Dual Boot Windows 2000 not working

[Paolo]

On an IBM ThinkPad T30. I have two hard disks, each containing
Windows 2000, which I swap in and out of the hard disk bay to boot
into. I want to merge the two OS partitions onto one drive. So:

HD1: Windows 2000 1
HD2: Windows 2000 2

will become

HD -> Part1: Windows 2000 1
Part2: Windows 2000 2

I've changed the partition layout of HD1 using PartitionMagic to the
following:

Partition 1 (Primary/Fat32/40 MB) - Runs BootMagic
Partition 2 (Primary/NTFS/20 GIGs) - Runs Windows 2000 1
Rartition 3 (Primary/NTFS/20 GIGs) - Will Run Windows 2000 2
Partition 4 (Primary/NTFS/20 GIGs) - Empty; will contain data files

Using Ghost, I make an copy of the Windows partition on HD2 and place
it on Partition 3 of the combined drive. I select this partition from
BootMagic and get the login screen. After entering my user name and
password, Windows just sits there for about a minute with some drive
activity. Eventually, the dialog "Saving System Settings" appears and
the login window appears.

I added the flag /BOOTLOG to boot.ini; the boot log has some entries
indicating that some drivers did not load. These lines, unlike the
successfully loaded drivers which look like "\SystemRoot\WinNt"
contain paths like "\??\C:\WinNt".

It seems odd that the partition will run on its own drive, but not on
a shared one. Could it be that the second OS partition is not getting
assigned letter C:?

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Paolo

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

On an IBM ThinkPad T30. I have two hard disks, each containing
Windows 2000, which I swap in and out of the hard disk bay to boot
into. I want to merge the two OS partitions onto one drive. So:

HD1: Windows 2000 1
HD2: Windows 2000 2

will become

HD -> Part1: Windows 2000 1
Part2: Windows 2000 2

I've changed the partition layout of HD1 using PartitionMagic to the
following:

Partition 1 (Primary/Fat32/40 MB) - Runs BootMagic
Partition 2 (Primary/NTFS/20 GIGs) - Runs Windows 2000 1
Rartition 3 (Primary/NTFS/20 GIGs) - Will Run Windows 2000 2
Partition 4 (Primary/NTFS/20 GIGs) - Empty; will contain data files

Using Ghost, I make an copy of the Windows partition on HD2 and place
it on Partition 3 of the combined drive. I select this partition from
BootMagic and get the login screen. After entering my user name and
password, Windows just sits there for about a minute with some drive
activity. Eventually, the dialog "Saving System Settings" appears and
the login window appears.

I added the flag /BOOTLOG to boot.ini; the boot log has some entries
indicating that some drivers did not load. These lines, unlike the
successfully loaded drivers which look like "\SystemRoot\WinNt"
contain paths like "\??\C:\WinNt".

It seems odd that the partition will run on its own drive, but not on
a shared one. Could it be that the second OS partition is not getting
assigned letter C:?

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Paolo

The fact that you get to the login screen suggests that your drive
letter assignments are correct. You could confirm this by making
a network connection to the laptop and running this command:

dir \\Laptop\c$

If it shows the usual stuff such as \winnt then the drive letters
are correct.

The problem is possibly caused by the machine being confused
about the location of userinit.exe. Copying it to \winnt\system32
on your data drive will probably fix the issue temporarily. To
solve it permanently, fix up this location in the registry:
HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows NT/Current Version/Winlogon/Userinit