Cant boot to my main drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Industrial One
  • Start date Start date
I

Industrial One

Paul, I realize you laid out instructions but I first want a diagnosis
before I accept any solutions.

A few years ago I bought a new PC which came with Windows Vista
included. I hated Vista so I created a new, smaller partition (F) and
a third spare partition (G) in case I ever found myself in a situation
like right now and needed a spare drive to communicate from.

I installed XP on partition F and deleted all the Vista system files
on partition C to free up some space. From there on I used Drive C as
a data partition and F became my system partition.

It took a while but drive F started to really get slow as it filled up
with only 20% free space and I ran out of quick fixes as there are no
longer just a few very fat files that I could just move to Drive C or
the separate 500 GB drive to free 10 GB in a few minutes. Drive F is
completely crammed with tiny files right now that would take me
forever to go through and clean up.

So I decided to merge Drive C with Drive F. Paragon Partition manager
refused as Drive C was Primary and Drive F was Logical. So I made
Drive C Logical, completely ignored Paragon's warning that I may not
be able to boot up if I do this and restarted the computer for the
changes to take effect... to find out that I can't boot.

So I inserted the Paragon emergency CD that I luckily burned a few
years ago for a boot-time interface and I reversed my previous
operation and made Drive C Primary again, but I still couldn't boot.

I tried all the options it had to offer. Fix MBR, fix BCD, every kind
of "fix" that did nothing.

Then I tried to do a repair install which wouldn't ****ing recognize
my already-installed Windows system on that partition.

So I backed up Drive F.

Installed Windows XP on drive G where I am typing this out from right
now. I replaced the registry hives on Drive F with 4-month-old backups
and hoped this would get me through but repair install failed once
again.

Now what exactly have I trashed up when I set Drive C to logical that
I caused all this shit?

I need some help here.
 
Industrial said:
Paul, I realize you laid out instructions but I first want a diagnosis
before I accept any solutions.

A few years ago I bought a new PC which came with Windows Vista
included. I hated Vista so I created a new, smaller partition (F) and
a third spare partition (G) in case I ever found myself in a situation
like right now and needed a spare drive to communicate from.

I installed XP on partition F and deleted all the Vista system files
on partition C to free up some space. From there on I used Drive C as
a data partition and F became my system partition.

It took a while but drive F started to really get slow as it filled up
with only 20% free space and I ran out of quick fixes as there are no
longer just a few very fat files that I could just move to Drive C or
the separate 500 GB drive to free 10 GB in a few minutes. Drive F is
completely crammed with tiny files right now that would take me
forever to go through and clean up.

So I decided to merge Drive C with Drive F. Paragon Partition manager
refused as Drive C was Primary and Drive F was Logical. So I made
Drive C Logical, completely ignored Paragon's warning that I may not
be able to boot up if I do this and restarted the computer for the
changes to take effect... to find out that I can't boot.

So I inserted the Paragon emergency CD that I luckily burned a few
years ago for a boot-time interface and I reversed my previous
operation and made Drive C Primary again, but I still couldn't boot.

I tried all the options it had to offer. Fix MBR, fix BCD, every kind
of "fix" that did nothing.

Then I tried to do a repair install which wouldn't ****ing recognize
my already-installed Windows system on that partition.

So I backed up Drive F.

Installed Windows XP on drive G where I am typing this out from right
now. I replaced the registry hives on Drive F with 4-month-old backups
and hoped this would get me through but repair install failed once
again.

Now what exactly have I trashed up when I set Drive C to logical that
I caused all this shit?

I need some help here.
Click to expand...

I didn't know you could install WinXP in a logical partition :-)

Your situation is not dual boot. You installed WinXP second, so
for all practical purposes this can be treated as a single WinXP
install that owns the hard drive.

