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problem restoring dual boot after crash

Hello,
 
I have a dual boot system with Win98SE on partition C: and Win2K on partition D:. After messing up Win2K on partition D: I formatted partition D: and used Drive Image to put back the image file I had made of that partition. But first I got the message that the partition was not unallocated space and that seemed to be needed to put the image back. Drive Image offered to delete the partition. I agreed and the program started to put the image file back. Then there came another message: 'Moving past cylinder 1023. the partition may not be bootable. Are you sure you want to do this?' Having no real choice I said yes and the image was put back. After this the machine did not boot up on WIN2K. I got the following message: 'Windows2000 could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \system 32\ntoskrnl.exe. Please reinstall a copy of the file.' Win 98 booted fine. Drive D was there, all the files were there. ntoskrnl.exe as well. I had this same message before after using Drive Image, but then it turned out the boot.ini on C: was changed. In this case this doesn't look like that: [boot loader] timeout=10 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect C:\="Microsoft Windows"

I  tried Win2K to repait the installation but in the process I got the following message: "Setup had detected that Drive D: is corrupted and connot be repaired."
Drive D: is the partition Win2K is on and which I restored with Drive Image. From Win98 I can access drive D and read and copy files just as always.
Basically I have the feeling it is a dual boot problem to be solved on drive C: and not a disk problem. But the question is: how to solve it?

Regards,

Diego Pos


Anyway, Looking at the drive I get the following information:

Partition Information Program
Copyright (c) 1994-1998, PowerQuest Corporation
==============================================================
Disk 0:  1868 Cylinders, 255 Heads, 63 Sectors/Track.
The BIOS supports INT 13h extensions for this drive.
====================== Partition Tables ======================
Partition      ----Begin----    ------End-----   Start     Num
Sector  # Boot Cyl Head Sect FS  Cyl Head Sect    Sect   Sects
------- - ---- --- ---- ---- -- ---- ---- ---- ------- -------
      0 0 80     0    1    1 0B  243  254   63      63 3919797
      0 1 00   244    0    1 0F 1023  254   63 391986026089560
Info: Begin C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Info: End C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
  Actual values are:
      0 1 00   244    0    1 0F 1867  254   63 391986026089560
3919860 0 00   244    1    1 0B 1023  254   63 391992326089497
Info: End C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
  Actual values are:
3919860 0 00   244    1    1 0B 1867  254   63 391992326089497

==============================================================
Disk 1:  1826 Cylinders, 255 Heads, 63 Sectors/Track.
The BIOS supports INT 13h extensions for this drive.
====================== Partition Tables ======================
Partition      ----Begin----    ------End-----   Start     Num
Sector  # Boot Cyl Head Sect FS  Cyl Head Sect    Sect   Sects
------- - ---- --- ---- ---- -- ---- ---- ---- ------- -------
      0 0 00     1    0    1 0F  801  254   63   1606529318625
Info: Begin C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
Info: End C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
  Actual values are:
      0 0 00     1    0    1 0F 1825  254   63   1606529318625
  16065 0 00     1    1    1 0B  801  254   63   1612829318562
Info: End C,H,S values were large drive placeholders.
  Actual values are:
  16065 0 00     1    1    1 0B 1825  254   63   1612829318562

==============================================================
Disk 2:  94 Cylinders, 64 Heads, 32 Sectors/Track.
The BIOS supports INT 13h extensions for this drive.
====================== Partition Tables ======================
Partition      ----Begin----    ------End-----   Start     Num
Sector  # Boot Cyl Head Sect FS  Cyl Head Sect    Sect   Sects
------- - ---- --- ---- ---- -- ---- ---- ---- ------- -------
Warning: The OS reported too few cylinders.  96 cylinders are present.
      0 3 80     0    1    1 06   95   63   32      32  196576

========================================================================
Disk 0:  14653.0 Megabytes
========================= Partition Information ========================
Volume        Partition                        Partition   Start   Total
Letter:Label  Type            Status   Size MB Sector  #  Sector Sectors
------------- --------------- -------- ------- ------- - ------- -------
C:SYSTEEM     FAT32           Pri,Boot  1914.0       0 0      63 3919797
              ExtendedX       Pri      12739.0       0 1 391986026089560
              EPBR            Log      12739.0    None - 391986026089560
D:MASTER      FAT32           Log      12739.0 3919860 0 391992326089497

