FIXMBR renewed

[William B. Lurie]

Michael Solomon:
Progress...of sorts.
You'll recall that I was reluctant to run RC>>FIXMBR until
I had a safe copy of my drive. Well, finally Drive Image 7
gave me what appeared to by an identical copy, on a new,
newly formatted drive. So I put aside my precious Master,
jumpered the new drive as Master, and booted up. Or tried
to. It booted part way, until it stopped with an error
panel reading: Product Activation...problem preventing Windows
from accurately checking license, 0X80090006.

So I started again, and I plugged in an XP CD, and booted
from it. Sure enough, it went through usual Setup and took
me to the choice of Setup XP or run Recovery Console. I
bravely chose the R option, and it did some things so fast
that I couldn't tell what, and left me at the C: prompt.
I typed FIXMBR and hit Enter, and in short order I was back
at the C: prompt. I then powered down and up again with the
CD removed, setting BIOS for usual Floppy>>CDROM>>HDD0, and
it booted part way into Windows....past the black logo screen
with the moving progress bar, to the light blue Windows logo
screen..............where it just stalled.

I may have told you the two sequences that led to dead ends,
in the wrong order, but I'm sure you know where and why I'm
now stuck. Perhaps you can suggest how I can get past those
obstacles. At least now I can try things without endangering the
Master hard drive.
William B. Lurie

 

[Total Exterminator]

Michael Solomon:
Progress...of sorts.
You'll recall that I was reluctant to run RC>>FIXMBR until
I had a safe copy of my drive. Well, finally Drive Image 7
gave me what appeared to by an identical copy, on a new,
newly formatted drive. So I put aside my precious Master,
jumpered the new drive as Master, and booted up. Or tried
to. It booted part way, until it stopped with an error
panel reading: Product Activation...problem preventing Windows
from accurately checking license, 0X80090006.

So I started again, and I plugged in an XP CD, and booted
from it. Sure enough, it went through usual Setup and took
me to the choice of Setup XP or run Recovery Console. I
bravely chose the R option, and it did some things so fast
that I couldn't tell what, and left me at the C: prompt.
I typed FIXMBR and hit Enter, and in short order I was back
at the C: prompt. I then powered down and up again with the
CD removed, setting BIOS for usual Floppy>>CDROM>>HDD0, and
it booted part way into Windows....past the black logo screen
with the moving progress bar, to the light blue Windows logo
screen..............where it just stalled.

I may have told you the two sequences that led to dead ends,
in the wrong order, but I'm sure you know where and why I'm
now stuck. Perhaps you can suggest how I can get past those
obstacles. At least now I can try things without endangering the
Master hard drive.
William B. Lurie

Hello : This happened to me , what I had to do was boot from the cd then
I had to repair the existing windows xp install ... Total

 

[William B. Lurie]

Hello : This happened to me , what I had to do was boot from the cd then
I had to repair the existing windows xp install ... Total

Yes, but the only option I know about, once I get to the Recovery
Console prompt, is FIXMBR. And as I said, that only took me half way
into Windows. Past the dark logo screen with the progress dots, then
hung in the light blue logo screen. I'm hoping somebody will tell me how
to get all the way to the desktop........ What is there at RC besides
FIXMBR? Maybe a Safe Mode? Or SOMEthing???

 

[Pop Rivet]

It's not advertised for some reason, but on my Gateway I discovered that
pumping F8 as it booted (after the POST, before windows starts) would bring
me to a menu with the familiar Safe, Bootlog, etc. options. Dunno why it's
a "secret" at Gateway, but it does what it's suppoed to do, in my case. All
Gateway tells you about is F1 or F2 and F10; NOT what's needed. It even
mentions F1 is only kept for backward compatability but no way in writing to
get to Safe Mode. That I could find, at least.

Check your docuy for how to get the Safe Mode.

Pop

 

[William B. Lurie]

Okay, Pop, but are you implying that something you relate
might have some bearing on the problem I described? On my
eMachines PC I have no trouble getting to Safe Mode, but
remember, this is long after the error messages that follow
the BIOS during bootup.
Bill L.

 

[Harry Ohrn]

William the problem as I see it is with the way the image is being created.
I've used several imaging programs to clone drives and once the cloned drive
is connected as master it boots up just as the original. It might serve you
better to see if you can get a proper clone happening rather than spending
this much time trying to get one that isn't working to boot up.

You are using Drive Image 7. Are there updates for it from Powerquest that
you might need to apply? Are you doing a Disk->Disk copy rather than a
Partition->Partition copy. Disk->Disk would be the preferred route but you
might find that a Partition->Partition copy is more effective.

 

[William B. Lurie]

Thank you, Harry. Basically, the problem is that my MBR needs
fixing, I believe. I was afraid to go >>RC>>FIXMBR on the
Master, so I used Drive Image 7.0 to make a full Disk->Disk
copy, figuring that I could then keep the Master safe while I
fixed the presumably exact copy. However, the 'exact copy'
does not boot all the way; it hangs part way through. I wish
I could get a proper clone to do as yours do. BTW, I know about
RC and can get to it and execute FIXMBR, but I was hoping that
somebody would lead me to what options exist there. Maybe it's
fixable but I need the 'Help' instructions as to how. Now that we
know that D-I 7 gets broken by running System Tools>>Disk Cleanup
and enabling condensing the files, I plan on not doing that any
more....after I get it fixed. Right now, if they've told me the
truth, I have to uninstall and reinstall D-I 7.
W B L

 

[Harry Ohrn]

Oh. Thanks for the clarification William. I thought you were just trying to
get the clone job to boot so that in case you ever needed to use it you
could <g>

 

[William B. Lurie]

Harry and Michael:
I now have more progress to report, and then I'll need your
next advice. System has Master Drive, intact and operating
normally.....and it has Slave which is Drive-Image-created
copy of Master Drive. I can boot to Master by telling BIOS >>HDD0
and I can boot to Slave, by telling BIOS >>HDD1. Both systems
act fine, when I boot to either one. So far so good.

When I re-jumper the 'Slave' drive to be Master or Single and
run it, alone, in Master position, it starts to boot up, goes
past BIOS and past Windows XP black logo screen with the
progress bar....into the next XP logo screen (blue), and then
an error window appears, saying:
Windows Product Activation...
A problem is preventing Windows from accurately checking the
license for this computer. Error code 0X80090006.
End of bootup. Dead end. Remember, this is the same software,
identically, which booted up fine when it was the Slave Drive.
Have I described it clearly enough? This drive with its OS runs
in Slave position but boot halts when it is in Master position.
Bill Lurie
---------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[William B. Lurie]

Michael Solomon:
You may not have seen my posting of yesterday evening. I'm hoping
that you can help me get my system to boot past the half-way-through
into Windows place where it now hangs........
Bill L.

--