BootIt NG - restore image from CD - partition contains no OS

First, I presume the Boot-It restore process worked okay (no error messages) -- right?

If so, boot to a Boot-It NG floppy (or CD) and "CANCEL" at the 1st prompt; then go to Maintenance Mode and Partition Work.  Describe the current partition structure of your new hard drive.

You most likely simply need to either set the partition active;  or set the BOOT.INI file to "point" to the correct partition ==> but if you post the exact details shown on the partition screen it will be easier to tell what's wrong.

first prompt is the "Floppy Boot Menu" with some radio buttons, defaulting to "Reactivate BootIt NG"
One of the buttons is "Maintenance" - I went with that and get to the ICON menu
Select Partition Work and get this:

Hard Drives are HD 0 and CDz
Partitions are:

----------        partition    57224 MB Free Space
BootIt EMBRM partition           8 MB BootIt EMBRM

That hard drive does not appear to have any OS partition on it (just the 57224MB of free space).

Since you've obviously had Boot-It on the drive, go ahead and re-activate it (then you won't need the floppy to get into Boot-It).

Then boot to Boot-It; select Partition Work;  select CDz;  insert your image CD; click Image;  and when you get the "Paste Pending for Image Restore" message select HD-0, then select the 57224MB partittion; and the click Paste.   That should restore the previously saved image.

doing that now - 4 CD's - takes about 90 min if I remember right.  Could have sworn that this is what I did yesterday... we'll see.

... could be that it's simply an unlabeled partition image; but won't hurt to be sure you've done it exactly right.

... Meanwhile, download EDITBINI from http://www.bootitng.com/utilities.html ---> and then put it on a bootable floppy (Win98 boot disk would be fine).   MIGHT need it in a bit ...

DONE pasting the image - tried to reboot and got to display of BOOT MENU with two items: Windows XP (my name) and Main (my name also)  not sure why there is two...

when I choose either and press Boot - I get "The configured boot partition was not found"

....

CF

I also tried Direct Boot and chose the only active partition - the one named for where I put the image (MainNew) and it tried to boot but gave me : "The partition does not contain an os..."

I've read back over our note of last Jan and cannot see why the image would not contain the OS

Assuming you made the image correctly, it should absolutely contain a good copy of the OS.   I presume it restored okay (no errors from Boot-It) ... so do this:

(1)  Go to Boot-It's Partition Work screen and post the current details (same as before)

(2)  Boot to a Win98 floppy containing the EditBINI program (per my note above) and run the program.   Post the current contents of the BOOT.INI file.

Hard Drives: HD 0    CDz
Partions

--------            Partition       8  MB Free space
MainNew         Partition 12182 MB FAT-32
-------             Partition 45034 MB free space
BootIt EMBRM  Partition        8 MB BootIt EMBRM

as for Win98... lol... I have one at home but I won't be back there until Thurs nite. Will try to find on at client site but all are gone for the day now.

... let me know if you find a '98 or DOS boot disk.   I think that is likely to resolve this.

I can't believe it but I have a W98 boot floppy but it does not have the EDITBini on it.... anyplace else to get the EDITBini program and put it on the boot floppy and then boot to it?  Oh - and one more hurdle - I don'thave a floppy drive - would have copy the floppy to a CD - and would need instructions for that - something like copy /f/s ?

Whoops -- guess you'll need a bootable CD :-)   I'll give you details on that ... but we're heading out for an evening engagement, so it will be late tonight before I can do that.   Look for it first thing in the morning ...

EditBINI is a free download from the link I gave you above (07/18/2006 01:27PM PDT).

One quick thing you can try:  Go into BootIt and DELETE the first partition on the disk (the 8MB one).
Be sure the 2nd partition (the 12182MB one) is Active.   Then reboot.   That may be all you need to do :-)    [this could mess things up a bit -- that's why I was going to look at BOOT.INI first -- but we can resolve it if it does;  so just give it a quick try and post back]

delete is not one of the options on the Partition work

Okay, it's not actually a partition -- just free space.

Highlight the "MainNew" partition and then click View MBR ==> is it shown as Active ??

If not, be sure "MainNew" is highlighted on the MBR display and click "Set Active".   If it wasn't active, that will likely fix this.

If it's already active, we need to look at some more stuff tomorrow.

Post back with the status for the MBR check, etc.

Now I've REALLY got to go ...

LOL... you sound just like me - always trying to get the last bit of info out... thanks and apologies to your wife.

MainNew was set to active already - in the VIEW MBR it looks like this:

                                       Starting                                         Ending             LBA             sectors
                                     C       H    S    FS                          C       H     S        
BootIt EMBRM                 1023  0     1    DFh                       1023  254  63      117194175        16065
MainNew           active          1  0     1    Ch                        1023  254   63            16065    24948945
                                          0  0     0    0h                              0     0     0                   0                0
                                          0  0     0    0h                              0     0     0                   0                0


btw - this is going to 500 pts....

