7tools Partition Manager 2005 problem

[John Doe]

I carefully laid out the process, anyone who has a computer and
some skill can verify my conclusions. You've got lots of theories,
if you can work the keyboard for anything except posting to
Usenet, go for it.

 

[Rod Speed]

You are just a big ego, tough guy wanna-be, big mouth in cyberspace.

Even you should be able to bullshit your way out of
your predicament better than that pathetic effort, child.

 

[Rod Speed]

I carefully laid out the process,

You didnt actually. You STILL havent explained why you got
registry bleed initially WITHOUT deleting the contents of the
boot.ini or why you were stupid enough to delete the contents
of boot.ini and THEN see registry bleed and why it matters
a damn what happens when the contents of boot.ini are deleted.

anyone who has a computer and some skill can verify my
conclusions. You've got lots of theories, if you can work the
keyboard for anything except posting to Usenet, go for it.

You're the one with the problem, child.

I've copied XP successfully many times.

 

[John Doe]

Even you should be able to bullshit your way out of
your predicament better than that pathetic effort, child.

What predicament is that, tough guy wanna-be?

Are you talking about your inability to do anything with your
computer except post to Usenet?

 

[John Doe]

You didnt actually. You STILL havent explained why you got
registry bleed initially WITHOUT deleting the contents of the
boot.ini

I never said that. You could tell by my posts if you wanted to. Are
you going to ask the same question a dozen times?

or why you were stupid enough to delete the contents
of boot.ini and THEN see registry bleed

Well, tough guy wanna-be, I didn't want the Windows XP boot menu
getting in the way of my boot managers.

and why it matters
a damn what happens when the contents of boot.ini are deleted.

A few posts above, in reply to da_test, I proved that and expressed
my theory about why it happens.

Do you do anything with your computer besides post to Usenet? If you
did, you could simply follow my instructions to disprove your
contention.

Do something instead of just talking.

You're the one with the problem, child.

And yours is a fake solution repeated a dozen times, tough guy
wanna-be.

I've copied XP successfully many times.

So have I.

 

[Peter]

Besides some obvious and difficult bugs in 7tools Partition

Manager 2005, there is one which puzzles me.

In Windows XP:

... make a hidden backup copy of the C drive Windows partition,
making the copy partition 2

... install some programs in partition 1

... hide partition 1 and switch to partition 2

... registry information from partition 1 shows up in partition
2, the newly installed programs from partition 1 show up in
partition 2's Add or Remove Programs and in MSconfig Startup
tab

Anybody know why that is happening? Apparently Windows XP puts
registry information somewhere on the disk that disk managers
cannot correctly copy? That information is sharred throughout
the drive? Could it have something to do with the system
folders labeled "System Volume Information"?

I was using PartitionMagic, now trying 7tools Partition Manager
2005, I guess Ghost is next?

Should I make the Windows partition backup copies to another
physical disk? Only one per disk?

Copying Windows partitions used to be easy.

This might help:
http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/
especially:
http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/editbini.htm
http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm
"Note that if a partition no longer exists in the system, any drive letter
previously assigned to that partition may be available for reallocation to
new partitions. "No longer exists" means the partition tables no longer show
any partition beginning at the same sector location. Remember that,
commonly, hiding a partition doesn't make it invisible, but really just
disguises it. That means that using a boot or partition manager to hide a
partition won't necessarily result in Windows forgetting that partition had
previously been assigned a drive letter, whether or not XP can access files
on it."

 

[Rod Speed]

Some silly little kid desperately cowering behind
John Doe <[email protected]> desperately attempted
to bullshit its way out of its predicament in message
and fooled absolutely no one at all. As always.

 

[Rod Speed]

I never said that.

Then why did you delete the contents of the boot.ini ?

You could tell by my posts if you wanted to.

Nope, you never said that clearly, whether the INITIAL
bleed of the registry was ONLY seen after you had
deleted the contents of boot.ini and why you chose
to do that, if that is what you actually did.

Are you going to ask the same question a dozen times?

Until you actually answer it, yes.

Its clearly got an answer now, child.

Well, tough guy wanna-be, I didn't want the Windows
XP boot menu getting in the way of my boot managers.

Then you should have just EDITED the boot.ini so that
doesnt present the user with any choice at boot time,
but still has the basic info that XP is clearly using in the
boot sequence to keep track of which copy its booting.

A few posts above, in reply to da_test, I proved that
and expressed my theory about why it happens.

Separate issue entirely to WHY you do something so stupid.

Do you do anything with your computer besides post to Usenet?

Yep, quite a bit actually, and I have a lot more than one too.

If you did, you could simply follow my instructions

Pointless, its terminally stupid to be deleting the contents of boot.ini

to disprove your contention.

There is on 'contention', and if you're gunna try using big
words, it might not be a bad idea to check what they actually
mean before you make a spectacular fool of yourself, child.

Do something instead of just talking.

YOU have the problem, child.

YOU are the one that gets to do anything.

And yours is a fake solution

Nope. Its how I do XP copys successfully, time after time after time.

And if you want to be able to selectively boot multiple copys
of XP, that MS article spells out one way of doing that.

So have I.

Like hell you have if you get registry bleed, stupid.

 

[Rod Speed]

In case I didnt make myself clear, the only thing that makes
any sense at all if you want to be able to multiboot more than
one copy of XP for whatever reason, is to EDIT the boot.ini
in the copy so that the numbers in the multi line are correct for
the location of the copy. You wont then get any registry bleed.

