Copying Bootable Drive C: to Second Hard drive

C

casey.o

In Win98se, I could take "Partition Magic 8" and simply copy c: to the
next drive, shut down, unplug the original drive, and set the jumper on
the new (bigger) drive to Master, and I'd have a bootable bigger drive.

This is not working on XP. I did the same thing, but the new drive will
not boot. (No system files error). I have tried doing this several
times, once I ended up with a dual boot creation, which was a major pain
in the ass to remove. I'm guessing that this type of operation is not
possible with XP, and I'll have to completely reinstall XP to the new
drive from scratch.

Anyone know any other way to do this?
 
P

philo 

In Win98se, I could take "Partition Magic 8" and simply copy c: to the
next drive, shut down, unplug the original drive, and set the jumper on
the new (bigger) drive to Master, and I'd have a bootable bigger drive.

This is not working on XP. I did the same thing, but the new drive will
not boot. (No system files error). I have tried doing this several
times, once I ended up with a dual boot creation, which was a major pain
in the ass to remove. I'm guessing that this type of operation is not
possible with XP, and I'll have to completely reinstall XP to the new
drive from scratch.

Anyone know any other way to do this?



It absolutely should work.

Since it does not, I'd first check to make sure the partition is marked
active.


If it is and still does not boot,
try issuing the command: fixmbr


You will need to boot with your XP cd and enter the repair console.
 
P

Paul

In Win98se, I could take "Partition Magic 8" and simply copy c: to the
next drive, shut down, unplug the original drive, and set the jumper on
the new (bigger) drive to Master, and I'd have a bootable bigger drive.

This is not working on XP. I did the same thing, but the new drive will
not boot. (No system files error). I have tried doing this several
times, once I ended up with a dual boot creation, which was a major pain
in the ass to remove. I'm guessing that this type of operation is not
possible with XP, and I'll have to completely reinstall XP to the new
drive from scratch.

Anyone know any other way to do this?

A dual boot might have resulted from doing two installations sequentially.
Less like to have happened purely by copying a partition. Of course,
Partition Magic, being magic and all, might have done something in
the process.

I would use Macrium Reflect Free while the good copy of WinXP is running.
It can process C: while C: is in usage, without rebooting. It uses the
VSS service in WinXP, as part of the solution. It supports cloning, possible
as of Version 5 (it's been out for a while).

(Download link lower left corner)

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

The following advice is custom to you and your situation. Macrium comes
with a Linux appliance type boot CD built into the main download. The
main download would be on the order of 20MB or so, and a lot of that
is the Linux CD that comes with it.

A second option, is to create a WinPE CD, using a second downloaded file.
This download is around 100MB or so, which is a bit too much for a dialup
connection.

The CNET link, that is a "stub installer". When the stub installer is
run on the computer, it presents a dialog that offers the above described
two download options (one or both). In your case, you'd disable the
WAIK/WinPE component, to keep the download to a reasonable size. Once
you've configured what you want from the stub, you can then start the
download. You'd want the 20MB file.

Now, the difference between the Linux appliance CD (dedicated single
application) and the WinPE one, is the WinPE one supports backup/restore/clone,
while the Linux one is more backup/restore. For the current job, of
cloning C:, you can actually do that with no CDs at all in hand. You
don't need either CD to solve your current dilemma.

It would be nice if Macrium had a "no-CD" option, but that
would conflict with their ability (like most good backup/restore
programs), to be able to do a bare metal restore to an empty
hard drive. You would need a CD to do that. But your
current problem is simpler.

There are other utilities you could use. But "everything
in life, starts with a download from somewhere", and
most every tool I can think of, is pudgy and overweight.
You just can't seem to find anyone in the developer
community, on a bandwidth diet, able to craft software
that fits on a floppy.

*******

The mechanical portion of a copy, can be done with
a tiny utility like this one. Only a 170KB download or so.

http://www.chrysocome.net/downloads/dd-0.6beta3.zip

The problem with using that, is it doesn't know about VSS,
and can't copy C: while the OS is running. So close and
yet so far.

I'd gladly point you at a Linux boot OS, as a way to work
on C: without needing VSS, but then the Linux download
would not be a candidate for dialup. It's just too big.
Even the small distros are too big.

So Macrium is going to have to do.