To boot with your OS choice, you need a primary partition, with the
boot flag set. In this example dialog, the second partition is NTFS (0x07)
and the boot flag is set (0x80). This is a picture of the output
of PTEDIT32, a Windows utility that was part of Partition Magic.
It's available now for free download. It can also be used to edit
the table (as I've swapped rows in the table, to get a disk booting
again after an "accident").

http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/files/dell-tbl.gif

Now, if the minimum of boot files were stored in C: and C: being
primary had the active flag set, then C: could be what was used to vector
the remainder of the boot process to F:. Converting C: to logical,
would mess up the partition table, such that no partition is now
marked as active. You could have three primary partitions and one
extended partition (which in turn holds logical partition(s) ). But
in the process of converting C:, there would be no partition marked
active. And even if the wrong thing was marked active, the boot files
the WinXP install put into C: wouldn't be where they were expected.

If you convert C: back to primary, it might not end up in the same slot
in the MBR table of four partitions. I expect the boot.ini ARC (disk path),
has to point to F:, and F: won't be moving, whereever it is. So perhaps
nothing has to be fixed there. You could check and see if a boot.ini is
in C: or F:, and depending on where you find it, correct the ARC in there.

To start, I'd want the (restored) C: partition, to have the active flag
set. The MBR boot code should be fine. Converting C: to logical, shouldn't
have changed the partition boot sectors (they would be located on C:,
just before the file system sectors start).

So my guess would be, all you need to do to start, is make sure that
where ever C: ends up, you set the active flag.

You can do that from Linux with "fdisk". You could slave the
drive to another computer, and use PTEDIT32. Or who knows, maybe
the "diskpart" utility has an option to set the 0x80 boot flag.

ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/PTEDIT32.zip

The diskpart instructions are here. You'd run this from any environment
that can give you a (MSDOS box) command prompt. You can do that with your
WinXP CD for example, or even a Vista or Windows 7 DVD can start such a session
as well.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415

'Use the active command to set the current in-focus partition to "active." '

Anyway, right now, my guess is it isn't too messed up. But I guess time will
tell how much work it'll take.

Doing what you did, meant that key things had to be placed in C:, to continue
to support the notion of the "active" flag, pointing to the right partition to
start the ball rolling. I don't know all the details of how that works, how
many files like "NTLDR" or "boot.ini" have to be on that primary partition,
but maybe you'll be able to figure it all out.

I've run into situations, where the "active" flag doesn't control booting,
so that flag is not "carved in stone". It just happens, that when WinXP installed
the code in the MBR (the equivalent of "fixmbr"), that code scans for the active
flag. There are other OSes, that when they load the MBR, the code used doesn't
depend on active, and you can blow away the active flag and booting still works.

Now, your situation does raise a good question. When you do a repair install,
does Windows look at the active flag ? Does it look for NTLDR ? How does it
decide where the boot partition and OS partition are located ? Answering those
questions, would make it easier to do a repair install, if that happens to be
your next fallback plan. You would think something like C:\WINDOWS would be
a good thing to have, to kick off a repair, as the majority of files are there,
including the registry loaded with all your preferences. Maybe the fact your
F: is logical, is throwing it off ?

Paul
 
Industrial said:
Paul, I realize you laid out instructions but I first want a diagnosis
before I accept any solutions.

A few years ago I bought a new PC which came with Windows Vista
included. I hated Vista so I created a new, smaller partition (F) and
a third spare partition (G) in case I ever found myself in a situation
like right now and needed a spare drive to communicate from.

I installed XP on partition F and deleted all the Vista system files
on partition C to free up some space. From there on I used Drive C as
a data partition and F became my system partition.

It took a while but drive F started to really get slow as it filled up
with only 20% free space and I ran out of quick fixes as there are no
longer just a few very fat files that I could just move to Drive C or
the separate 500 GB drive to free 10 GB in a few minutes. Drive F is
completely crammed with tiny files right now that would take me
forever to go through and clean up.

So I decided to merge Drive C with Drive F. Paragon Partition manager
refused as Drive C was Primary and Drive F was Logical. So I made
Drive C Logical, completely ignored Paragon's warning that I may not
be able to boot up if I do this and restarted the computer for the
changes to take effect... to find out that I can't boot.