Its completely stupid to be deleting the contents of the boot.ini

 

[John Doe]

This might help:
http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/
especially:
http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/editbini.htm
http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm
"Note that if a partition no longer exists in the system, any
drive letter previously assigned to that partition may be
available for reallocation to new partitions. "No longer exists"
means the partition tables no longer show any partition
beginning at the same sector location. Remember that, commonly,
hiding a partition doesn't make it invisible, but really just
disguises it. That means that using a boot or partition manager
to hide a partition won't necessarily result in Windows
forgetting that partition had previously been assigned a drive
letter, whether or not XP can access files on it."

I was thinking that learning more about BOOT.INI probably is a
good idea. Thanks for providing the links.

Probably still need to also use a boot manager since the Windows
boot menu does not hide the other partitions. The combination might
be the only known way to keep bootable (non-conflicting) Windows XP
partitions on the same disk. It's inconvenient, but it's no big
deal.

Thanks.

 

[Peter]

This might help:

I was thinking that learning more about BOOT.INI probably is a
good idea. Thanks for providing the links.

Probably still need to also use a boot manager since the Windows
boot menu does not hide the other partitions. The combination might
be the only known way to keep bootable (non-conflicting) Windows XP
partitions on the same disk. It's inconvenient, but it's no big
deal.

Yes, you need a "better" boot manager:

"The most rudimentary boot loaders--such as linux LILO and the NT loader
(ntldr) used by Windows 2000 and XP--have little or no control over the
partition tables to hide any partitions. They rely on the principle that if
differing OS's cannot understand partitions in foreign file formats, then
the partitions are as good as hidden anyway. This doesn't help, though, if
you install duplicate or multiple OS's that can read each other's file
formats. Better boot managers can hide/unhide primary partitions depending
on which you want visible. The most versatile can also selectively hide
logical volumes in the extended primary partition.
If the only OS's you've installed can't understand each other's file
formats, or if they can and you don't care about it, then the rudimentary
boot loaders should be fine. If you only have a couple OS's and can put them
in primary partitions, then mid-level boot managers (like BootMagic,
included with PartitionMagic) will allow you to hide them from each other.
Since we've put some OS's in logical partitions that must be hidden when
certain other OS's are booted, we need a good boot manager that is also
capable of hiding logical partitions. BootIt-NG and XOSL fall into this
latter category."

If you plan cloning XP partitions, editing BOOT.INI is a must,
unless you use a sophisticated boot manager as Bootit-ng.

Then you have to deal with disk signatures too (Bootit-ng helps
there also):

"The other issue is that NT-family OS's "remember" drive letters by
recording the signatures of the corresponding partitions in the XP registry.
When you clone partition-1 to partition-2, the registry goes with it. But
then when partition-2 tries to boot it will remember that the partition
signature corresponding to partition-1 is where 'C:' was, and it may assign
partition-2 a different drive letter. That's bad. The solution is to make XP
forget the remembered drive letter assignments. The registry tweak to clear
the partition signatures will do that. Make the registry edit on partition-1
before cloning it to partition-2, then XP won't remember any previous drive
letters and will build the registry partition signatures anew the first time
it boots."

 

[Rod Speed]

I was thinking that learning more about BOOT.INI probably is a
good idea. Thanks for providing the links.

Probably still need to also use a boot manager

No need.

since the Windows boot menu does not hide the other partitions.

You dont need to hide the other XP partition.

But you can use a boot manager if you want to,
just ensure that the numbers in the boot.ini are
correct for the copy of XP particularly.

The combination might be the only known way to keep bootable
(non-conflicting) Windows XP partitions on the same disk.

Nope, that MS article clearly spells out how to have more than one
bootable XP partition on a system if you want that for whatever
reason and makes it clear that you dont need a separate boot
manager to do that, or to hide the copy of XP you aint booting.

It's inconvenient, but it's no big deal.

Certainly no big deal at all to edit the boot.ini and you can just
keep a copy of the edited boot.ini so you can just copy that into
the copy of XP when you make another copy of XP sometime.

 

[Joep]

using NTFS
"However, using NTFS as the only file system on a computer that
contains both Windows XP and Windows NT is not recommended. On these
computers, a FAT partition containing the Windows NT 4.0 operating
system ensures that when started with Windows NT 4.0, the computer
will have access to needed files."

Is for an entirely different issue.

 

[John Doe]

using NTFS
"However, using NTFS as the only file system on a computer that
contains both Windows XP and Windows NT is not recommended. On these
computers, a FAT partition containing the Windows NT 4.0 operating
system ensures that when started with Windows NT 4.0, the computer
will have access to needed files."

Is for an entirely different issue.

It's for the same issue.

 

[Peter]

It's for the same issue.

It was written because NTFS version included with Windows XP
was not compatible with Windows NT pre SP4.

"There is more than one version of NTFS. Windows XP and Windows 2000 both
use NTFS v5. Windows NT 4.0 right out of the box uses NTFS v4. But Windows
NT 4.0 can be upgraded to use NTFS v5 by installing Service Pack 4. This
becomes important when you attempt to dual-boot with Windows NT 4.0 (without
Service Pack 4) and Window XP. The NT OS will be unable to access files on
the Windows XP NTFS formatted partitions. Your only options are to apply SP4
to NT or use FAT."

 

[Joep]

It was written because NTFS version included with Windows XP
was not compatible with Windows NT pre SP4.

"There is more than one version of NTFS. Windows XP and Windows 2000 both
use NTFS v5. Windows NT 4.0 right out of the box uses NTFS v4. But Windows
NT 4.0 can be upgraded to use NTFS v5 by installing Service Pack 4. This
becomes important when you attempt to dual-boot with Windows NT 4.0 (without
Service Pack 4) and Window XP. The NT OS will be unable to access files on
the Windows XP NTFS formatted partitions. Your only options are to apply SP4
to NT or use FAT."

Voila! A different issue

 

[John Doe]

Voila! A different issue

Well, not different than what I was replying to. But I appreciate the
effort to get back on-topic.