There is a list of cloning programs on Wikipedia.
I checked Clonezilla, and it's over 100MB (as it is a
bootable Linux approach). Even researching the download
size of these, is going to take all day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_disk_cloning_software

Any decent cloning utility, should copy MBR, boot flags,
and the entire C: partition, so they really shouldn't be
dropping the ball and making un-bootable disks. I think
Philo, in his answer, is assuming a not-very-good clone,
where C: partition is copied, but the MBR wasn't copied
properly. To copy the MBR properly, means copying the
440 byte boot code, as well as the 16 byte partition definition.
And in the 16 byte partition definition, is a byte that
holds the boot flag. (The boot flag exists on all four
primary partitions in the MBR, but by convention, only
one boot flag is asserted at a time.)

A "fixmbr", done from WinXP recovery console, reloads the 440 byte
area. I don't know if it bothers with the boot flag or not.
You could probably use "diskpart" to correct the boot flag.

Doing a "fixboot" is another command, but that fixes
a couple sectors at the start of C:. Those are sectors
related to booting as well. Only if you "cloned" C: by using
XXCOPY or Robocopy, would you have "lost" the Partition Boot Sector
in the header of the file system. And I don't think that's
what happened to you. As Philo says, you could use the
installer CD, boot to recovery console, and do the fixmbr
from there.

When using the recovery console, it looks at all the disks, and
lists all the WinXP OSes it sees. If both of your hard drives
are connected, you'll have to select one and enter the password.
I consider this interface to be obnoxious at best. To make
your life simpler, if you want to follow up on Philo's idea
(and save yourself hours of downloading for Macrium), you would
disconnect the good drive, and just leave the non-booting
drive connected. When you boot your WinXP CD and enter the recovery
console, there will only be one OS showing, and you can confidently
select it, type the administrator password, and get to work.

"Starting the Windows Recovery Console from... CD"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058

Paul
 
M

Mayayana

What else is on the other drive? You mentioned
a dual boot creation. You also didn't say what
you used to copy the partition. In addition to
making sure the partition is set active, you'll
need to edit boot.ini if the partition is not in the
same location on the drive. When you boot to
a Win98 partition it boots that partition. When you
boot to an XP partition it boots whatever partition
is specified in boot.ini. That was probably disk 0,
partition 1 originally. If it's not still disk 0, partition 1
then while you may succeed in starting the boot
process in the new XP partition, XP may be trying
to boot a non-bootable partition elsewhere, in which
case you're likely to get something like an error saying
hal.dll is missing.


| In Win98se, I could take "Partition Magic 8" and simply copy c: to the
| next drive, shut down, unplug the original drive, and set the jumper on
| the new (bigger) drive to Master, and I'd have a bootable bigger drive.
|
| This is not working on XP. I did the same thing, but the new drive will
| not boot. (No system files error). I have tried doing this several
| times, once I ended up with a dual boot creation, which was a major pain
| in the ass to remove. I'm guessing that this type of operation is not
| possible with XP, and I'll have to completely reinstall XP to the new
| drive from scratch.
|
| Anyone know any other way to do this?
|
 
C

casey.o

It absolutely should work.

Since it does not, I'd first check to make sure the partition is marked
active.


If it is and still does not boot,
try issuing the command: fixmbr


You will need to boot with your XP cd and enter the repair console.


It was set active. I have spent half the day trying it different ways.
Either I get a non-system error, or it boots to the XP logo and dont
continue, or for awhile it just kept rebooting. I finally just got
pissed and used my dos floppy, and using fdisk, I wiped the whole hard
drive.

I cant boot from my CD. As I mentioned a week ago, I had to copy the CD
to a flash drive, then copy it to the harddrive, and install it from a
dos prompt off the HD.

Thanks for everyone's help, I QUIT!

I'm not usually a quitter, but everything I try to do with XP is like
being in a fight, or a "world war" might better describe it. I spent 3
datys trying to get XP to connect to the internet and could not so it,
now I spent the last 2 days trying to simply copy the installed OS to a
bigger HD. I NEVER have these problems with Win98. I have copied 98 to
at least 8 HDs, I can connect to the internet with any modem, and since
I normally lose at least one modem every year from lightning, I
regularly change them.

I thought XP was supposed to be fairly easy to use, and maybe it is, as
long as it's installed and left alone, as MS created it, but any
modifications (other than changing the appearance of the desktop), seem
near impossible. It seems as bad if not worse than when I once tried
Linux.

I guess this is the end of the road. I'll stick with Win98, and keep
struggling with the crappy browsers it runs, which is far less trouble
than the last week of completely wasted time I have spent fighting with
XP. I'm not trying to cut down anyone that used XP, I'm just being
honest. 10 or 12 years ago, was the first time I ever touched XP, and I
hated it. I really tried this time, tried to be patient and thorough,
and all I can say in the end is that I hate it more than before.