So I inserted the Paragon emergency CD that I luckily burned a few
years ago for a boot-time interface and I reversed my previous
operation and made Drive C Primary again, but I still couldn't boot.

I tried all the options it had to offer. Fix MBR, fix BCD, every kind
of "fix" that did nothing.

Then I tried to do a repair install which wouldn't ****ing recognize
my already-installed Windows system on that partition.

So I backed up Drive F.

Installed Windows XP on drive G where I am typing this out from right
now. I replaced the registry hives on Drive F with 4-month-old backups
and hoped this would get me through but repair install failed once
again.

Now what exactly have I trashed up when I set Drive C to logical that
I caused all this shit?

I need some help here.
Click to expand...

[Repost from my backup news server, as the primary one is screwing up...]

I didn't know you could install WinXP in a logical partition :-)

Your situation is not dual boot. You installed WinXP second, so
for all practical purposes this can be treated as a single WinXP
install that owns the hard drive.

To boot with your OS choice, you need a primary partition, with the
boot flag set. In this example dialog, the second partition is NTFS (0x07)
and the boot flag is set (0x80). This is a picture of the output
of PTEDIT32, a Windows utility that was part of Partition Magic.
It's available now for free download. It can also be used to edit
the table (as I've swapped rows in the table, to get a disk booting
again after an "accident").

http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/files/dell-tbl.gif

Now, if the minimum of boot files were stored in C: and C: being
primary had the active flag set, then C: could be what was used to vector
the remainder of the boot process to F:. Converting C: to logical,
would mess up the partition table, such that no partition is now
marked as active. You could have three primary partitions and one
extended partition (which in turn holds logical partition(s) ). But
in the process of converting C:, there would be no partition marked
active. And even if the wrong thing was marked active, the boot files
the WinXP install put into C: wouldn't be where they were expected.

If you convert C: back to primary, it might not end up in the same slot
in the MBR table of four partitions. I expect the boot.ini ARC (disk path),
has to point to F:, and F: won't be moving, where ever it is. So perhaps
nothing has to be fixed there. You could check and see if a boot.ini is
in C: or F:, and depending on where you find it, correct the ARC in there.

To start, I'd want the (restored) C: partition, to have the active flag
set. The MBR boot code should be fine. Converting C: to logical, shouldn't
have changed the partition boot sectors (they would be located on C:,
just before the file system sectors start).

So my guess would be, all you need to do to start, is make sure that
where ever C: ends up, you set the active flag.

You can do that from Linux with "fdisk". You could slave the
drive to another computer, and use PTEDIT32. Or who knows, maybe
the "diskpart" utility has an option to set the 0x80 boot flag.

ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/PTEDIT32.zip

The diskpart instructions are here. You'd run this from any environment
that can give you a (MSDOS box) command prompt. You can do that with your
WinXP CD for example, or even a Vista or Windows 7 DVD can start such a session
as well.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415

'Use the active command to set the current in-focus partition to "active." '

Anyway, right now, my guess is it isn't too messed up. But I guess time will
tell how much work it'll take.

Doing what you did, meant that key things had to be placed in C:, to continue
to support the notion of the "active" flag, pointing to the right partition to
start the ball rolling. I don't know all the details of how that works, how
many files like "NTLDR" or "boot.ini" have to be on that primary partition,
but maybe you'll be able to figure it all out.

I've run into situations, where the "active" flag doesn't control booting,
so that flag is not "carved in stone". It just happens, that when WinXP installed
the code in the MBR (the equivalent of "fixmbr"), that code scans for the active
flag. There are other OSes, that when they load the MBR, the code used doesn't
depend on active, and you can blow away the active flag and booting still works.

