goal is to put the 120 gig in an external USB enclosure and do my cloning without having to remove covers or having to swap cables and jumpers.  I am still a long way from that and I will not buy any more of Symantec’s bloatware to try to achieve that goal, so any words of advice are more than welcome.