Ghost 2003: Cloning the Entire C: Drive to Another Drive’s G: Partition Gives Error Message, “Generic Host Process for Win32 Services encountered a problem and needed to close”

Bought the PC below with the 80 GB C: drive on it. The C: drive has XP Pro, Service Pack 3 already installed and seems to work fine.

Installed, partitioned and formatted the new 1.5 TB drive as below and want to clone the C: drive onto the new drive’s G: partition. 

The cloning process seems to work OK and the image is installed on the G: partition successfully.

After a Shut Down, use the menu from the Windows boot.ini file on the C: drive to select the G: partition to boot from.  The boot up into XP Pro on the G: partition seems to work. 

But then, always get the same error message:

“Generic Host Process for Win32 Services encountered a problem and needed to close”

Do not get that error message when booting from the original C: drive.


How to clone the C: drive to the G: partition without getting the ‘Generic Host Processor...” error message when you boot up from G:?


Thanks very much for your help.


Dell Precision 470 Workstation
3.2 GHertz, 2 GB RAM
XP Pro, Service Pack 3

Seagate SATA 80 GB
  C: drive         80 GB  XP Pro OS and data

Seagate SATA 1.5 TB
  G:  NTFS            40 GB  XP Pro OS
  H:  FAT32           30 GB  Ghost images
  I:   FAT32      30 GB  Ghost images
  H:  NTFS   1,297 GB  data

AnotherUser

Quote:

As you have noted, this setup *seems* to work--but, your original WinXP's registry that you cloned to G still has all it's references to the *C* drive--if you remove that drive--or it's contents--I think you will not be able to boot from your cloned copy of WinXP--the registry of your *G* copy will still be pointing to original *C* instance of WinXP!

Here's a possible answer from a Google search--but I have no personal experience to offer:  How to Fix "Generic Host Process For Win32 Services Encountered A Problem and needs to close."

Make sure your data is backed up and/or you have a system *restore* point to revert back to if the *fix* doesn't work!

Let us know if it helps!

Christer wrote on Oct 22^nd, 2010 at 5:34am:


Sorry for the lack of clarity. 

Have tried the following with the same result each way:

1.  clone the C: partition directly to the G: partition

2.  create a Ghost image file of the C: partition and save it to a FAT 32 partition on the new drive (either H: or I:), then use Ghost to clone the image file onto the G: partition.

AnotherUser

Quote:

I'm curious--did you manually edit the *boot.ini* file to add a menu choice that pointed to the second HDD, 1st partition?

What is your actual goal here?  Are you wanting to transfer your WinXP to the new larger HDD, and remove the old HDD--or keep the old HDD as a second HDD on the system--but, not the *main* HDD?  Or, are you wanting to have two instances of WinXP on the same system and keeping the old HDD and copy of WinXP in place?

I don't know the answer--but, given this current setup--when booting from the *G* WinXP--which is depending on the *C* WinXP files--when you make registry changes (i.e. settings changes) using the *G* WinXP--I assume those changes are written to the *G* WinXP registry--but are there changes being made to the files on the *C* WinXP because the *G* WinXP registry entries point to the *C* WinXP files?

My point being--when you later boot to the *C* WinXP--will some of its files now reflect changes that you made earlier when booted to the *G* WinXP?

And, after making changes in the *C* WinXP settings--will those show up when booted to the *G* WinXP once again?

NightOwl wrote on Oct 22^nd, 2010 at 8:53am:


Thanks for your reply.

Based on Brian’s being able to duplicate the “Generic Host Process For Win32 Services” error message on his system, decided to postpone the possible repair above and pursue fixing the "schizophrenic" system error.  Plan to keep the repair in mind for possible use as needed later...

NightOwl wrote on Oct 23^rd, 2010 at 8:56am:

Good question. 

1- The overall goal is to use the C: partition’s OS and its already installed device drivers on the new G: partition.  This would save doing a new install of XP Pro on G:

The new drive will be the main drive to boot from and for storing data.

2- Keep the original 80 GB drive as a backup OS if needed.

Would of course like to have the OS on the new G: partiton completely independent of the contents of the original C: drive once all is set up.

In a sense, these seem to be simple goals,  But the implementation appears to be tricky...

NightOwl wrote on Oct 23^rd, 2010 at 9:13am:

Quite right.

Once the new drive is fully running, all apps installed (or maybe sooner), plan to repartition the old drive.  It would have an NTFS partition for the OS and any data and two 30 GB FAT 32 partitions to receive Ghost image files for backup from the new, large drive, hopefully resulting in a better “safety net”, as you say.

Brian wrote on Oct 23^rd, 2010 at 11:40pm:

Thank you for your recommendation.

Just now found a copy of Norton PartitionMagic 8.0 hidden away here, which includes a copy of BootMagic.

Is BootMagic worth considering or not really?  Would value your view very much.