Help! Can't boot Win2K now that I switched from BootMagic to BootItNG!

[Anonymous User]

Hi all...

I'm having some troubles dealing with the Windows boot sequence,
and especially with getting Windows 2000 to boot now that I've
switched from BootMagic to BootItNG.

The details...

Previously, I had PowerQuest BootMagic installed on my
laptop (an IBM Thinkpad A31). My partitions were like this:

|Primary: FAT (1GB)|Extended: NTFS
(14GB)|NTFS|Linux|Linux|Linux|FAT (2GB)|

BootMagic was installed on the 1st FAT partition, Windows 2000 Pro
on the 1st NTFS partition. That 1st FAT partition was a primary
partition, and the rest were on Extended/Logical paritions.

I removed BootMagic, and my system then just did a regular Windows
boot sequence upon start up.

I noticed that there were still a lot of Windows boot-time
files sitting on the 1st FAT partition (boot.ini, NTLDR, etc.).
I had forgotten about this (I think I had discovered that Windows
seemed to want all of them on a 1st, FAT, partition, but I can't
remember now), though, and REMOVED that 1st FAT partition.

I then booted with the BootItNG CD and installed BootItNG on
what had been my boot partition (it took up just the 1st 7MB, leaving
the rest unused).

I found, however, that my Windows 2000 partition was no longer
bootable (although the Linux partition was).

I tried many things, including copying boot.ini, NTLDR and
NTDETECT.COM
to the Windows NTFS partition (known as "D:"), but when I tried to
boot the
Windows partition, all I got was a blank screen and no activity.

So I removed BootItNG, and in the Windows Recovery Console I did a
FIXBOOT and FIXMBR.

Even after this, though, booting the computer didn't work... I just
got
a blank screen again. Not even an "NTLDR Not Found" or "Cannot find
Operating System" message.

I ran the Windows Recovery Console again, and noticed that it was
assigning
the FAT partition near the end of my drive the "C:" drive letter. I
was
wondering if what was going on was the Windows booter was thinking
THAT
was my boot drive?

In any case, what I'd like to know is, why is NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM and
boot.ini existing on my Windows 2000 partition not enough to boot it
from BootItNG? What's the underlying boot sequence doing such that it
can't
find the Windows boot code?

Does this have anything to do with Windows boot code needing to exist
on the
first FAT partition, or something along those lines? I thought this
wasn't
necessary, since BootItNG can boot any partition it's pointed at
(supposedly).

Anyone have any clues on what's happening here?

- Tim

 

[Jetro]

Booting W2k from logical volume/extended partition is a bad idea.
While in RecoveryConsole run 'map' and get disk layout from the Windows
point of view.

After POST the BIOS tries to find MBR. IBM computer's MBR is always at Cyl
0, Side 0, Sec 1, offset 55AA. If found, BIOS tries to load MBR into RAM.
MBR stores the partition table and 446 bytes of boot loader code. Boot
loader attempts to locate an active (bootable) partition in its partition
table. If such a partition is found, the boot sector of that partition is
read into memory.
Each operating system has its own boot sector format. The loader in the boot
sector must locate the first part of the operating system's kernel loader
program (or perhaps the kernel itself or perhaps a "boot manager program")
and read that into memory.

 

[I'm Dan]

I'm having some troubles dealing with the Windows boot
sequence, and especially with getting Windows 2000 to
boot now that I've switched from BootMagic to BootItNG.

The details...

Previously, I had PowerQuest BootMagic installed on my
laptop (an IBM Thinkpad A31). My partitions were like this:

|Primary: FAT (1GB)
|Extended: NTFS(14GB)|NTFS|Linux|Linux|Linux|FAT (2GB)|

BootMagic was installed on the 1st FAT partition, Windows 2000
Pro on the 1st NTFS partition. That 1st FAT partition was a
primary partition, and the rest were on Extended/Logical paritions.

I removed BootMagic, and my system then just did a regular
Windows boot sequence upon start up.

I noticed that there were still a lot of Windows boot-time
files sitting on the 1st FAT partition (boot.ini, NTLDR, etc.).
I had forgotten about this (I think I had discovered that Windows
seemed to want all of them on a 1st, FAT, partition, but I can't
remember now), though, and REMOVED that 1st FAT partition.

I then booted with the BootItNG CD and installed BootItNG on
what had been my boot partition (it took up just the 1st 7MB,
leaving the rest unused).

I found, however, that my Windows 2000 partition was no
longer bootable (although the Linux partition was).

I tried many things, including copying boot.ini, NTLDR and
NTDETECT.COM to the Windows NTFS partition (known
as "D:"),
...(snipped)...

We can stop right here. This tells us that Win2K wasn't self-contained on
the NTFS partition, but was spread over two partitions -- the single primary
and the first logical. When you were booting into Win2K, those partitions
were 'C' and 'D', with 'C' being your startup partition (what MS calls the
system partition) and 'D' was the operating system itself (the boot
partition, in MS-speak). Your old BootMagic wasn't loading 'D', it was
loading 'C' and then 'C' was loading 'D'. You have to keep both in order
for your Win2K to work. When you blew away your primary FAT partition, you
broke Win2K. Your Win2K began life as a pair of partitions, and must
forever remain a pair.

