I'm Dan said:
. . . You also have two "gotchas" that will trip up your second XP:
the partition number in boot.ini has to be changed, and the registry's
[MountedDevices] key will have the wrong starting location of
the partition. Both can be corrected with a little surgery . . .
Ed H said:
Sorry I'm a bit side tracked with anther issue. PM is okay in Dos,
I did not download BING, XP computer management shows the
hidden partition as 'hidden' (unknown). I use all ntfs partitions.
Okay, if DOS-PM shows no error, I think the Error 117 was a Windows-PM bug
and not a genuine partition error. I think it's safe to ignore the Win-PM
error and go on to the real issue(s), so don't bother to download BING just
for the sake of additional corroboration.
I've requoted the relevant parts of the earlier posts as a refresher. Copy
the steps below, and when you get time to get back to this project, here are
the steps to follow. I'll assume the second partition should be XP Pro, but
substitute accordingly if you want it the other way around:
(1) Restore XP Pro image to partition 1, then boot into it.
(2) Remove the [MountedDevices] entries from the registry - see
www.goodells.net/multiboot/notes.htm#04 for details. (Don't worry about the
paging file - it's usually only a problem with Win2K). XP will rebuild this
key when it reboots, but we want an image *without* the key values, so as
soon as you remove them, make a new image of the XP Pro partition.
(3) Restore XP Home image to partition 1. Restore XP Pro image to partition
2.
(4) Download two free DOS utilities, editbini and ptedit, and put them on a
floppy. See
www.goodells.net/multiboot/tools.htm for sources.
(5) Boot from floppy and run ptedit. It's possible for the partitions to
be listed out of order in the partition table, so this step is just to
confirm whether the partition table is in the same order as the actual
partitions. If partition 1 starts at an earlier cylinder number than
partition 2, all is as expected, and proceed to next step. If not, post
back for revised instructions.
(6) Each partition will have its own boot.ini file. Each boot.ini must
point to *its own partition*. Boot from floppy and run editbini. See
www.goodells.net/multiboot/editbini.htm for details. Select the first
partition and check its boot.ini. It probably says "...partition(1)...",
which is correct for partition 1, so leave it be and exit.
(7) Run editbini again, this time select the second partition, and look at
its boot.ini. This one should point to "...partition(2)...", but most
likely will show "...partition(1)..." because that was where the partition
was when the image was made. Change '1' to '2' (two places), and exit,
saving your changes.
(8) Test both partitions. Use pqboot from a boot floppy to set either
partition 1 or partition 2 active, and reboot. Note pqboot will
automatically "hide" the alternate partition from the active one, so you
don't need to go through Pegasus' roundabout step-by-step posted earlier.
Check Disk Mgmt in each to make sure the proper partition, either first or
second, is designated as 'C:' and as the "system partition". The alternate
(non-booted) partition should show as "Healthy (unknown)", with no drive
letter. Note the table at the top of the window is in *alphabetical* order,
so look at the *bar chart in the middle*, which shows the physical partition
layout.
If all is well, you now have two completely independent installations. The
keys to cloning (or imaging/restoring) is making sure the boot.ini enclosed
in the partition points to itself, and making sure the MountedDevices key
doesn't "remember" partition 1 as "drive C:".