Now, your situation does raise a good question. When you do a repair install,
does Windows look at the active flag ? Does it look for NTLDR ? How does it
decide where the boot partition and OS partition are located ? Answering those
questions, would make it easier to do a repair install, if that happens to be
your next fallback plan. You would think something like C:\WINDOWS would be
a good thing to have, to kick off a repair, as the majority of files are there,
including the registry loaded with all your preferences. Maybe the fact your
F: is logical, is throwing it off ? You would think, that if it allowed you to
install in a logical, it could repair a logical too :-)

Paul
 
Paul said:
Doing what you did, meant that key things had to be placed in C:, to
continue to support the notion of the "active" flag, pointing to the right
partition to start the ball rolling. I don't know all the details of
how that works, how many files like "NTLDR" or "boot.ini" have to be on
that primary
partition,
Click to expand...

Those two plus NTDETECT.COM


--

dadiOH
____________________________

dadiOH's dandies v3.06...
....a help file of info about MP3s, recording from
LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that.
Get it at http://mysite.verizon.net/xico
 
Paul said:
Now, your situation does raise a good question. When you do a repair
install, does Windows look at the active flag ? Does it look for
NTLDR ? How does it decide where the boot partition and OS partition
are located ? Answering those questions, would make it easier to do a
repair install, if that happens to be your next fallback plan. You
would think something like C:\WINDOWS would be a good thing to have, to
kick off a repair, as the majority of files
are there, including the registry loaded with all your preferences.
Maybe the fact your F: is logical, is throwing it off ?
Click to expand...

My XP is also on a logical drive - also F: as a matter of fact - on an
extended partition and I've never had a problem with it.



--

dadiOH
____________________________

dadiOH's dandies v3.06...
....a help file of info about MP3s, recording from
LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that.
Get it at http://mysite.verizon.net/xico
 
I didn't know you could install WinXP in a logical partition :-)

Your situation is not dual boot. You installed WinXP second, so
for all practical purposes this can be treated as a single WinXP
install that owns the hard drive.

To boot with your OS choice, you need a primary partition, with the
boot flag set. In this example dialog, the second partition is NTFS (0x07)
and the boot flag is set (0x80). This is a picture of the output
of PTEDIT32, a Windows utility that was part of Partition Magic.
It's available now for free download. It can also be used to edit
the table (as I've swapped rows in the table, to get a disk booting
again after an "accident").

http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/files/dell-tbl.gif

Now, if the minimum of boot files were stored in C: and C: being
primary had the active flag set, then C: could be what was used to vector
the remainder of the boot process to F:. Converting C: to logical,
would mess up the partition table, such that no partition is now
marked as active. You could have three primary partitions and one
extended partition (which in turn holds logical partition(s) ). But
in the process of converting C:, there would be no partition marked
active. And even if the wrong thing was marked active, the boot files
the WinXP install put into C: wouldn't be where they were expected.

If you convert C: back to primary, it might not end up in the same slot
in the MBR table of four partitions. I expect the boot.ini ARC (disk path),
has to point to F:, and F: won't be moving, whereever it is. So perhaps
nothing has to be fixed there. You could check and see if a boot.ini is
in C: or F:, and depending on where you find it, correct the ARC in there..

To start, I'd want the (restored) C: partition, to have the active flag
set. The MBR boot code should be fine. Converting C: to logical, shouldn't
have changed the partition boot sectors (they would be located on C:,
just before the file system sectors start).

So my guess would be, all you need to do to start, is make sure that
where ever C: ends up, you set the active flag.

You can do that from Linux with "fdisk". You could slave the
drive to another computer, and use PTEDIT32. Or who knows, maybe
the "diskpart" utility has an option to set the 0x80 boot flag.

ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/PT...

The diskpart instructions are here. You'd run this from any environment
that can give you a (MSDOS box) command prompt. You can do that with your
WinXP CD for example, or even a Vista or Windows 7 DVD can start such a session
as well.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415

    'Use the active command to set the current in-focus partition to "active." '

Anyway, right now, my guess is it isn't too messed up. But I guess time will
tell how much work it'll take.