I messed around a bit and now have a VIEW MBR that looks like this:

                                       Starting                                         Ending             LBA             sectors
                                     C       H    S    FS                          C       H     S        
MainNew           active          1  0     1    Ch                        1023  254   63            16065    24948945
                                          0  0     0    0h                              0     0     0                   0                0
                                          0  0     0    0h                              0     0     0                   0                0
                                          0  0     0    0h                              0     0     0                   0                0

Work With Partitions looks ike this:

Hard Drives: HD 0    CDz
Partions

--------            Partition       8  MB Free space
MainNew         Partition 12182 MB FAT-32
-------             Partition 45042 MB free space




oops - and now won't boot w/out the BootIt CD  and the Reactivate BootIt NG option is not active....

 

Well ... I'm not sure what you've done that caused Boot-It to "lose itself".   It appears you've either deleted or hidden the Boot-It EMBR partition.

Boot with the Boot-It CD, Cancel at the first prompt (do not install), and go to Maintenance Mode and then Partition Work.   Post what the current partition structure looks like.

... do you have access to a system with a floppy drive AND do you have a USB flash drive?

If so, be sure you have Explorer set to "see" ALL files, including hidden and system files; then copy all of the W98 boot disk to the USB drive.   Now download EditBINI and add it to the flash drive.

... now the flash drive should boot on your laptop :-)

last night I copied all the files from your win98 attachment, buned to CD, and tried to boot to it but no go - it just ignores it and goes directly to BootIt - which is what started my messing around as per prev posts.

Anyway I can do as stated above but how do I get the boot to pick the USB drive - when I f12 on the dell I only see Internal HDD, CD, Card bus NIC,onboard NIC and Diagnostics - when I plug in flash it gets added to list maybe?  I will try in the meantime.

Tks,
CF

Look in the BIOS and see if there's a "USB boot" option (may be worded differently).  Most newer systems (2 years or so) will allow booting from a USB device -- yours may or may not.

If not, you can create a bootable CD using Roxio or Nero => you have to "tell" them where the boot disk image is, and they can create the bootable CD.  You do not just burn the files to CD :-)

-Quick formatted the flash drive FAT-32
-took files off an official W98 SE Boot Disk and copied to flash drive
-added the EDITBINI.EXE you gave me
-plugged into USB
-started
-f12
-chose USB drive to boot from
-seems to start but then CD fires up and system goes nowhere, just hangs with blinking cursor in top left and black screen
-did 2 more times - same result

Boot with the Boot-It CD, Cancel at the first prompt (do not install), and go to Maintenance Mode and then Partition Work.   Post what the current partition structure looks like.

just verified that everything looks same as posted at 9:03pm last night

So that's like this:  (i.e. the Boot-It EMBR partition is now GONE)

--------            Partition       8  MB Free space
MainNew         Partition 12182 MB FAT-32
-------             Partition 45042 MB free space

When you try to boot from the USB flash drive (''... seems to start ...") are you getting any messages or menus at all (e.g. the Win98 menu asking if you want to boot with/without CD support) ??
IF you're getting the menu, select NO CD Support and see if that boots to a DOS prompt.

If you're not, do you have access to a PC with Roxio Easy CD Creator and a floppy drive?   If so, you can easily create a bootable CD by simply inserting the floppy; running Roxio; selecting File - New Project - Bootable CD; and following the prompts.   If not, do you have any CD software that can write a CD from a .ISO file?   ... I may be able to find you an .ISO of a bootable CD :-)

Had a guy here that tried to use ROXIO to create the bootable CD from the floppy but is having problems - it just hangs when he hits burn...

Try to use a lower burn speed (even 4x is fine -- you're burning a VERY small amount of data).

He had already tried that...


I booted with a Symantec Recovery Disk from Norton Ghost 9.0 - it is asking for
Rescu files
check disk
advanced recovery tasks

does this do us any good?

I chose Advanced.... then Utilities.... which dropped a menu that had an option for "Edit Boot.INI"  I thought "Yay!"
I chose it and the CD spun up but nothing happens.

got bored... went to Utilities... chose modify partitions.... (I know, I know...)  it showed that the primary partition was bootable but under the "HOME" column it said NO.  

It was asking which partition I wanted to boot from so I chose the only one there (I'm brilliant), and it restarted.

On restart/boot, I got :

BootIt EMBRI  2.01
BootIt EMBRL 2.02

Unable to fine BootIt i the EMBRM partion!

I think this tells you something - but I am not sure how to get BootIt back into the EMBRM partition.

I think I'm at the end of my possible options and will await your next command. It is not the end of the world if I have to restore from Dell orig disk and move on. Just bugs me.

CF

Try again to make a bootable CD from a Win98 boot disk that has EditBINI on it (downloaded from Terabyte as I noted earlier) ...