I'll stick with Win98, and start saving my pennies for a Macintosh
computer. I want no part of any MS operating systems beyond Win98.

Again, THANK ALL OF YOU FOR THE HELP. I'm just too frustrasted to fight
with XP any further.

I'll probably install 98 on this spare computer too, that way it wont
just collect dust in my closet.

By the way, there is a program called dixmlsetup.exe, which is supposed
to make a clone of a partition. Dont waste your time with it. after
installing it, it kept complaining about some missing file..... well,
duhhhh, why didnt it install that file????
 
C

casey.o

When using the recovery console, it looks at all the disks, and
lists all the WinXP OSes it sees. If both of your hard drives
are connected, you'll have to select one and enter the password.
I consider this interface to be obnoxious at best. To make
your life simpler, if you want to follow up on Philo's idea
(and save yourself hours of downloading for Macrium), you would
disconnect the good drive, and just leave the non-booting
drive connected. When you boot your WinXP CD and enter the recovery
console, there will only be one OS showing, and you can confidently
select it, type the administrator password, and get to work.

"Starting the Windows Recovery Console from... CD"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058

Paul

Thanks Paul. You sure do know your stuff, but I wont touch anything
Linux. Fighting with XP is bad enough. I tried linux once, and vowed
to never go anywhere near it again. On top of that, i have never burned
a CD, and have no clue how to even begin. This who mess has me so damn
frustrated that I'm taking this XP computer out to the garage right now,
before I take a hammer to it, which I already came close to, when the
damn floppy refused to come out of the floppy drive.

THANKS FOR TRYING to help!
 
P

Paul

Thanks Paul. You sure do know your stuff, but I wont touch anything
Linux. Fighting with XP is bad enough. I tried linux once, and vowed
to never go anywhere near it again. On top of that, i have never burned
a CD, and have no clue how to even begin. This who mess has me so damn
frustrated that I'm taking this XP computer out to the garage right now,
before I take a hammer to it, which I already came close to, when the
damn floppy refused to come out of the floppy drive.

THANKS FOR TRYING to help!

There's nothing Linux there. Trust me.

I was explaining what some of them use, for emergency boot media.
You're not in an emergency, so you won't be burning any CDs. Simple.

Download Macrium Reflect Free while you're in WinXP.
Select the "least" set of files to download. That would
be 18-20MB or so. You don't need WinPE/WAIK at the moment,
and options like that are too big to download on dialup.

You then install the program, run it from the Program menu.
Select the source drive, and clone it to the other drive. Done.

Now, shut down, disconnect the original drive. You're not supposed
to leave the original drive connected, while booting the new clone.
You can only re-connect the original drive, once the clone has
successfully booted at least once. Then, it won't do anything
freaky.

So try again, it's probably just a finger problem, like
forgetting the "clones boot alone the first time" rule.
And, I learned of that rule the hard way, and had to clone
over again. It's not like I got that one right on the
first try. I suffered the problem, then looked it up :)

Paul
 
C

casey.o

There's nothing Linux there. Trust me.

I was explaining what some of them use, for emergency boot media.
You're not in an emergency, so you won't be burning any CDs. Simple.

Download Macrium Reflect Free while you're in WinXP.
Select the "least" set of files to download. That would
be 18-20MB or so. You don't need WinPE/WAIK at the moment,
and options like that are too big to download on dialup.

You then install the program, run it from the Program menu.
Select the source drive, and clone it to the other drive. Done.

Now, shut down, disconnect the original drive. You're not supposed
to leave the original drive connected, while booting the new clone.
You can only re-connect the original drive, once the clone has
successfully booted at least once. Then, it won't do anything
freaky.

So try again, it's probably just a finger problem, like
forgetting the "clones boot alone the first time" rule.
And, I learned of that rule the hard way, and had to clone
over again. It's not like I got that one right on the
first try. I suffered the problem, then looked it up :)

Paul

Thanks Paul. I put the computer away for now. I'll try it again in a
day or two when I calm down. I've been working on this damn thing
around the clock and have had enough. Right now, I'm going out to get a
much needed drink :) These computers are designed to drive peiople
nuts, or lead them to drink :) I'm at that point.

PS. I did remove the original drive after trying to clone with Part
Magic. Like I said, either I got a "no system found" error, or it hangs
on the "welcome " screen, or it kept rebooting over and over and over.