Doing what you did, meant that key things had to be placed in C:, to continue
to support the notion of the "active" flag, pointing to the right partition to
start the ball rolling. I don't know all the details of how that works, how
many files like "NTLDR" or "boot.ini" have to be on that primary partition,
but maybe you'll be able to figure it all out.

I've run into situations, where the "active" flag doesn't control booting,
so that flag is not "carved in stone". It just happens, that when WinXP installed
the code in the MBR (the equivalent of "fixmbr"), that code scans for theactive
flag. There are other OSes, that when they load the MBR, the code used doesn't
depend on active, and you can blow away the active flag and booting stillworks.

Now, your situation does raise a good question. When you do a repair install,
does Windows look at the active flag ? Does it look for NTLDR ? How does it
decide where the boot partition and OS partition are located ? Answering those
questions, would make it easier to do a repair install, if that happens to be
your next fallback plan. You would think something like C:\WINDOWS would be
a good thing to have, to kick off a repair, as the majority of files are there,
including the registry loaded with all your preferences. Maybe the fact your
F: is logical, is throwing it off ?

    Paul
Click to expand...

F isn't logical anymore, I set all my drives to primary now.

Interesting note about the Active flag, I just realized that F is set
to active (and currently holds the boot-loader so I could use this
spare drive) and this partition is not active yet I am using it as we
speak. I completely misinterpreted what Active means or does, I
thought Primary was the same thing.

I did try setting Drive C to active and I was greeted with my old dual
boot screen but with a half-a-second timeout (because of the last
attempted repair install). But since there was no XP CD inside the
screen was black for about a minute and it automatically restarted.

Nothing is missing on Drive C except NTDETECT.COM that dadiOH
mentioned. Ima try to do a repair install now with Drive C set to
active.
 
Industrial said:
Just tried to do a repair install, I got no such option. God damn!
Click to expand...

You've got material like this to work with. One is a bit better written
than the other.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_startup_process
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTLDR

*******

"I was greeted with my old dual boot screen but with a half-a-second timeout"

Does that mean some of the Vista stuff is still present ? Then the
question would be, how do you edit the BCD if you wanted to use
that boot menu ? Can you edit the BCD and change the timeout,
using a Vista install CD and its version of Recovery Console ?

*******

If you boot the WinXP installer CD, and attempt to run Recovery Console,
does the Recovery Console manage to identify "C:\WINDOWS" as a candidate ?
The drive letters it uses, don't correspond to the drive lettering you're
used to. On my machine, the drive letters could be enumerated in the order
the disks are connected to Southbridge ports. I have two WinNT partitions
on my machine at the moment (one per disk, two disks), and if I use
Recovery Console, I can never figure out at this prompt, which one is which.
One is labeled C: and one is labeled D:, and I usually pick the wrong one
and have to reboot and try again.

http://support.microsoft.com/Library/Images/2399081.png

If a partition were to be entirely re-written, you could lose the
partition boot sectors that way. For example, if I copy all the files
from my WinXP partition, to another partition, format the original
partition, then move the files back, it won't boot until I do a
"fixboot" from the recovery console for that partition, and
rewrite the partition boot sectors located just before the NTFS file
system on C:.

Paul
 
Damn, couldn't post my report cuz I lost my internet connection last
month, but problem's solved.

It turns out the problem was far more linear than I thought. You know
how boot-time programs always report a different drive letter than how
Windows displays it? Well the boot-time partitioning program didn't
recognize Drive F as F but Drive C (which it wasn't) and the real
Drive C as Drive D. I did not think this was a problem because the XP
installation CD always displays weird drive letters but it all turns
out good when the repair is done and you return to the OS.

It appears this case was the exception to the rule. I changed the
Drive letter to the correct letter (F) on the boot-time partitioning
app and ran all the registry and MBR fixes as necessary and bam,
everything was back to normal.

Thanks everyone for the help anyways.
 
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