Let me know if you can then boot to it => if so, run EditBINI, then select the hard disk (you only have one); then the partition; and then it should display your current BOOT.INI ==> post the contents of it.

... as you noticed, I was gone for an hour or so ...

About the worst case is you may have to delete all of the current partitions;  then restore from your image again; then set the BOOT.INI correctly => and the system will boot fine :-)

Your mention of Dell triggered a thought -- did this have a Dell utility partition on it originally?   If so, that explains why your BOOT.INI is likely "pointing" to the wrong place.   Hopefully you can get a CD built correctly so we can look at it :-)

I ws wrong - I had another idea.  I managed to re-install BootIt to it's own partition and can boot again normally with no external drives. But the boot menu is empty when it displays.

I tried to set MainNew as an identity in the boot menu but I then get the 'ol "partition does not contain an OS"


Given the results of using the Symantec CD and getting no response from choosing "edit Boot.ini"  is it possible that I do not have a Boot.INI at all?

Going to try to install roxio on my machine and play with it....

This is one of those "if the bloody machine was here it'd take 15 minutes" kind of problems !!

Boot to the Boot-It CD;  CANCEL at the first prompt (don't install it);  go to Partition Work; and DELETE all of your partitions !!!   Post the resulting partition display (should only have one entry).

Then boot to Boot-It and this time install it (don't press CANCEL).

Reboot (to confirm it's okay);  then go to the main Boot-It menu and select Settings.   Click the "Limit Primaries" button.   Now go to Partition Work and post the partition display again.

More after all this ...

... just been informed we're going out to dinner :-)     Leaving in about 30 min; then gone for 2 hours.   Hopefully we'll have this done in 20 minutes !!

After delete had 1 partition - 57232 MB free space
(I did not select the Wipe option)


Re-boot shows that Limit Primaries was already checked
Partition Work shows 2 partitions :

BootIt EMBRM  Partition  8mb  BootIt EMBRM
------              Partition  57224mb Free space



Going to the hotel now  - going to try to get on there - sometimes it works sometimes not...

btw - no sweat on all this. I have an alternate laptop that is working just fine - I have to give it back to it's owner in about 3 weeks.  also - I will be travelling home on Thurs at 2pm and will probably not be rocking again until Monday at noon.

thanks as usual but again, no sweat on this.

I'm on but have nothing but the flash drive - have no cd...

In the absence of a bootable CD it would be difficult to resolve this tonight.  There IS a "backdoor" way to resolve it if you're anxious ==> restore the system with the Dell CD's;  but don't bother with the drivers, updates, etc. -> just get it to where it boots.   The boot to Boot-It (whoops !! -- no CD !!) ...   Okay, you can't do this.   But since I started describing the process, I'll finish it; just so you know how to do it.    Then boot to Boot-It, and restore your Image (from the CDs you have it on) on top of the XP partition that the Dell restore operation just created.   That should be in the same relative position that it was when you imaged it -- so it should work fine.

Well - I could do that if I had the Dell cd's with me....  will it work if I just use the XP Pro CD that Dell sent with my replacement/under warranty Hard drive?

And then instead of formatting the drive and restoring BootIt and then the image, just boot from BootIt CD and restore image?

Might be worth a try in the am.

Thanks.
CF

The first thing I'd try to do is get a bootable CD that has EditBINI on it => that should let us directly adjust the BOOT.INI so all will be well.

If Dell sent you an XP Pro CD with your hard drive, then you must not have had a Dell utility partition on the old hard drive !!  I simply don't know.  The problem with your restored image is most likely one of two things:

(1)  The image wasn't of your active XP partition (seems unlikely);  or

(2)  The system you imaged had a BOOT.INI that reflected a partition other than the first one on the hard drive.   If this is the case, a simple EditBINI run will let us fix that very quickly.

Installing from an XP CD would create a bootable system => and if we then restore your image on top of that partition, the only possible thing that would need to be updated is BOOT.INI => as long as the problem isn't #1 (i.e. your image isn't of the operating system partition).

I'd wait until morning and see if you can find a bootable CD with EditBINI before doing anything else.  It would be very useful to know (a) if there IS a BOOT.INI in your restored image (if not, #1 might be the problem); and (b) assuming there is, which partition it expects the OS to be in.

Realized that I had Roxio 5 on my good machine.... gad.  
I requested to create a bootable cd.
I pointed to my HD where I had copied the W98 files you sent.
I selected all files and added to project
I tested the burn - no probs
I burned it - no problems
Put in laptop that had BIG installed on HD
Booted requesting CD - it used BIG instead and dropped me to the selection menu
I pulled new CD and put in BIG
Booted using BIG CD
Deleted BIG partion
Put W98 CD in - rebooted
get message: Unable to find BootIt in the EMBRM partition!
lost again...