========================================================================
Disk 1:  14323.6 Megabytes
========================= Partition Information ========================
Volume        Partition                        Partition   Start   Total
Letter:Label  Type            Status   Size MB Sector  #  Sector Sectors
------------- --------------- -------- ------- ------- - ------- -------
              Free Space      Pri          7.8    None -      63   16002
              ExtendedX       Pri      14315.7       0 0   1606529318625
              EPBR            Log      14315.7    None -   1606529318625
E:NO NAME     FAT32           Log      14315.7   16065 0   1612829318562


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When you allowed Drive Image to remove the partition and reinstall it, you change both the Master Boot Record as well as the File Allocation Table.

Save copies of your NT boot loader files to a floppy.

Boot to your Windows 98 Boot Floppy and type FDISK/MBR <enter>

Boot to Windows 98 floppy again and check to make sure both partitions are present and that "C" is active.

Now copy the boot loader files back to the root of "C".

Now you should be able to either boot to Win2k or do a repair from the Win2000 CD.

Dennis
If DEW's solution does not work, then I would see what fdisk sees on the drive, and then I would consider adding these 3 lines to your boot.ini and see if you can boot from one of them.

I think that your partition order may be messed up, and this my help.

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 P3"       /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 P4"       /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 P1"       /fastdetect

I hope this helps !
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diegopos

ASKER

Hello Sysexpert: I tried the boot.ini trick, but none of the options would boot.

Hello Dew associates: Can you tell me which files are the NT boot loader files? Or shall I copy the entire selection in C:\ to floppy, just to be sure?

Regards,

Diego Pos
Just listening.

Strange enough: this is another occasion when PQDI seems to give headaches. Last time I saw something like this was approx. 4 weeks ago, when I did a training two times with different people. The sysadmin had saved copies of the classromm machines using PQDI to be able to reset the configuration between the two classes. the backup image was located on a D: partition of the same harddisk. All 7 machines available were the same make and model (Dell Optiplex), and so were the harddrives.

Whan it came to the restore on three machines we got a nonsense message (something like that the target partition had not been properly unlocked (how do you lock/unlock a partition ????)). A lock/unlock function could not be found anywhere in PQDI. We ended up deleting the partition and re-creating in using exactly the same size (I can tell for sure, since the backup copy had been placed into a partition just after the old C: partition, so all I had to do is create a partition between the beginning of the disk and the begignning of the backup partition).

The result: none of the three machines would boot W2k, same message as yours. We triple checked all settings (yes, inluding the partition active flag) and tried any repair option we could think of, from booting DOS and doing fdisk /mbr to any kind ow w2k repair options, but none helped in any way.

Finally we deleted all partitions and rebuilt all three machines from scratch, which worked right away.

Armin Linder
Copy ntdetect.com, ntldr and boot.ini to the floppy. Note: These files are hidden, so you may need to change your view settings to find them.
Hello Dew:
I did the FDISK/MBR thing but still Win2K did not boot. Trying the Repair function gave the same message, that drive D was corrupted.

What do you think about the remarks made by Armin Linder? Is this a Drive Image bug?About a year ago I had more or less the same problem. In the proces of recovering nothing helped, but I messed up more and more. I messed up Win98 as well and reinstalled it again from scratch. Then I got this thought: I had made the image file with Drive Image 3 and had put it back with Drive Image 4. Now I put it back with version 3 and the whole thing immediately functioned again!
The lesson I thought I had learned was to always put back an image file with the version you created it. But, as it turns out, this was a mistake. But finding that Drive Image 3 puts back a functioning dual boot system and version 4 doesn't, gives one the impression that there must be a bug in version 4?
I tried putting back my image file (made with version 4) with version 3, but the file is not recornized as a valid imagefile, so that trick doesn't work.

What to do? Are there new insights? Or do I have to throw away Drive Image (and buy Ghost) and start all over again?

