Paging file missing or too small when upgrading to new hard drive. Why? Windows 2000 professional, t

J

Joe Donaldson

I have Win 2k pro with a Maxtor 40gb hard drive split into 4
partitions, c,d,e,f. No slave drive. I bought an 80gb 8mb cache
Western Digital drive to REPLACE my master drive (Maxtor 2mb ATA 66).

How did I try to do this?
What I did was to hook up the new drive as slave and run (perhaps a
mistake) the Western Digital Lifesaver utility to partition and format
the new drive. I then used same utility to copy current drive C: to
new drive D, which was probably drive G. The D,E,F partitions of the
new drive I copied using Ghost.

I then set the page file on Drive C to zero and reset the new page
file on the slave G:.

I then disconnected the Master drive and made the new (Western
Digital) Slave drive, the master.

Well this is where I got stuck. I really do not want to read a bunch
of MSFT KB articles but desire a true and proven documented method to
get past the error of "Page file does not exist or is too small", when
I made the slave the master file and had only one drive in the
system-desired result.

I CANNOT reinstall Windows as I have too much software on C that I
cannot recreate (due to paid downloads where I was STUPID to not save
the install files).

I finally returned as I burned it out in frustration and by mistake
(not powering off) the drive but am willing to try again with a new
drive.

I assume perhaps wrongly that this error is perhaps Windows 2k saying
"Hey wait a minute, too much has changed here, I need to throw up an
error"...

I did try to run the basic Windows Repair from the CD but that did not
work. I tried copying the Page file manually over from one drive to
another and even though it existed on the new C drive, still got
paging file error when I logged in. Could never get to control panel
or have any icons show up. Was in an endless loop of logging in and
getting Page File dialog message.

Note I also tried FDISK FIXMBR or something like that or SYS FIXMBR.
This did not help.

I assume there are several ways around this:
1. Perhaps do not use the utilities that come with the drive.
2. Perhaps use Fdisk and Format and install CD Win2k to new drive.
3. Then perhaps run Ghost to copy Win 2K from old drive to new drive
with certain parameters to recreate SID and GUID's....
4. Then copy rest of partitions via Ghost.

Not sure about the above but I read a lot about this but nothing that
indicated a concrete solution. Will be buying a new hard drive to try
this again in the next few days (waiting on sale) but wanted to see
some surefire replies that people know work before I buy anything
else. Otherwise I could live with current drive until I buy a new PC
late next year.



Ghost had a posting from someone that suggested this:

a. Initialize the disk signature using the -FDSZ (force
disk signature zero) switch. Initializing the disk
signature forces Windows 2000 to discard any existing
drive letters and to start re-allocating new drive
letters from scratch.

Note: Ghost generally performs this during a Windows
2000 disk load operation. It will not perform this
initialization if you are only loading a partition. In
this case the -FDSZ switch should be used to fix a
boot failure.

b. Alternately, if you wish to retain the allocated drive
letters use the -FDSP switch (force disk signature
preserve). This will only be required on Windows 2000
disk load operations that result in a boot failure.

Thanks so much.
Joe
 
M

MadDog

-----Original Message-----
I have Win 2k pro with a Maxtor 40gb hard drive split into 4
partitions, c,d,e,f. No slave drive. I bought an 80gb 8mb cache
Western Digital drive to REPLACE my master drive (Maxtor 2mb ATA 66).

How did I try to do this?
What I did was to hook up the new drive as slave and run (perhaps a
mistake) the Western Digital Lifesaver utility to partition and format
the new drive. I then used same utility to copy current drive C: to
new drive D, which was probably drive G. The D,E,F partitions of the
new drive I copied using Ghost.

I then set the page file on Drive C to zero and reset the new page
file on the slave G:.

I then disconnected the Master drive and made the new (Western
Digital) Slave drive, the master.

Well this is where I got stuck. I really do not want to read a bunch
of MSFT KB articles but desire a true and proven documented method to
get past the error of "Page file does not exist or is too small", when
I made the slave the master file and had only one drive in the
system-desired result.

I CANNOT reinstall Windows as I have too much software on C that I
cannot recreate (due to paid downloads where I was STUPID to not save
the install files).

I finally returned as I burned it out in frustration and by mistake
(not powering off) the drive but am willing to try again with a new
drive.

I assume perhaps wrongly that this error is perhaps Windows 2k saying
"Hey wait a minute, too much has changed here, I need to throw up an
error"...

I did try to run the basic Windows Repair from the CD but that did not
work. I tried copying the Page file manually over from one drive to
another and even though it existed on the new C drive, still got
paging file error when I logged in. Could never get to control panel
or have any icons show up. Was in an endless loop of logging in and
getting Page File dialog message.

Note I also tried FDISK FIXMBR or something like that or SYS FIXMBR.
This did not help.

