Hard Drive Upgrade Failed Using Ghost

[Don Miller]

I had asked before here how to upgrade to a larger hard drive, a lot of
folks suggested Symantec's Ghost and I bought it. It didn't seem to make
things easy at all like I had hoped.

I took an empty 120Gb hard drive, partitioned it into two 30gb (F, FAT32
like the C) and an 80gb(G, NTFS) partitions (with the software that came
with the hard drive), using Ghost I cloned my boot drive (C, 20gb) to the
30gb (G) partition, configured the larger drive as a master, replaced the
old drive, and then rebooted.

Now the computer loads W2K through all the starting screens and then repeats
over and over "Loading personal settings..." then "Saving personal settings"
in quick succession, and never gets past that. Then I tried booting W2K in a
Safe mode, it took forever and died after showing "Loading personal
settings...". Neither time, no matter how long I waited would the desktop
come up.

I certainly thought after spending $70 that I could do this and that I
wouldn't notice any difference loading and my computer and desktop would
appear identical.

Does anyone know why this didn't work with Ghost? Thanks.

(Could it have anything to do with the new drive not being named "C"?)

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

If your current Win2000 installation resides on the first partition,
visible as drive C:, then your migrated installation must also
reside on the first visible partition. It seems you installed it
in the second visible partition on the new disk (drive G, hence
your problem.

Put it on your first drive and it will work!

 

[sgopus]

It is frustrating isn't it!

Try doing a repair of your current install.
I would think not being drive C may have something to do
with the problem, a repair should resolve it.

 

[Guest]

Did you make the boot partition on the new drive a primary partition, and make
it active? If not, it is possibly still booting from your old drive, which
will possibly now have a different drive letter than C, and/or your boot.ini
may not be pointing to the correct partition. Try only having your new drive
connected - if you get it working that way, you can then add the old drive
back in later. If it won't boot, it was probably doing it from the old drive.

It would have been a lot easier if you had let Ghost do the partitioning in
the first place.

You could have used Ghost to copy the old drive to the new drive (as a
"drive-to-drive" copy), but only make a 30G partition (which Ghost will make
active/bootable). Then, after you get Windows running, you would partition
and format the rest of the drive (D: ?). Then you could reattach the old
drive if you wish, and reformat it (probably making it E: or something). The
drive letters above C: can be reassigned later in Windows if you wish (if you
have a CD drive, it may become D:, or E:, depending on what hard drive
partitions exist, for example)
If you do a partition-to-partition copy as you did, it will reformat the
partition, but not repartition it - if it was not active before, Ghost will
not make it active.
(Ghost comes with a program gdisk, that can be used to do partitioning and
make partitions active, so you may be able to correct your error)

The drive letters that you had assigned before were irrelevant, as they will
be reassigned when you move the drives between Master/Slave, etc.
If your boot partition was C: before, the new boot partition must be C:, or it
will not work.


|I had asked before here how to upgrade to a larger hard drive, a lot of
|folks suggested Symantec's Ghost and I bought it. It didn't seem to make
|things easy at all like I had hoped.
|
|I took an empty 120Gb hard drive, partitioned it into two 30gb (F, FAT32
|like the C) and an 80gb(G, NTFS) partitions (with the software that came
|with the hard drive), using Ghost I cloned my boot drive (C, 20gb) to the
|30gb (G) partition, configured the larger drive as a master, replaced the
|old drive, and then rebooted.
|
|Now the computer loads W2K through all the starting screens and then repeats
|over and over "Loading personal settings..." then "Saving personal settings"
|in quick succession, and never gets past that. Then I tried booting W2K in a
|Safe mode, it took forever and died after showing "Loading personal
|settings...". Neither time, no matter how long I waited would the desktop
|come up.
|
|I certainly thought after spending $70 that I could do this and that I
|wouldn't notice any difference loading and my computer and desktop would
|appear identical.
|
|Does anyone know why this didn't work with Ghost? Thanks.
|
|(Could it have anything to do with the new drive not being named "C"?)
|
|

 

[Don Miller]

I'm not quite sure I understand (or I didn't make myself clear).

When I copied the C partition (disk 1 master) to G partition (disk 2, slave,
F is the second 80gb partition on disk 2), I then removed the original
master hard drive 1 (that was the old C) completely. I did not leave the
drive 1 in-situ. I replaced the master hard drive with the 120gb drive in
the location the original disk was, changed the jumper etc. I thought that
the system would automatically assign that boot partition drive as C (and D
for the second partition?)

So, I think I *did* put it on my first drive (and I expected it to work)

 

[Don Miller]

I don't know how to repair my current install. Do you mean the source
partition? And if you mean the new drive (with two partitions), how do I
repair it when I can't get to a desktop?

I appreciate any help. Thanks.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I cannot figure out what you mean by this:

I copied the C partition (disk 1 master) to G partition (disk 2, slave,
F is the second 80gb partition on disk 2).

Let's keep it simple: With both disks in the machine, you have
these drives:
Old disk - C:, D:, E:
New disk - F:, G:

Drive F: is on the first partition of the new disk. This is where
Win2000 must go to. You probably put it on drive G: instead!

 

[Don Miller]

I did alphabetically screw up my "clear" follow-up explanation and the
original post. Of course I copied C to F (there is nothing at all in G
except empty 80gbs). So, I think I did everything right and Ghost didn't
work as advertised (cloning partition to partition).

And when I use Windows Disk Management to look at the second drive the F
partition is the primary partition and it is active. The G partition is a
Logical Drive

 

[Don Miller]

Did you make the boot partition on the new drive a primary partition, and
make

it active?
Yes.