Actually it's not a bug at all, it's the way DI incorporates portions of Partition Magic and how it handles drive issues and Windows 2000. The problem is is that you destroyed a FAT and it appears that it is the first one on disk 1. Can you boot to DOS and change to the second disk and read the contents?
Hello Dew:
There is no problem reading the contents of partition D: from Dos. If you mean wether I can read the FAT, I don't know how and where to look for it.
If you can to it via DOS and read a directory of its content, then there's at least one good fat. Make sure these files are in the root of the boot partition, ntdetect.com, ntldr and boot.ini, and make sure boot.ini is pointing to the correct partition for Win2k.
Hello Dew:
I put these files in C:root and also in D:root. For the boot.ini, I put in several possibilities. It looks like this now:
[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 P3"       /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 P4"       /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 P1"       /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(0)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 P0"       /fastdetect
C:\="Microsoft Windows"

It doesn't work, but maybe I should try another string?

You can't put those files in the root of "D", this could cause an unrecoverable crash.

WAIT, before we go any further, let's understand exactly where things are.

How many physical hard drives do you have?

How many partitions on each drive?

What exactly is in each partition?
More info:

The ARC naming convention:

The BOOT.INI file's path options use the ARC naming convention. An ARC name has five parts. Look at this entry from our sample BOOT.INI:
 
multi(0)rdisk(0)disk(0)partition(1)\WINNT

Let's take a closer look at each of these parts and the conventions they use.

Which controller?

The first part will contain the word multi or scsi and a number in parentheses. This part of the name identifies the controller that hosts this disk drive. If the controller is a Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) controller, you'll see scsi here. If you're using a multifunction adapter disk controller, such as IDE, EIDE, or ESDI, you'll see multi in this place. Well, that's almost true. In order to make their SCSI controllers easier to use with Intel systems, many manufacturers of SCSI controller cards create them to talk directly with the Intel BIOS. Of course, these cards may not be installed in an Intel machine; therefore, the makers allow you to enable or disable this feature. A SCSI controller that has this feature enabled is said to have its ROM BIOS enabled. A SCSI controller with its ROM BIOS enabled will be listed as multi in this first part of the ARC name. The number in parentheses (zero based) indicates which controller this is. A second IDE controller would be multi(1).
 
Which disk?

The next part of the name will always be rdisk; it tells the node address of this disk on its controller. Since only SCSI controllers have multiple nodes, the number here will always be zero (0) for a true multi (IDE or similar) controller. For a SCSI controller, this number will be the SCSI ID number of this disk on its controller, i.e., a number from 0 to 7 identifying this disk's address on the SCSI controller. Remember that a ROM BIOS-enabled SCSI controller will show up in BOOT.INI as multi. In this case, you could see a name beginning with multi(0)rdisk(3) in your file. You now know that this can't be an IDE drive; therefore, it must be a disk at ID 3 of a SCSI controller with its ROM BIOS enabled. This is a point that escaped even the early Microsoft certification tests for Windows NT and still isn't well documented in the NT texts. The third part of the name identifies which disk, at the node address specified under rdisk. Here, the SCSI controller must be zero (0), since only IDE and related controllers support master/slave disk configurations. The master disk on an IDE controller will be disk(0) and the slave will be disk(1). On a dual-channel EIDE controller, this number could be anything from 0 to 3.

Which partition?

To understand the fourth part of the ARC name, you must understand the Intel partitioning scheme. In current versions of DOS, Windows 95, and Windows NT, a disk may have up to four separate partitions. One of these partition may be an extended partition. Any others must be primary partitions. A primary partition equates to a single drive letter; for example, C: is located on a primary partition. The extended partition dates back to the time, under earlier versions of DOS, when a disk could have only one primary partition. To allow better division of the available disk space, the extended partition was invented.

An extended partition took up the remaining space on the disk, but allowed the user to create multiple logical drives within the extended partition. The extended partition still exists, but is mostly useful only when you need more than four divisions of the available space on a disk.

You can have a disk with one primary partition or four primary partitions, or three primary partitions and one extended partition. Any combination of partitions is allowed as long as the total number of partitions doesn't exceed four, and there's no more than one extended partition. The numbering of these partitions is controlled by Intel BIOS and isn't intuitively obvious. Partition zero (0) refers to the entire disk, but it isn't used by any Microsoft operating system. Therefore, partition numbering in BOOT.INI starts with 1. The active partition, or the first partition if no partition is marked active, will be partition zero. If there are no extended partitions on the disk, then the remaining partitions will be numbered in the order in which they occur in the partition table. This is usually the order in which the partitions were created.

