Dynamic disk conversion failure

[Guest]

I tried to convert my disk from basic to dynamic because my C: partition was running out of disk space. There was unallocated disk space before the C: partition. When I did it, it warned me that I would have to edit the boot.ini partition and that I should look at the Disk Management Console before I did it. It asked me to reboot, which I did. It rebooted fine, it did something and then asked me to reboot again. I blindly said yes and now it says "Windows 2000 cannot start because the following file is missing or corrupt: <windows 2000 root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe. Please re-install a copy of the above file." What is the procedure to contnue with the conversion? I have my original CD and can go into the recovery console. I don't have a recovery diskette.

 

[Bjorn Landemoo]

Leo

Perform a manual repair, and select to "Inspect Startup Environment", see
this MS Knowledge Base article:

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=238359

Upgrading the disk to dynamic will not help you enlarging your C partition,
though. You might need to consider a backup and restore for this.

Best regards

Bjorn

 

[Leo Lemonidis]

I did as you suggested, but it said that it could not find
a WIN200 installation to repair. As I mentioned before, I
do not have the repair disk. If I do recovery using the
recovery console, I can select my c: drive and I can "see"
all of the other partitions. Do I need to use the FIXBOOT
command of the repair console?

-----Original Message-----
Leo

Perform a manual repair, and select to "Inspect Startup Environment", see
this MS Knowledge Base article:

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=238359

Upgrading the disk to dynamic will not help you enlarging your C partition,
though. You might need to consider a backup and restore for this.

Best regards

Bjorn

my C: partition was running out of disk space. There was
unallocated disk space before the C: partition. When I did
it, it warned me that I would have to edit the boot.ini
partition and that I should look at the Disk Management
Console before I did it. It asked me to reboot, which I
did. It rebooted fine, it did something and then asked me
to reboot again. I blindly said yes and now it
says "Windows 2000 cannot start because the following file
is missing or corrupt: <windows 2000 root>\system32
\ntoskrnl.exe. Please re-install a copy of the above
file." What is the procedure to contnue with the
conversion? I have my original CD and can go into the
recovery console. I don't have a recovery diskette.

 

[Bjorn Landemoo]

Leo

FIXBOOT will only rewrite the boot sector, and that will not help in this
situation.

Currently, my only idea is to use a boot diskette:

Format a diskette from a running Win2000 installation and copy the files
boot.ini, ntdetect.com and ntldr to it.

You might need to edit the ARC path in boot.ini to point at your boot
partition. On a default setup it would look like this:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT

Is C: the first partition on your disk?

When the ARC path is correct, this floppy will boot your computer and load
Win2000 from your hard disk.

Best regards

Bjorn

 

[Guest]

Bjorn,

It gives me exactly the same message as the original
message that ntoskrnl.exe is missing. C: is the
first "real" partition on the disk. There is unallocated
space before it. Does that make the unallocated/free space
the first partition and C: the second under dynamic disk?

Leo

 

[Bjorn Landemoo]

Leo

No, the free space is not counted as a partition. You can create a boot.ini
with up to ten different boot selection, like this:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="0001"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="0002"
etc

and try different ARC paths.

I have never seen the message to edit boot.ini when upgrading a disk to
dynamic, this should normally not occur.

Why was there free space in front of C:? Did you delete any partition?

Best regards

Bjorn

 

[Guest]

Bjorn,

Actually it probably counts it as a partition, because
when I tried booting with partition(1) which was what my
original boot.ini had, I got the same message. When I
edited by boot.ni and set the partition number to 2 then
it booted fine. I then immediately edited the boot.ini on
the c: partition to boot from partition(2) and rebooted.
It's now running fine. I still want to extend my c:
partition though. I know there is an knowledge article on
doing that for basic disks but not dynamic. Is there a
knowledge article for doing the backup/restore procedure
for the whole disk ?

Thanks for all your help!!!

Leo

 

[Bjorn Landemoo]

Leo

That's funny. Does Disk Management show your C: volume as (System) in the
status column?

See if this MS Knowledge Base article can help you with a back up and
restore operation:

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=249694

Best regards

Bjorn

 

[Guest]

Yes it does. I did try to extend it, but Disk Management
does not let me because it was originally created as part
of a basic disk rather than dynamic disk.

Thanks for the knowledge article reference. Do you know if
any of the third party tools (Partition Magic, Norton's,
etc) handle the extending?

Leo

 

[Bjorn Landemoo]

Leo

I am not aware of any third party tools that handles dynamic disks,
unfortunately.

Best regards

Bjorn

 

[Phil Barila]

Yes it does. I did try to extend it, but Disk Management
does not let me because it was originally created as part
of a basic disk rather than dynamic disk.

Thanks for the knowledge article reference. Do you know if
any of the third party tools (Partition Magic, Norton's,
etc) handle the extending?

You can use ghost to capture an image of the disk, then put the image back
onto the whole disk. Ghost can resize the partition just fine, though it
doesn't allow you to edit partitiojns in place.

Phil
--
Philip D. Barila Windows DDK MVP
Seagate Technology, LLC
(720) 684-1842
As if I need to say it: Not speaking for Seagate.
E-mail address is pointed at a domain squatter. Use reply-to instead.

 

[Guest]

Thanks Phil! I will buy Ghost and try your procedure. I'll
let you know if it was successful.

Leo