Failed installation hosed all systems on all partitions. Any ideas

[Guest]

I want to be thorough, so this is a long one. Please be patient if you’re
interested.

First, let me say that I’m not whining about the irretrievable, unbacked-up
precious data I lost forever as a result of this dog of a beta. Since I can
see that the original partitions and files are still there, I could use a
linux live CD to copy any files that aren’t backed-up (and that I want to
recover) to another location on my LAN. I’m just baffled by the fact that I
can’t seem to restore any of the system installations on the disk at this
point. Any insight would be appreciated. Eventually, I’ll just format and
reinstall. I may do that anyway, but I’d still like to find an answer.

Second, an outline of the (rather complicated) system disk topology:
Triple boot, multi-partition boot drive:
Primary partition 1=win98 (legacy installation kept around only because boot
stuff for all systems is on this partition. Win98 installation has not been
bootable since I upgraded to socket 939 mobo with 64bit cpu.)
Extended partition containing logical drives 2 & 3,
logical 2=winXP (installation for specific software packages – optimized
system)
logical 3=winXP (everyday use, everything and the kitchen sink installation)
…and some hardware specs:
AMD 3500+ cpu
Abit NF7-S mobo
3GB PC3200 ram

I decided that I would install the beta2 on partition 2, logical drive 3
(the kitchen sink installation). I booted that winXP installation, inserted
the DVD and was told by the Vista installer that upgrade was disabled and
that the previous installation would wind up in a “windows.old†folder. No
problem with that; a clean install might be a good thing anyway. The
ridiculously long installation routine seemed to proceed just fine. Vista
booted up and I spent the afternoon wrestling with its idiosyncrasies and
badly designed security “features.†I also noticed that the Office2007beta
and the Vistabeta2 don’t seem to play well together. Nothing making the two
impossible to use together, but lots of weirdness. Overall, the system was
very sluggish (remember: this is a 2GHz 64bit Athlon cpu with 3GB of ram –
very strange). I also hated that I had to use my big hammer to make Vista
allow me to login as the Administrator; it shouldn’t be so difficult. But
all this grousing about this not-ready-for-prime-time OS is for another
discussion. Nevertheless, I was having some fun, and was also able to boot my
winXP installation on partition 2, logical drive 2 from the new Vista
bootloader screen. Worked just fine.

Now the mystery:
I have a bunch of CD images that I use for software installation on a large
LAN share. In order to use them, I needed to install daemontools. I ran the
installer and was told that I would have to reboot to install the scsi driver
layer. When I rebooted, Vista came up and the driver installation widget
appeared in the systray. It spun greenly for a couple of minutes while I did
other things and then – Whammo! – BSOD. I tried rebooting, but no dice:
always the BSOD. Obviously, I though, it’s the result of an incompatible
driver. I booted the winXP installation and removed the .sys files associated
with the driver from Vista’s %/system32 folder and rebooted to Vista. No
dice. It complained that the offending sys file was missing and, so, could
not boot. Hmmm, this is a problem, I thought to myself. So, I booted back to
the XP installation, restored the sys files to the Vista %/system32 folder
and then opened each of them in notepad to clear the data contents. I saved
the empty files and rebooted to Vista. This time Vista complained that the
offending sys files were corrupt and it still could not boot. This sucks, I
thought. I googled a bunch of stuff, but could not find any help on removing
the problem daemontools installation. The only real suggestion I found was to
reinstall Vista. OK, I though, I haven’t gotten too far into customizing this
one, let’s just reinstall. I booted from the Vista DVD and started the
installation process. It warned me again about the “windows.old†thing.
That’s bad, I thought, it’s gonna overwrite my original winXP “windows.oldâ€
folder. So I paused the installer, opened a command prompt and renamed the
current windows.old folder to windows.xp, closed the terminal window and
resumed the installer. Knowing that it would take a while, I walked away.
When I came back, the installer was displaying a (useless) dialog box
informing me that the installer “failed to open the windows image file.†Only
thing I could do was click the OK button. Installer was frozen at this
point. Had to hard boot the computer. I tried the DVD installation again. No
dice: same message. Weird, I thought, it installed fine the first time. I
googled a bit. Saw the CRC stuff, burning advice, etc. Tried all of it. No
joy. Same installer message each time. Ah, well, I thought, I’ll just boot
into the other XP system, format the partition and install clean and fresh.
Only problem is that suddenly the previously fully functional XP installation
on logical 2 won’t boot. Windows logo screen with the blue crawler comes up,
but won’t proceed further. Moreover, no disk activity (booting always
involves a lot of disk activity – that little led on the case ordinarily
flashes madly). This sucks, I thought again. Did some more googling.
Couldn’t find anything really pertinent. Someone suggested reinstalling XP.
Why not, right? I booted my XP slipstream SP2 cd. In turn, I tried
increasingly draconian options in the repair console, starting with bootcfg
/rebuild and ending with fixmbr. Nothing worked. So, I tried an in-place
installation. At first, I thought it had worked, because my tried-and-true
old boot.ini menu greeted me, but upon choosing the logical 2 XP
installation, I got the same hung logo screen with the perpetual blue crawler
just teasing me.

