[gandalf97]

Hello...

I'm hoping someone can help with this. I have 2 systems - a laptop and a desktop which are both running Windows 2000. I have been working on setting up a clean install of Windows 2000 on the desktop and using Ghost to take images as I worked. The desktop has 2 HD. HD1 is a Samsung 120 GB and HD2 is a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 also 120 GB. I purchased the Samsung with the desktop a couple of years ago and it has been fine except that it was pretty disorganized and had a couple of OSs I no longer wanted (Win 98 and Win 2K Server). There were 3 partitions. C was FAT32 (Win 98) and was about 28 GB while the other two were evenly split and were NTFS. All partitions were almost full but I was able to clear all user data off the C: drive.

The problem started when the Maxtor drive started to fail. I was having trouble getting the system to even see the Maxtor drive. Right before it failed totally, I was able to get it to boot and tried to clone the C: drive on the Maxtor to the C: drive of the Samsung using Ghost 2003. It seemed to work until I made the Samsung the master and the Maxtor the Slave and tried to reboot. All of the boot options disappeared which didn't surprise me (much). Booting seemed to take a lot longer than normal but I finally got the login screen and typed the Admin password. I am POSITIVE the password is correct but I keep getting the press ctl-alt-del to begin message. I do not get the error message that I would get if I typed the password wrong. (I typed a wrong password to test and sure enough, the standard message came up.) I tried booting to safe mode and the same thing happened. When I tried booting from the Maxtor, it was dead. I could keep trying over and over for a while hoping it wil eventually boot like it did the last time (on the 10th try) but I can't count on that working.

So, the only bootable system I have is the Win2K on the laptop. If I somehow manage to make the Samsung disc bootable again, I am still potentially faced with more than a week's work to rebuild the system if I can't get a ghosted image restored. I want to avoid that if at all possible. What do you experts suggest? Please keep the suggestions "constructive" :-)

Thanks in Advance
Gandalf

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Hello,

I am still dead in the water on this... can someone please help?

[gandalf97]

Hello,

I am still dead in the water on this... can someone please help?

[gerryf]

I think in trying to be precise, you over complicated

You said that the samsung is the first drive and it had three partitions, fat32, ntfs and ntfs; then you said the Maxtor failed. Then you say you tried to clone the c drive on the one to the c: drive on the other....when "C" is a designation by windows, and it would never assign C to two partitions on the same machine.

Somewhere in here we need some clarity.

Given what you wrote, I would not have expected the second drive to be bootable at all, since it would not have a bootsector (which is placed on the first partition of the first drive in a multi-disk machine. This leads me to believe this disk was at one time a bootable, primary drive that was moved into the system. You give no history on the maxtor.

So, how to untangle?

You have two OS's you didn't want; what one did you want?

What was the original config of the PC, when did the second drive get added to the process?

[gandalf97]

Thanks so much for your reply!

I'll try to clarify...

The Samsung drive *WAS* bootable to Win2000 Server. I had Win98 on the Fat32 partition and Win 2K server on the 1st NTFS partition. Originally I could boot to both but had uninstalled and wiped the Fat32 partition prior to attempting to restor the Maxtor C drive to it.

The Maxtor drive was being configured as Win2000 Pro and was working until the HW failed.

I was alternating booting between the Maxtor and Samsung while getting setup (switching jumpers, to make sure the drive booted that I wanted to have boot).

I had Norton Ghost images of the Maxtor C: (Win2K Pro, bootable) taken prior to the drive failure. I took a final image and stored it on the Samsung drive.

I cloned the C: on the Maxtor to the Fat32 partition on the Samsung. That partition *was* the C: drive on the Samsung. (Fat32)

I tried to boot from the Samsung. The Maxtor drive completely failed and the system would no longer see it. The Samsung drive was recognized but would not boot. I'm assuming that the cloning somehow hosed the boot record.

Does that clarify?

Additional Info...
I have a replacement HD on the way. I'm not sure if it is exactly the same type of drive as the Maxtor in terms of size/geometry.

Additional Questions...
1) Does Ghost require that cloning or image restoration be to a drive/partition exactly like the original?

2) If not, how ccan I save many hours of time in loading an image onto the new drive and making it boot to Win2K Pro?