I assume there are several ways around this:
1. Perhaps do not use the utilities that come with the drive.
2. Perhaps use Fdisk and Format and install CD Win2k to new drive.
3. Then perhaps run Ghost to copy Win 2K from old drive to new drive
with certain parameters to recreate SID and GUID's....
4. Then copy rest of partitions via Ghost.

Not sure about the above but I read a lot about this but nothing that
indicated a concrete solution. Will be buying a new hard drive to try
this again in the next few days (waiting on sale) but wanted to see
some surefire replies that people know work before I buy anything
else. Otherwise I could live with current drive until I buy a new PC
late next year.



Ghost had a posting from someone that suggested this:

a. Initialize the disk signature using the -FDSZ (force
disk signature zero) switch. Initializing the disk
signature forces Windows 2000 to discard any existing
drive letters and to start re-allocating new drive
letters from scratch.

Note: Ghost generally performs this during a Windows
2000 disk load operation. It will not perform this
initialization if you are only loading a partition. In
this case the -FDSZ switch should be used to fix a
boot failure.

b. Alternately, if you wish to retain the allocated drive
letters use the -FDSP switch (force disk signature
preserve). This will only be required on Windows 2000
disk load operations that result in a boot failure.

Thanks so much.
Joe
.

Get a Windows 98 boot disk (from www.bootdisk.com if you
don't have one).

Boot with it, and type fdisk /mbr at the prompt.

This should fix your problem.

MD
 
P

Pegasus \(MVP\)

Joe Donaldson said:
I have Win 2k pro with a Maxtor 40gb hard drive split into 4
partitions, c,d,e,f. No slave drive. I bought an 80gb 8mb cache
Western Digital drive to REPLACE my master drive (Maxtor 2mb ATA 66).

How did I try to do this?
What I did was to hook up the new drive as slave and run (perhaps a
mistake) the Western Digital Lifesaver utility to partition and format
the new drive. I then used same utility to copy current drive C: to
new drive D, which was probably drive G. The D,E,F partitions of the
new drive I copied using Ghost.

I then set the page file on Drive C to zero and reset the new page
file on the slave G:.

I then disconnected the Master drive and made the new (Western
Digital) Slave drive, the master.

Well this is where I got stuck. I really do not want to read a bunch
of MSFT KB articles but desire a true and proven documented method to
get past the error of "Page file does not exist or is too small", when
I made the slave the master file and had only one drive in the
system-desired result.

I CANNOT reinstall Windows as I have too much software on C that I
cannot recreate (due to paid downloads where I was STUPID to not save
the install files).

I finally returned as I burned it out in frustration and by mistake
(not powering off) the drive but am willing to try again with a new
drive.

I assume perhaps wrongly that this error is perhaps Windows 2k saying
"Hey wait a minute, too much has changed here, I need to throw up an
error"...

I did try to run the basic Windows Repair from the CD but that did not
work. I tried copying the Page file manually over from one drive to
another and even though it existed on the new C drive, still got
paging file error when I logged in. Could never get to control panel
or have any icons show up. Was in an endless loop of logging in and
getting Page File dialog message.

Note I also tried FDISK FIXMBR or something like that or SYS FIXMBR.
This did not help.

I assume there are several ways around this:
1. Perhaps do not use the utilities that come with the drive.
2. Perhaps use Fdisk and Format and install CD Win2k to new drive.
3. Then perhaps run Ghost to copy Win 2K from old drive to new drive
with certain parameters to recreate SID and GUID's....
4. Then copy rest of partitions via Ghost.

Not sure about the above but I read a lot about this but nothing that
indicated a concrete solution. Will be buying a new hard drive to try
this again in the next few days (waiting on sale) but wanted to see
some surefire replies that people know work before I buy anything
else. Otherwise I could live with current drive until I buy a new PC
late next year.



Ghost had a posting from someone that suggested this:

a. Initialize the disk signature using the -FDSZ (force
disk signature zero) switch. Initializing the disk
signature forces Windows 2000 to discard any existing
drive letters and to start re-allocating new drive
letters from scratch.

Note: Ghost generally performs this during a Windows
2000 disk load operation. It will not perform this
initialization if you are only loading a partition. In
this case the -FDSZ switch should be used to fix a
boot failure.

b. Alternately, if you wish to retain the allocated drive
letters use the -FDSP switch (force disk signature
preserve). This will only be required on Windows 2000
disk load operations that result in a boot failure.

Thanks so much.
Joe


Your problem is caused by Win2000 being unable to create
a paging file in the specified location. The cure is simple:
Temporarily install some formatted disk as a slave disk
(a 1 GByte disk will do) so that you can log on and reset
the location for the paging file.

By the way: You write "I really do not want to read a bunch
of MSFT KB articles", but at the same time you expect
respondents to read through your long and meandering post.
Please keep it short and to the point - you will get many
more replies.
 
J

Joe Donaldson

Thanks will give it another try when I get a new drive. May try to use
new drive as master in stead of slave and then GHOST FROM drive I am
replacing to new drive, instead of other way around as insturctions
with new drive indicate.

Thanks, \Joe
 

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