The good news is that it still boots from the original HD, and I removed
the dual boot crap, by simply removing the last line from BOOT.INI. And
more good news, the floppy was NOT stuck in the drive. I was getting so
frustrated that I forgot I removed it. No wonder it did not come out no
matter how hard I pushed the button and after I unplugged the drive
while it was still running.

Time for that drink or two or three!!!!

Thanks
 
P

Paul

Thanks Paul. I put the computer away for now. I'll try it again in a
day or two when I calm down. I've been working on this damn thing
around the clock and have had enough. Right now, I'm going out to get a
much needed drink :) These computers are designed to drive peiople
nuts, or lead them to drink :) I'm at that point.

PS. I did remove the original drive after trying to clone with Part
Magic. Like I said, either I got a "no system found" error, or it hangs
on the "welcome " screen, or it kept rebooting over and over and over.

The good news is that it still boots from the original HD, and I removed
the dual boot crap, by simply removing the last line from BOOT.INI. And
more good news, the floppy was NOT stuck in the drive. I was getting so
frustrated that I forgot I removed it. No wonder it did not come out no
matter how hard I pushed the button and after I unplugged the drive
while it was still running.

Time for that drink or two or three!!!!

Thanks

Taking a break, will put things in perspective.

I only pull long sessions now, if I have a reasonable
expectation they'll finish. For example, I started a plumbing
project one day, I'd done a ton of prep work and "nothing
could go wrong". When I hit midnight, I stuck with it, because
I could see all the nasty stuff was done. I could barely
drag myself out of the basement at 3 A.M. in the morning
when it was finished (my back was giving out). I wouldn't
have tried that, if I thought it was going to go south
on me again :)

Back in my working days, I pulled a couple of 36 hour
stints at work, but that's really counterproductive.
You have to be really careful what you eat when you do that,
because one heavy meal, and you're done for.

Paul
 
B

BillW50

In (e-mail address removed) typed:
Thanks Paul. I put the computer away for now. I'll try it again in a
day or two when I calm down. I've been working on this damn thing
around the clock and have had enough. Right now, I'm going out to
get a much needed drink :) These computers are designed to drive
peiople nuts, or lead them to drink :) I'm at that point.

PS. I did remove the original drive after trying to clone with Part
Magic. Like I said, either I got a "no system found" error, or it
hangs on the "welcome " screen, or it kept rebooting over and over
and over.

The good news is that it still boots from the original HD, and I
removed the dual boot crap, by simply removing the last line from
BOOT.INI. And more good news, the floppy was NOT stuck in the drive.
I was getting so frustrated that I forgot I removed it. No wonder it
did not come out no matter how hard I pushed the button and after I
unplugged the drive while it was still running.

Time for that drink or two or three!!!!

Thanks

Hi Casey! I've seen this dozens of times. The problem is XP (NT really)
saw the clone drive and it remembers that isn't the system drive. So it
thinks it is the same drive letter it was the first time and now it is
all confused. The fix is to make XP forget that it ever saw this drive
before and it will work just fine. How?

One way is by using Win98 "FDISK /MBR". Yes this creates a new MBR on
the new clone drive, but Win98 FDISK also has a bug that wipes out part
of the volume identifier (or whatever they call it). Don't boot up the
original with the clone connected after doing this or this problem will
reoccur again.

Another way is to use XXClone (the free one) which runs under your
original drive and create your clone that way. Don't worry XXClone makes
the clone drive forget. Also many other clone software should work too,
since most developers knows about this clone system drive problem.
 
P

philo 

<snip>


It really does look like Partition Magic failed but I did think of one
more thing.

Some manufacturers have different jumper settings for "master"


Master with slave present

Master with no slave present
 
B

BillW50

<snip>

It really does look like Partition Magic failed but I did think of one
more thing.

Some manufacturers have different jumper settings for "master"

Master with slave present

Master with no slave present

Well I think Partition Magic did okay and all. But Partition Magic
didn't know and correct the cloning under Windows NT (in this case XP)
problem. Nothing bad happens if the original Windows never sees the
clone drive. Like cloning from booting from a CD or something.

The problem happens when you boot the original with the clone connected
and the original notes that new drive and assigns a drive letter to it.
It remembers this because it is stored in the registry.