I really appreciate any help.

[gerryf]

wow...confusing....

OK, here is what happened

Samsung has three partition...first in fat32, second is ntfs. third is ntfs
We will call them SAMSUNG1, SAMSUNG2, SAMSUNG3
SAMSUNG1 has Windows98 AND the boot SECTOR for win2k server on SAMSUNG2 (I guess SAMSUNG3 is just storage, so we don't care about it anymore for the moment.)

Maxtor has one (partition), we will call it Max1 (first partition on disk2, if you want, but not "C." It has win2000 pro on it.

You clone MAX1, and store image (presumable on SAMSUNG3)? Then MAX1 dies.

You then think you're going to take the cloned image on put it on SAMSUNG1, after wiping out win98 and fat32 there...or even just restoring it there, you essentially do that.

Here is the screw up

SAMSUNG1 contains the boot sector and boot record for Win98 on SAMSUNG1, win2kserver on SAMSUNG 3, AND win2k pro on MAX1.

Restoring MAX1 to SAMSUNG1 overwrites the boot sector and boot records.

You have no boot record.

Does that sound plausible? Now then, what is the goal here? A working version of....? (what OS or OSes?)

[gandalf97]

Gerry,

You pretty much have it all correct except that there are 2 partitions on MAXTOR. Since MAXTOR2 had only data I'm thinking it might be irrelevant in solving this problem. If I'm wrong, please correct me. Also, Win98 was on SAMSUNG1, WIN2K Server was on SAMSUNG2 and SAMSUNG3 is data (if that matters).

No boot record may be plausible, but I have some info to add. My goals are:
1. Have Win2K Pro boot on SAMSUNG1.
2. Be able to restore the snapshot I took of MAX1 to SAMSUNG1 and pick up essentially where I left off. This will probably save me 80+ hours of work in reloading and configuring everything from scratch.

Additional info....
I apologize for not checking this before I posted. When I tried this again, Win2K pro booted and gave me the login dialog. I typed my password, it started to log me in and then it gave me the login dialog again *WITHOUT* the standard error message that you get if you type the password wrong. No other hardware changed so drivers being wrong doesn't seem like it would be the case.

Isnt there a way to take an image of an old drive and restore it to a new drive and have the result be *EXACTLY* the old drive (including the boot record)? I may be getting confused between the way Ghost refers to "drives" and "partitions" because I thought I had done just that.

I appreciate your help very much.

[gerryf]

the stickler here is that the boot record for the image is not complete, because part of it was on the original SAMSUNG1, and it was wiped out. I'm kind of suprised that it boots at all to the image you recreated...it shouldn't.....

You were using the boot manager that comes with windows 2k, right? No third party?

And, install order was

Win98, win2kserver, win2k pro, correct?

I think we can recreate the boot record, just a little confused about how something got setup this way....

[gandalf97]

Gerry,

You are correct about the install order.

So, is it still likely a problem with the boot record, even though I get to the login dialog?

Since the current SAMSUNG1 is a result of CLONING MAX1, should I try to restore an actual image? I'm still confused, but I appreciate your help.

[gerryf]

No, leave as is for now....


You've got the win2k disk, so let's boot with that (set bios boot order to cd rom)

You will be asked to select the OS to repair....it should say something like 1.Windows 2000 Pro?

And then it should ask for an administrative password.

Can you log in there?

If so type

Fixmbr \Device\HardDisk0

If that finishes, then type the following

Fixboot c:

[gandalf97]

Thanks for the suggestions on fixing the mbr. That's really cool. I didn't know how to do that before. It is now part of my bag of tricks.

Unfortunately, after repairing the mbr, it is still doing the same thing. Boots to the login sceen. Lets me type my password. waits a few seconds and then back to the login screen.

Should I try something else or should I try to restore an image?

Regards...

[gandalf97]

Here is the latest....

After fixing the mbr llast night, I thought I could see the SAMSUNG2 and SAMSUNG3 partitions but now they are missing. Apparantly, when I fixed the mbr, it trashed the partition info. Did I just lose another 80GB of data or is there a way to recover it?

I'm getting myself into deeper and deeper trouble here and I am hoping that there is a way out.

HELP!

Regards....