If not, it is possibly still booting from your old drive, which
will possibly now have a different drive letter than C, and/or your boot.ini
may not be pointing to the correct partition.

The old drive was completely removed from the computer.

It would have been a lot easier if you had let Ghost do the partitioning in
the first place.

Command line programs are not what I had in mind for an "easy" upgrade. And
gdisk does not create NTFS partitions (for G, although I can always do that
later).

This has all taken MUCH longer than what I had expected and I appreciate any
help. Upgrading to larger hard drives should not be a nightmare, all day
project.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Copy userinit.exe to from c:\winnt\system32 to
G:\winnt\system32.

When successful in logging on, point
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows NT/Current Version/
Winlogon/Userinit to the correct location of userinit.exe

See also http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=249321

 

[Don Miller]

Copy userinit.exe to from c:\winnt\system32 to

G:\winnt\system32.

Even though it is already there?

When successful in logging on,

That's been the problem.

See also http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=249321

That article and resolutions are WAY beyond my level of competence. I don't
have networked computers or a DOS startup floppy or even understand what
they are saying to do.

Is this article saying that for W2K, Ghost is always worthless?

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Things are getting confusing again. I wrote

"Copy userinit.exe to from c:\winnt\system32 to G:\winnt\system32"

and you replied: "Even though it is already there?" Yet, in one
of your previous replies, you wrote "there is nothing at all in G:".
Now which one is empty, drive F: or drive G:?

It's quite OK if you are not an expert in these things. However,
if you want to resolve your problem then you have to observe
two things:
- Report carefully and accurately what you observe, and
- Carry out all instructions exactly as written.

Anything else will cause frustration on your side, and it
will discourage potential respondents.

 

[Don Miller]

You're correct in that G is completely empty because I didn't understand the
thought process of creating dummy folders (winnt\system32) and copying the
userinit.exe on an empty partition (when it already exists in
F:\winnt\system32). How would that help logging on process?

And, what is the correct location of userinit.exe to change in the Registry?
(isn't it C:\WINNT\system32\userinit.exe which is what is already there?)

Again, the MS article was of no help to ME in this very familiar scenario of
upgrading hard drives (and why doesn't Ghost take care of this userinit
thing automatically?)

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

See my comments below.

You're correct in that G is completely empty because I didn't understand the
thought process of creating dummy folders (winnt\system32) and copying the
userinit.exe on an empty partition (when it already exists in
F:\winnt\system32). How would that help logging on process?

The problem you reported is often caused by Win2000 looking
for userinit.exe in the wrong place. The method I proposed places
a copy of userinit.exe into that "wrong place", to get you going.

And, what is the correct location of userinit.exe to change in the Registry?
(isn't it C:\WINNT\system32\userinit.exe which is what is already there?)

We can tackle this issue after you have logged on successfully.

Again, the MS article was of no help to ME in this very familiar scenario of
upgrading hard drives (and why doesn't Ghost take care of this userinit
thing automatically?)

This is a Windows issue, not a Ghost issue. It occurs sometimes
when the disk structure is altered. It would be quite inappropriate
for Ghost to deal with it. However, I suspect the issue is dealt
with in the Norton Ghost FAQs.

 

[Eric]

You probably could have done the job by simply using the software that is supplied with most new retail drives.

If you didn't receive any software, you can get a free transfer program from the hard drive mfg. Most only work with their drives.

IBM/HITACHI:
http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

MAXTOR:
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/index.htm

SEAGATE:
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz.html

WESTERN DIGITAL:
http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp

 

[Don Miller]

You're right. I did find the floppy disk that came with the hard drive but
at the time my floppy drive was dead. Now that the drive is working again, I
found the Disk Copy function there but I've already opened the Ghost box.

I bought into the idea that spending $50 for Ghost would save me time but
I've spent hours dealing with it instead. I've also found that Ghost must be
for corporate type IT folks because writing an Ghost image for backup in a
home environment (no tape storage devices or extra hard drives) would mean
writing out about 30CDs for a 20gb image!!!! (and then it probably wouldn't
work because of similar problems to what I'm having now).

Thanks.

You probably could have done the job by simply using the software that is
supplied with most new retail drives.

If you didn't receive any software, you can get a free transfer program from
the hard drive mfg. Most only work with their drives.

IBM/HITACHI:
http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

MAXTOR:
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/index.htm

SEAGATE:
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz.html

WESTERN DIGITAL:
http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp

 

[Don Miller]

It worked! My desktop comes up.

We can tackle this issue after you have logged on successfully.

When I looked at the registry key userinit points at
"C:\WINNT\system32\userinit.exe".

How can I get rid of the winnt/system32/userinit.exe (now on the F
drive -formerly G drive when)?

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

You must now fix up an incorrect entry in the Registry:

1. Click Start / Run
2. Type regedit {OK}
3. Navigate down to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows NT/Current
Version/Winlogon
4. On the right-hand side, locate the entry "Userinit.exe".
5. Double-click it, then make sure that it reads like so:
C:\WINNT\system32\userinit.exe
I suspect that it currently reads "D:\winnt . . ."
6. Click OK.
7. Rename d:\winnt\system32\userinit.exe to userinit.ex.
8. Reboot your machine and log in.
9. If all is well, delete the folder d:\winnt.

 

[Don Miller]

Thank you for all of your help with this one.

Actually what I found in the registry was "C:\WINNT\system32\userinit.exe"
just like it was supposed to be (not D).

After this I also threw in an gdisk 1 \mbr command that supposedly rewrites
the boot record?????

Anyway, it's all working now (after hours of swapping drives and web and
newsgroup searching).

Next time I will use the Drive manufacture's disk-to-disk copy program and
stay away from partitioning and Ghost (which I will NEVER spend a moment
using again).