Now remove the original and boot up the cloned copy and Windows thinks
it is original but also recalls this cloned drive is drive letter so and
so. What is weird if you reverse the drives after you cloned (making the
clone the boot/system drive) and the original as some other drive. And
if you have drive lights, Windows will boot normally in this condition,
but you will see both drives being accessed while booting. Since Windows
sees some parts as the original drive as the real boot and system drive
and parts of the new clone as the boot/system drive. Weird.

Microsoft could have easily wrote a small amount of code to fix this,
but they didn't. I know why personally I think their reason is stupid
myself, but I digress. Anyway the trick is to make Windows to believing
it never saw this cloned drive before. Then everything works as it
should. This problem only pops up with NT and not with Windows 9x (ME).

So cloning software that deals with NT should already know about this
problem and then knows how to remove the registry entry about this
cloned drive. Thus Windows sees it as an unknown new drive and not
something it has seen before.

Partition Magic is a partitioning program and an old one at that. It
isn't meant to be used for cloning per se, but it can. And back when
Windows 2000/XP first came out, this problem was very common. Later
software got smart to this and worked around the problem.
 
P

philo 

Well I think Partition Magic did okay and all. But Partition Magic
didn't know and correct the cloning under Windows NT (in this case XP)
problem. Nothing bad happens if the original Windows never sees the
clone drive. Like cloning from booting from a CD or something.

The problem happens when you boot the original with the clone connected
and the original notes that new drive and assigns a drive letter to it.
It remembers this because it is stored in the registry.


I think the OP did not reboot with the drive attached...

it looks to me like he did it properly
 
B

BillW50

In philo typed:
I think the OP did not reboot with the drive attached...

it looks to me like he did it properly

Actually if the original is booted with the clone drive (even before it
is cloned) it is now marked by the original XP (NT really). Now when you
clone it under the original OS, all of the original information is also
now on the clone, even knowledge of this cloned drive. So it is too late
to disconnect and reboot. The problem is already there. I have seen this
more times than I care to recall. Win98 FDISK's bug is an easy way to
fix it.
 
C

casey.o

Actually if the original is booted with the clone drive (even before it
is cloned) it is now marked by the original XP (NT really). Now when you
clone it under the original OS, all of the original information is also
now on the clone, even knowledge of this cloned drive. So it is too late
to disconnect and reboot. The problem is already there. I have seen this
more times than I care to recall. Win98 FDISK's bug is an easy way to
fix it.

--

To let everyone know what happened. After taking a break from working
on this, which was driving me batty, I tried to download Macrium, which
Paul suggested. Being booted and online under Win98, it would not let
me access the thing. I did some sort of work-around on the site, and
faced a 180meg file. Way too big for my dialup connection. (I do
question why a program to simply copy a partition needs to be that big).

Anyhow, after downloading several #$%^& demos, and two programs from
"Runtime software" , that isnisted I need VSSVC.EXE running in task
manager (which WAS running), I deleted all that crap, and found XXCLone.
It was a small download of about 4 megs, and worked perfectly. I had to
run two operations. One copied all fiels on the partition to the new
drive, the second one installed the boot files.

I now have a duplicate of the original 10g hard drive, on a larger
drive, and it boots just fine. Since then, I installed SP3. I now have
a good working computer with XP SP3. The bad thing, is that my whole
intention was to setup this XP machine to mostly be used for the
internet, because there are no browsers that work properly in Win98
anymore. The bad news is that no matter what I have tried, I can not
get a usable connection to the internet via dialup. I can connect at
32k to 39k, (slightly slower than my usual connection using Win98, which
generally ranges from 38k to 48k). But when connected via XP,
regardless of speed, I can not transfer data. For example, I had to
wait 12 minutes to just open a google home page.

I did check on many of the things that Paul recommended in another
thread. Much of this became far too complicated and confusing for me to
understand. No matter what, I cant connect properly. I'm at a total
loss what to do from here.......
My only thought is to network the XP machine to the W98 one, and uxe the
connection from the W98 machinme on the XP one. (I think that will
work). But I need to buy a newtork card for the W98 machine.

Otherwise, I'm clueless how to make the modem work properly. You'd
think someone would make some software that would set this up correctly.
Doing it manually, with all those init strings and settings seems to
require a 4 year college degree to understand.

In the end, I have a nice, but older computer, which seems to work well,
but it's worthless for my original intention of using it for the
internet. And since a high speed connection is not possible here I live
(at least not affordable, which would cost $50 a month and up), I guess
I'm stuck with using Win98, and fighting with the horrid browsers. The
funny thing, is that this morning I hit the ultimate speed on this W98
machine. I was downloading videos from youtube at a combined speed of
7.4kb per second. That's the fastest I haev ever downloaded on dialup.
My connection was 48K at the time.

