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El Duderino

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Restoring image to a different partition
Jan 9^th, 2006 at 11:45am

Hi,
I recently installed XP Pro on my machine as part of a dual boot system. I already had XP Home installed on partition 2 of my first hard disk. I installed Pro on partition 3. After install I created a Ghost 2003 image of the new install and now I wouldn't mind replacing the XP Home version on partition 2 with the XP Pro image of partition 3. I use a boot manager to control booting so when one OS is active the other is hidden, meaning that both OS's are on C:. I appreciate that the boot.ini file is going to point to the wrong partition but what I want to ask is, is this likely to be my only problem or is there half a chance it may work once I've modified the boot.ini to point to the correct partition. Any suggestions would be welcome especially from anyone with experience of similar situations,
El.

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Re: Restoring image to a different partition
Reply #1 - Jan 9^th, 2006 at 12:02pm

El Duderino

I dual boot--I use Ghost to place a copy of my OS partition on a second primary partition--there I can test new software without effecting my *main* install of the OS.

I do not use a *boot manager*, but I use PartitionMagic's *pqboot* program that changes which primary partition is active and hides the other primary partitions--so my OS partition is alway C:\ also--the only issue I have had is the *boot.ini* file has to point to the correct partition for booting.

I think, as long as the drive letter does not change, everything else should be *good*--but have backups to restore to the original if something goes *wrong* Wink

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El Duderino

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Re: Restoring image to a different partition
Reply #2 - Jan 9^th, 2006 at 1:11pm

Thanks for replying so soon Night Owl,
What I think I'll do is turn off BootMagic first leaving XP Home as the active partition. Then boot up using the Ghost floppy and "restore" the XP Pro image (partition 3) to Partition 2 (XP Home) and then quit Ghost. I think then what I should do is take out the Ghost floppy and insert the Symantec Recovery CD (you can modify the boot.ini file with it) and boot from that. Or should I reboot straight after the restore and then use the Symantec Recovery CD to modify the boot.ini ??? I'm slightly concerned about the restore pointing to partition 3 when I reboot. I don't won't to mess with anything on that partition even though it's hidden. What do you think?

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Re: Restoring image to a different partition
Reply #3 - Jan 9^th, 2006 at 2:43pm

El Duderino

Quote:

I think then what I should do is take out the Ghost floppy and insert the Symantec Recovery CD (you can modify the boot.ini file with it) and boot from that. Or should I reboot straight after the restore and then use the Symantec Recovery CD to modify the

I'm not sure what you are asking here, unless you mean try to boot to the WinXP that's on that 2nd partition before you resort to booting to the Ghost 9.x or 10.x Recovery CD where you can modify the boot.ini file.

As a side note--you might want to try the above--when I use Ghost 2003 to restore my OS image (its boot.ini file points to *partition(1)* for booting) to the spare primary partition, Ghost actually *alters* the boot.ini file behind the scene without letting me know it has done so! Because my partition table is *out of sequence*--(I did not actually partition the *unallocated* space to create the 3rd primary partition until long after I had partitioned my drive with 2 other primaries and an extended with 4 logical partitions--so my third primary partition is the 7th partition listed in the partition table, but physically the 2nd partition on the disk--used PartitionMagic to end up with this scenario!)--and Ghost has a *flaw* in how it reads an *out of sequence* partition table--so it alters the boot.ini file to try and boot from *partition(7)*--which is actually my 2nd primary partition as far as physical location on the HDD, but is listed as the 7th partition I created on this HDD!

I get a boot error that states that the boot process can not find the *system disk*! Well-duh!--partition 7 on my HDD is my logical FAT16 partition in the extended partition. I have to manually edit the boot.ini file to point to *partition(3)* because that's the 3rd bootable partition listed in the partition table--even though it's physically the 2nd partition on the HDD--and apparently the ARC path for the boot sequence gets its information from the partition table (and I do not know where Ghost gets its information from)!

If you followed all that--I'm not sure I did!!!--then possibly Ghost 2003 will correctly alter your boot.ini to point to the correct partition for booting if your partition table is *in sequence*--only trying will tell!

I now have created three WinXP emergency boot floppy disks--one for each possible bootable partition on a boot HDD: partition(1), partition(2), and partition(3) using this method:

How to use System files to create a boot disk to guard against being unable to start Windows XP

So, regardless of what the HDD boot.ini reads, I can access my WinXP using one of these floppys, and then altering the boot.ini to match which one of the boot floppys worked!

No question is stupid...but, possibly the answers are Wink

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El Duderino

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Re: Restoring image to a different partition
Reply #4 - Jan 9^th, 2006 at 7:55pm

I'm needing to back-track a little here. I noticed you mentioned it earlier and I've just recently posted in the forums about an alternative boot manager. Brian also suggested PQBoot so I've been giving it a try. It seems okay actually but now I'm wondering what will happen if I delete partition 1 (which is where BootMagic is installed but disabled). I'd uninstall BootMagic first of course. I presume partition 2 (XP Home) will become partition 1 and partition 3 (XP Pro) will become partition 2. If I do this from the XP Home partition I suppose it's easy enough to modify the boot.ini straight after (providing I don't have to reboot first, which I shouldn't because the BootMagic partition is totally inactive) but at some point I'll have to boot into XP Pro (the old partition 3 with a boot.ini to match). If there's a problem hopefully I'll be able to boot into the active partition (which should be 2, the old 3) with the recovery CD I mentioned earlier and modify the boot.ini. Does any of that make sense? I suppose I'm not really that keen on having a 50MB FAT partition at the begining of my disk that's doing nothing. Let me know if you have any thoughts on this scenario if you wouldn't mind,
El.

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Brian

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	Re: Restoring image to a different partition Reply #5 - Jan 9^th, 2006 at 8:15pm El Duderino, I've made three floppies as per NightOwl's above link. So if you can't boot into your partitions after uninstalling BootMagic and rebooting, then you can boot from the floppies and then edit your boot.ini from Windows. Is that correct NightOwl?
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El Duderino

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Re: Restoring image to a different partition
Reply #6 - Jan 9^th, 2006 at 9:44pm

So far so good and no need for a floppy disk as yet, although I have made them. I've always had one for the first OS but it never occured to me to make one for the second. Thanks for the tip. I deleted partition 1 where BootMagic used to reside with PartitionMagic and it or something updated both boot.ini files to point to the correct partitions. As for restoring an image of the 2nd partition to the first as I vaguely remember someone mentioning at some point...maybe it was on another forum, I'm going to leave it for a few days but I'll let you know how I get on. Thanks again folks,
El.

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	Re: Restoring image to a different partition Reply #7 - Jan 9^th, 2006 at 11:15pm Brian Quote: So if you can't boot into your partitions after uninstalling BootMagic and rebooting, then you can boot from the floppies and then edit your boot.ini from Windows. Yes, that is correct!
	No question is stupid...but, possibly the answers are ! (This is an old NightOwl user account--not in current use. Current account is NightOwl without a dash at the end.) IP Logged

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