John66 said:
Thank you all for your suggestions!
In answer to the questions asked by Pegasus:
If I can remember correctly, I think I made a clone of my disk using
xxclone. I remember I tried a couple of different ways to clone the
entire
hard drive (4 partitions) and had problems doing all 4 at once. I had to
do
them one at a time. I just don't remember exactly what I did - it has
been
too long.
If I can get the system to boot fro the master (original) disk I can try
an
clone things again and then keep the clone updated - any suggestions on
doing
this? Is a clone/backup not the best thing to do?
Disk 0 is my primary (master) drive. Disk 1 is the cloned version which I
am
using for my backup. So my old disk is my master disk.
I checked out disk managment and found that disk 0 has a partion that
says
'system' and another partition that says 'boot'. On disk 1 (the clone)
there
is a partion that says 'active'.
When I tried to boot the master disk by itself, it really didn't get very
far. I only saw a black screen that flashed white text with
'NTDetect.......'
error message and then the PC would reboot. I will have to get back to
you on
the exact message - I apologize as I realize this would help a lot. I
need to
wait for another process to complete before I can reboot ( a backup in
case I
make a mess of this).
The boot.ini file says:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /fastdetect
My hard drive setup is a bit weird in the way it was originally set up,
so
partion 3 really is where the OS is located.
What I meant by 2 XP system folders is that if I have a clone of my
master
drive then I have 2 system folders. One on disk 0 and another on disk 1.
Thank you so much for your help,
John
Pegasus said:
I don't know xxclone but I wonder if it played around with
your active partition. Run diskmgmt.msc from the Run box
to set the boot partition of disk(0) active. This will probably
fix your problem. If it does not then you may have to restore
the Master Boot Record, either by using the method suggested
by Andy or else by booting the machine with your WinXP
CD and following these steps:
- Select "Repair"
- Select "Recovery Console"
- Log on
- Type these commands:
fixmbr
fixboot
When cloning a disk with a cloning program then you must
avoid having both disks connected during the first boot after
the cloning operation.
John:
Pegasus's questions were the right ones and it's good you responded to
them...
First of all, you were indeed "smart" to add a second HDD to your system
which you plan to use as the recipient of the cloned contents of your
day-to-day working HDD, i.e., the "source" disk. It's a most desirable
thing to do and with a decent disk imaging/disk cloning program you'll
never be sorry you embarked on that course.
Perhaps your initial problem was using that xxclone program. I recall
experimenting with that program some time ago and we ran into so many
issues (read "problems") with it that we soon discontinued using it. And
the feedback we received from other users paralleled our experience.
Perhaps it's been improved; I don't know.
Frankly, I think the current partitioning scheme on your primary HDD is a
source of problems now & in the future. With that in mind, if the
following is at all practical depending upon the programs you have
currently installed on your "source" HDD...
1. Could you, in effect, start over by making a fresh install of the XP OS
onto that source drive? Unless you have some special multi-partitioning
needs, why not just create a single partition comprising the entire disk?
In recommending this fresh install of the OS, I'm assuming a number of
things...
a. Your user-created data is now available on the "cloned" HDD or some
other source (or you can copy whatever data you need to the secondary HDD
when both drives are connected and you're able to boot) so that you can
copy that data back to your newly-installed XP OS., and,
b. You can install all the programs you desire since you have the
installation media for those programs, and,
c. You don't mind installing all the MS critical updates since SP2. (I'm
assuming if you go ahead with this fresh install of the XP OS it will be
undertaken with a XP installation CD including SP2 - or if SP2 is not
included on the CD, you will subsequently install that service pack.)
Anyway, assuming you go this route or using Pegasus's latest suggestion or
through some other means you're able to get your present system back to
some functional state, consider in the future using one of the more
tried-and-true disk imaging/disk cloning programs such as Acronis True
Image or the Casper 4.0 program (the latter my current favorite) for your
disk cloning needs. You won't regret it.
Anna