Why I cant do anything online, with XP which is the same experience I
got from Win2000, and trying both an internal and a serial external
modem, is beyond me. Either way, I'm a a total loss where to proceed
from here. All I know is that I have a good running XP machine which
does nothing more than my Win98 machine, except allows me to use some
newer software, and dont ask me to install drivers for everything I plug
into a USB port. So, about the only thing I gained is the ability to
play DVD movies on the XP one, but that really is not needed, since my
DVD player works fine on my tv set.

My final question is whether I can network to the 98 machine and use the
dialup connection from that machine on the XP one, and thus use the
newer browsers. Of course setting up a network will likely drive me
nuts too. I did it many years ago, using two computers running Windows
for Workgroups 3.11. I did get it to work to transfer software between
the two machines. These days that purpose seems pretty worthless. I
can copy my whole computer onto a USB harddrive, and move it ot the
other machine. So, who needs a network????

Thanks to everyone!
 
P

Paul

Bill said:
It was 42 MB over here, not 180 Meg (and that was very recently). I don't
know which version you were looking at, but it doesn't have to be that big.
Apparently that 180 one includes a whole bunch of other stuff you don't
need.

As for trying to network two PC's using dial-up to allegedly get your XP on
dial-up through the other one, I can't even imagine. :)

You can use ICS, on a machine with two network interfaces, to
share the network.

Modem Ethernet
The-Internet ------ ICS_Machine ---------- Some-other-machine-with-regular-LAN-setup

You could dial out with the ICS_Machine, and do your stuff that way.

Why they make articles like this, with absolutely no pictures,
is beyond me. There are so many useful pictures you could draw,
of working and non-working ICS setups, that would be so helpful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_connection_sharing

*******

All I can say, is unless you get into the Hayes Command Set, and
understand what's going on, you'll never fix it :) I know this
for experiences, over and over again. Spread over probably 10-15 years.
On equipment as pitiful as Macintoshes. And PCs.

OK, now for some fun.

I wanted to find a serial port logger. I could find a commercial
one, I could find one that promised a download from CNET, but that
would mean dealing with nasty boring toolbars.

Then, I noticed Sysinternals wrote a Portmon. It records
serial port I/O calls.

Now, it would be too simple to just go to the web site and
get the current version and have it work. This is version 3.03,
the current one. Now, this is missing a crucial menu column at the top.
There is no way to "start" a capture. The capture menu is
grey. So forget the current version. We need to go back in time.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896644.aspx

How this works, is the author of this was not happy with just
capturing serial I/O. The tool was also designed to work
remotely. For that to happen, one copy of Portmon runs on the
computer you want to log. That is the "server". The other
copy runs on the server where you want to view what is
going on. That copy of the program is called the "client".

An older version of the program, has a "Connect Local" option.
That makes the one program, running on your WinXP machine,
perform both the "server" and "client" roles on the same computer.

This is version 3.02, which has the "Connect local" option.
This is the one that works.

https://web.archive.org/web/2008010...icrosoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896644.aspx

This is the 142KB download. Unzip this in a separate folder.
Double click portmon.exe to run it. You should have administrator
rights, as this is going to install a temporary filter driver
in the serial port. When you shut down the program, no residue is
left behind. Mark writes portable programs, in the best possible way.

https://web.archive.org/web/20080102163853/http://download.sysinternals.com/Files/PortMon.zip

Once you do the Computer : "Connect Local", go to the
Capture menu. In there, the Capture item at the top will
have a tick next to it. Now, the next item down is "Ports".
I selected my COM3 port, which has my modem.

As a test, I went to Device Manager, selected the USR Modem,
went to the Diagnostic tab. clicked the button to run the
dialup diagnostics. This sends commands to the serial port.
The log in PortMon then starts to fill with data. I can save
the log file for later, using Save As in the program. Once I've captured
enough information to have the important bits in the log.

When the modem transmits, the PortMon captures an
entire string. In this case, a Hayes AT Command set
command is being sent. The program sending the command
is "mmc", which is the thing that makes the Device Manager
display on your screen. When debugging your setup, the name
will be other than "mmc.exe". My serial port, rather than
being "serial0" as Mark's documentation would show, is "VPC1",
because my serial port is a USB to RS232 dongle. Again, yours
will be different.

96 0.00046805 mmc.exe IRP_MJ_WRITE VCP1 SUCCESS Length 80: ATQ0V1E0........................................................