I’m out of ideas. What I’d like to accomplish is restoration of access to my
logical 2 XP installation so that I don’t have to reinstall both operating
systems. I can see that everything is still there, I just can’t seem to get
the XP installation to boot. Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks!

 

[Joe727]

First off, you should break your post into easy to follow paragraphs.

Secondly, you have an operating system on your C drive. I am certainly no
expert, but I have been using multi-boot PCs for several years now including
98SE / XP Pro / Suse Linux 10 and because of that, I did not place any
operating systems on my C drive.

Right now I have 98SE / XP Pro / Vista Beta 2 Build 5384.

Take a look at my setup. You'll notice that my C drive is about 700 MB.
There is no operating system on it. It simply holds files that 98SE / XP /
Vista automatically "dump" there.

http://home.cfl.rr.com/jbmsbink/VistaInstall.jpg

Vista certainly has problems, but it by no means a dog IMO. In fact, I
think it's terrific. Microsoft released it as a Beta so that end users
like you and me could report back what problems we encounter with it.

Windows 9x will not work with any computer with an AMD 64 bit CPU. 9x is
abandoned in the 64 bit computing environment, so you might as well get rid
of it on your current setup.

You might want to try a Repair from your XP CD. Not the Recovery Console.
When the selection screen comes up press Enter to install and then select R
to repair the XP installation.

HTH

Joe

 

[Guest]

Joe, I hate to be a dick, but...

1. The first sentence of my post warns readers about its length. I do not
see how it could be better structured and still be complete. Perhaps I could
have left out the "entertaining" commentary. Thanks anyway for the "etiquette
lesson."

2. You didn't say anything that I haven't already said explicity or alluded
to in my post, so why bother to post at all? If it was just to refute my
claim that this beta is a dog, then it really was pointless. I stand by my
evaluation for the reasons outlined in my original post.

 

[Joe727]

I offered a potential solution which is repeated here:

You might want to try a Repair from your XP CD. Not the Recovery Console.
When the selection screen comes up press Enter to install and then select R
to repair the XP installation.

I also said the fact that you have an operating system on your C drive might
be the cause of the problem.

Neither was in your original post.

Good luck.

Joe

 

[Guest]

Joe,
My flip tone in my original post must have given you the impression that I'm
a newbie, or at least close to one. I'm actually an IT professional at a
large university.
An "in-place installation" (from my original post) is reinstalling XP with
exactly the method you're suggesting. Thank you, anyway. Although anything is
possible, I'm sure that the windows 98 folder on c is not causing any
problems. Again, thank you anyway.

 

[Joe727]

I don't consider your tone flip at all. All I can say is that I have a
triple boot 98SE - XP Pro SP 2 - Vista Beta 2 Build 5384 on this PC and I
don't have any problems with it, other than issues with Vista itself which
is to be expected.

Prior to that it was 98SE - XP Pro - Suse Linux 10 - no problems there
either. Then again, I don't have an operating system on my C drive either.

Since Windows 98 won't work on your 64 bit system, why keep it? After all,
what do you have to lose other than an operating system that won't be
officially supported in another month or so.

I hope you get the problem sorted out. Perhaps others will come by with
other potential solutions.

Joe

 

[droid]

I booted the winXP installation and removed the .sys files associated
with the driver from Vista’s %/system32 folder and rebooted to Vista. No
dice. It complained that the offending sys file was missing and, so, could
not boot. Hmmm, this is a problem, I thought to myself. So, I booted back
to
the XP installation, restored the sys files to the Vista %/system32 folder
and then opened each of them in notepad to clear the data contents. I
saved
the empty files and rebooted to Vista.

At that point:

Did you try uninstalling the daemon tools driver from safe mode (and
skipping it during the boot) before going around messing the .sys files with
notepad?

If the safe mode uninstallation didn't do the trick then did you try loading
the registry hive externally and removing the appropriate service entries
for the driver - apparently not.


If you still have the Vista there on the boot menu just not booting because
of the daemon tools driver you could still try some of the above. If the
Vista boot menu isn't visible getting it back though may prove a moderate
challenge.

Regarding the XP installation hang, I might have a clue on what's going on
there but writing isn't one of my strengths, if it were I might write a book
about how to solve those.