However, if you have an extended partition, the numbering scheme changes. The first logical drive in an extended partition will always be partition 2. Numbering will continue through the remaining logical drives of the extended partition until all logical drives are numbered. Then the remaining primary partitions will be numbered starting with the next number after the last logical drive in the extended partition.
Hello Dew:
Thanks for your extensive reaction. Even in the case that this will not rescue my configuration, I've learned a lot.
First, the disks and partitions:
I have two IDE-HD's. On the first HD there is a partition called C: with Win98SE on it and another called D: with Win2K on it. Then there is drive E, which has no further partitions and only contains data.

The line in boot.ini used to boot to Win2k before I used Drive Image was: multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect.
It seems to me that messing around with the partitions cannot alter the first three settings (multi-disk-rdisk)?
I do have an extra Promise Ulra 66 IDE card in the system, since I had too many IDE-devices. But nothing has changed in that regard.

The Powerquest Partition Information program analyzed the disk after my problem started as follows:
========================================================================
Disk 0:  14653.0 Megabytes
========================= Partition Information ========================
Volume        Partition                        Partition   Start   Total
Letter:Label  Type            Status   Size MB Sector  #  Sector Sectors
------------- --------------- -------- ------- ------- - ------- -------
C:SYSTEEM     FAT32           Pri,Boot  1914.0       0 0      63 3919797
             ExtendedX       Pri      12739.0       0 1 391986026089560
             EPBR            Log      12739.0    None - 391986026089560
D:MASTER      FAT32           Log      12739.0 3919860 0 391992326089497

========================================================================

Checking it with two other programs(Ranish Partition manager and Partition magic), they both call the drive drive 1. But I think they mean by that drive 1 out of two.
Partition magic says partition C: is active and primary, then there is an extended partition which is not active and primary and then there is partition D: that is not active and logical.
The first FAT sector is 32.
Partition Magic states that partition D: is formatted Fat 32X (whatever that may be).

Ranish partition Manager sees four partitions, where number 1 is active and corresponds in size with C:.
Partition 3 and 4 are not used. But with partition 2 (not-active, LBA VFAT (Dos Extended)it claims there is something wrong. According to this program it is inconsistent, meaning: "CHS values do not correspond to starting sector and partition size which are also stored in the partition table."

Ranish states that the first physical sector starts at cyl. 244 and ends with cyl 1023, while Parition magic says it starts at 244 but ends at cyl. 1867.

Does this all give you any clue?
Ranish may be having problems with cylinders over 1023, a known problem. I would trust the other info more than ranish.

At this point, I would delete the partition, and install win2k fresh. If it works OK, then you can optionally try to restore your image from PQDI, after checking the contenet of the boot.ini file.

I hope this helps !
There are a few approaches you can use, however all but one requires a substantial understanding of drive geometry and how to edit the partition table.

You can use Norton Tools or Partition Magic to try and repair the partition table, which is essentially straight forward as the programs handle this directly, or you can use an editor and do it manually yourself. The obvious downside to all of this is that if there was even a minor problem when you setup this drive initially, and you return the parameters to the figures they should be, you can't recover the partition. It comes down to how much work you want to do.
Hallo Dew/Sysexpert

I reformatted partition D: and re-installed Win2K. After that I had a working but completely clean Wins2K system. Looking at the boot.ini I was amazed to find that the line pointing to Win2K was exactly the same: default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT.
I then deleted everything on partition D: and tried to put back the image file, but of course Drive Image wanted (like the first time) to mess around with the partition. So I cancelled that action. But luckily Drive Image comes with a sile editor that allows you to enter the image file and copy selected files back.
So I manualy copied the directories I needen back and to my surprise the whole thing worked again. I haven't had time to test it thoroughly, but I started about five programs and they all worked properly. So it looks as if I am on the road again. Thanks!

One last question:
In writing the files back to D: I also put back a file called Pagefile.sys. The one in the backup was larger than the new one. But Win2K later automatically overwrote it with the smaller version. Will this cause trouble?
No. Pagefile.sys is a temporary pagefile that expands and contracts as needed, within the limits that you define in the virtual memory section of the My computer properties.

I'm glad you got this working !!
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Hello guys,

Thanks a lot for your technical and mental help.
I am sorry not to be able to share the point or double them.
Hope to see you here next time I am in trouble (but not to soon).

Diego
I am very grateful.
You're quite welcome, glad I could help!