When the modem answers, for some reason, the characters
are logged individually. This is what you would normally
get from a Hayes AT command which doesn't have any
particular data output. The modem has returned "OK".
If you send "AT" to a modem, it says "OK" as an answer.
The two characters here, have received separate timestamps.

109 0.00000111 mmc.exe IRP_MJ_READ VCP1 SUCCESS Length 1: O
110 0.00000108 mmc.exe IRP_MJ_READ VCP1 SUCCESS Length 1: K

With this information in hand, you can start PortMon running,
log the port, then attempt to do DUN (Dialup Networking) in
WinXP. What you're looking for, is only the initial captures,
where the INIT string is being fed to the modem. Once we have
that, then the fun can begin. Post the string when you find
it, as well as the make and model number of the modem.
The INIT string could include stuff similar to my
example "ATQ0V1E0", followed by things like a phone
number "ATDT5551212". They may break the string into
separate AT commands, or attempt to load the whole
thing in one shot. This portion of the transaction,
is before PPP begins to run, and send authentication
info. If you specify some form of encryption in your
PPP session, the authentication info may be
encrypted. None of that is important at the moment,
because we don't care about the PPP stuff. Just the
Hayes strings matter at the moment. Stuff that will
be very near to the beginning of the trace. You can
replace the phone number with 5551212 when you post
the strings you find. I don't plan on testing your
modem pool. And please don't post the strings with
your PPP username or password, if they happen to be
in plaintext.

Paul
 
C

casey.o

It was 42 MB over here, not 180 Meg (and that was very recently). I don't
know which version you were looking at, but it doesn't have to be that big.
Apparently that 180 one includes a whole bunch of other stuff you don't
need.

As for trying to network two PC's using dial-up to allegedly get your XP on
dial-up through the other one, I can't even imagine. :)

Like I said, it seemed to notice I was using W98 and refused to let me
open it, except for that 180m one. But that dont matter anymore, I
found that XXClone worked great, was easy, and only a 4m download. Its
FREE too. I'd highly recommend it!
 
C

casey.o

The INIT string could include stuff similar to my
example "ATQ0V1E0", followed by things like a phone
number "ATDT5551212". They may break the string into
separate AT commands, or attempt to load the whole
thing in one shot. This portion of the transaction,
is before PPP begins to run, and send authentication
info. If you specify some form of encryption in your
PPP session, the authentication info may be
encrypted. None of that is important at the moment,
because we don't care about the PPP stuff. Just the
Hayes strings matter at the moment. Stuff that will
be very near to the beginning of the trace. You can
replace the phone number with 5551212 when you post
the strings you find. I don't plan on testing your
modem pool. And please don't post the strings with
your PPP username or password, if they happen to be
in plaintext.

Paul

This looks like it will take awhile, but I found the init string on my
W98 machine, in the registry. Its
AT S0=0 E0 V1 Q0 &C1 &D2 X4
This was located in the registry under Serial - modems (something like
that).

I wanted to try this string on XP, but cant find where to put it....

I went back to the internal PCTEL modem, because I need the ext modem on
the W98 machien and got tired of swapping them. That modem is on Com3.
Somewhere in the Device Manager settings, I believe under "Ports", it
only shows Com 1 and 2. Why 3 is not shown is beyond me. I recall
being able to put in a Init String in there. I dont know how to change
the port either. It shows either Com1 or Com2 in use, I forget which
one. Probably for the Mouse, is my guess.

I still cant believe no one has written some software that will just
setup a modem to the best settings. and not require any manual stuff!!!!

I was wondering if this is possible???? There are some devices sold
(not sure what they are called), that connect to a high speed internet
connection, and send out a WIFI signal. I wonder if I could hook one of
them to my phone line, and eliminate the modem all together????
Of course I'd then hae to get some sort of device on the computer to
receive WIFI, or use my laptop which has that built in.

Comment, this modem stuff has got to be the worst and most complicated
thing about computers. All those commands are damn near as bad as
setting up linux, which is why I avoid linux like the bubonic plague.
 
P

Paul

Like I said, it seemed to notice I was using W98 and refused to let me
open it, except for that 180m one. But that dont matter anymore, I
found that XXClone worked great, was easy, and only a 4m download. Its
FREE too. I'd highly recommend it!

Macrium Reflect runs in WinXP or later!

Macrium Reflect, while running in WinXP, can copy
the C: partition while the OS continues to run. It uses VSS
to do that (Volume Shadow Service).

If you attempt to move a partition by: creating a new
partition, copy the files, then you'll need to do a
"fixboot" to load a partition boot sector, and you'll
need to set the boot flag on the partition as well.
If the MBR has no boot code in it (not the same thing
as the PBR), then you need to do "fixmbr" for that to work.
If WinXP was already on the machine, got deleted somehow,
the MBR 440 bytes of code might already be ready to go.
So your XXClone method, either that program has some of
those other details worked out, or you did the other
details manually.

Some backup/copy/clone utilities, don't use VSS, and
then the computer must be rebooted so that the tool can
make its copy. I might have some old version of Ghost
that works that way here. But on WinXP or later, with
VSS, there is a lot less need to reboot, to copy C: somewhere.

Paul
 
P

Paul

This looks like it will take awhile, but I found the init string on my
W98 machine, in the registry. Its
AT S0=0 E0 V1 Q0 &C1 &D2 X4
This was located in the registry under Serial - modems (something like
that).

I wanted to try this string on XP, but cant find where to put it....

I went back to the internal PCTEL modem, because I need the ext modem on
the W98 machien and got tired of swapping them. That modem is on Com3.
Somewhere in the Device Manager settings, I believe under "Ports", it
only shows Com 1 and 2. Why 3 is not shown is beyond me. I recall
being able to put in a Init String in there. I dont know how to change
the port either. It shows either Com1 or Com2 in use, I forget which
one. Probably for the Mouse, is my guess.

I still cant believe no one has written some software that will just
setup a modem to the best settings. and not require any manual stuff!!!!

I was wondering if this is possible???? There are some devices sold
(not sure what they are called), that connect to a high speed internet
connection, and send out a WIFI signal. I wonder if I could hook one of
them to my phone line, and eliminate the modem all together????
Of course I'd then hae to get some sort of device on the computer to
receive WIFI, or use my laptop which has that built in.

Comment, this modem stuff has got to be the worst and most complicated
thing about computers. All those commands are damn near as bad as
setting up linux, which is why I avoid linux like the bubonic plague.

I really think you should record all the AT strings with PortMon.
In my imagination, they would work like this (I have no working
account any more, to test dialup with).

AT_default_strings <--- sets up things like hardware flow control
AT_extras <--- now, the user has their string, pasted on the end
ATDT4025551212 <--- now the number is dialed

OK, so you say you see the default string. Say you were
to craft an AT_extras, like this.

AT
(command that resets the modem)
(rest of string you really wanted to use)

If that command was to execute as an "extra", it would
override the default string that had been already sent.
And that's why a user's "extra" string, would be
sent after the default string. If the "extra" string
is empty, then nothing gets overridden.

The letter "Z" is a way to reset the modem, as in ATZ.
Did out your Hayes command set for the modem...

So you don't necessary have to edit the Registry,
to get a desired result. If you craft a crafty
Extras string, it'll just override the default one.
Because it comes after it, and you can issue a reset
with the letter Z.

AT Z S0=0 E0 V1 Q0 &C1 &D2 X4 <--- Paul makes his own Extra.

*******

I have a US Robotics modem. WinXP has a driver for it,
but my modem consists of a modem number and a version
number, and my version number is too old to be compatible
with the driver.

Instead, I had to select a "generic" driver called Unimodem.
And that turned out to work great. Gives me 43K to Freenet.
(I.e. Any connection better than 33.6K means negotiation
of a 56K rate is taking place. The line quality may not be
the best, but at least everything is working.)

So you can have more than one driver available, to use
with a modem. If you have a working driver for your
external, there's probably no reason to go attack it now.

*******

I supposed I'm required to decode your INIT string :)

http://support.usr.com/support/3453b/3453b-crg/appd 2-alphabetic.html

AT S0=0 E0 V1 Q0 &C1 &D2 X4

S0=0 Turn off AutoAnswer. Won't answer a Fax call.
E0 Turn off character echo
V1 Verbose status messages (English text)
Q0 Display result codes
&C1 Modem uses Carrier Detect signal - assert CD when connected
&D2 Computer must use DTR signal, before attempting transmit
X4 Controls level of detail in result codes.
The X4 value is the Microsoft default amount.

So there is nothing controversial about those commands.
But there could be another AT command sandwiched in there.
And that's what PortMon is for. To find them and list them.

If you happen to mention the model of modem you want
to get working, it's going to be easier to figure out
what the Hayes commands are doing. Some of the commands
on my US Robotics are proprietary. Just a few of them.

Paul
 

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