Ideally, you should reinstall Win2K from scratch so it gets properly
installed as an independent, self-contained OS on its own partition. If you
don't want to do that, I believe you'll need to recreate an active primary
partition and restore it as a functioning 'C' drive. You might want to ask
the folks at the BING newsgroup for suggestions, but I'm not sure there's an
easy fix. You could split the old-'C' space into a BING partition plus a
new primary for Win2K's 'C', but I think that would break linux (because
/hda2 would now become /hda3, etc.).

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Booting W2k from logical volume/extended partition is a bad idea.

<snip>

Not necessarily - if done properly then it provides excellent
modularity to a multi-booting system. Consider the typical
approach taken by users of XOSL (a free boot manager):

- First primary partition: XOSL
- Second primary partition: Win2000
- First logical drive: WinXP
- Second logical drive: Win98
- Third logical drive: WinNT
etc. etc.

Every OS is completely self-contained, i.e. all its files,
including its boot files, are installed on the chosen drive.
Every OS runs of its own drive C:, and all the other OSs
are completely invisible from it.

Your own preferred approach is restricted by the limit of
4 primary partitions. XOSL gets around this limit.

 

[Jetro]

Many 3rd-party boot managers can load any OS from any partition indeed and
any LILO/GRUB can do it natively as well. The point is there is a lot of
problem if the boot manager crashes and you don't understand how it works. I
am reluctant to dig in the Microsoft site and find a suitable KB article
about Windows and primary partitions but it's somewhere there.
As to my own preferred approach, it is neither restricted nor limited by
anything, 'cause I am personally using virtual machines. In my opinion,
having multi-boot system is unprofessional. Why on the earth should anyone
have DOS/W3x/W9x/Me/NT/2k/Xp/2k3/five Netwares/dozens of Linux/UN*X etc on
the same multi-boot box if neither of them can run simultaneously? When I've
studied I did have multi-boot system for a limited time but that Linux disk
travelled with me between home and university and this was the only excuse.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Many 3rd-party boot managers can load any OS from any partition indeed and
any LILO/GRUB can do it natively as well. The point is there is a lot of
problem if the boot manager crashes and you don't understand how it works. I
am reluctant to dig in the Microsoft site and find a suitable KB article
about Windows and primary partitions but it's somewhere there.
As to my own preferred approach, it is neither restricted nor limited by
anything, 'cause I am personally using virtual machines. In my opinion,
having multi-boot system is unprofessional. Why on the earth should anyone
have DOS/W3x/W9x/Me/NT/2k/Xp/2k3/five Netwares/dozens of Linux/UN*X etc on
the same multi-boot box if neither of them can run simultaneously? When I've
studied I did have multi-boot system for a limited time but that Linux disk
travelled with me between home and university and this was the only

excuse.

There is a very strong reason for me to have a multi-booting PC:
Customer support. My clients use the whole range of MS operating
systems. In order to support them professionally, I must be able to
run my machine in their environmen (even though I spend 99% of my
time using Win2000 on one PC, WinXP on the other).

Restoring a simple boot manager such as XOSL is child's play,
in particular if you save an image of its 7 MByte partition somewhere
else. Mine failed two weeks ago - five minutes later things were
back to normal.

 

[Jetro]

So the support takes only 1% of your time and you do have multi-boot box...
)
I'm not a developer/programmer and can only imagine the situation when my
machine must run the client's OS naturally. Since W2k with its native FAT32
and USB support hit the market there is no standard MS/PC support task which
cannot be performed on this OS, unless it's W2k3 domain management.

P.S. XOSL partition image: uhm, you protected yourself and now it's child's
play indeed

Regards

 

[Guest]

Thanks for all the advice, folks! I actually got it all figured
out. The FIRST problem was that NTLDR was missing from my 1st
(FAT) partition. I wasn't sure which file had to be where, so
I put NTLDR, BOOT.INI and NTDETECT.COM on both the 1st partition
and my Windows 2000 partition. It then booted, but I didn't want
to keep copies of files in the wrong places (fastidious engineer
that I am), so I removed on, then another, and found what I
needed to put where (NTLDR on partition 1, BOOT.INI and NTDETECT
on the Windows 2000 partition). I probably could have found this
out if I'd researched it more (or read all of the answers everyone
here gave), I s'pose.

Then I rearranged my partition table so that the entries matched
their order on the drive, which, once again, confused Windows (I got
the infamous "missing pagefile.sys" problem). I tried rearranging
the partition table again back to the way it was, but that didn't
solve it. Then I tried the suggestion on the Microsoft website which
suggests creating a WINNT/System32 folder on the partition Windows
thought it was supposed to find the pagefile and place USERINIT.EXE
in it. I noticed that one partition in particular (the one after
the one it was supposed to be on) had a Windows-created-yet-empty
folder of that name, but, sadly, I had not configured the Windows
Recovery Console to allow all folders to be accessible, and thus
began my search all today for a DOS-level NTFS driver.

Everything I found seemed to cost lots of money (especially Wintools'
ERD Commander, with it's relatively high price and unreasonable
licensing structure).

But wonder of wonders! I found the "Bart's PE" website, with it's
"Windows bootable from a CD" freeware program, and was able to fix
the problem (had to reassign drive letters after I finally got
Windows to boot, but that was just a minor thing).

The program, if anyone wants it, is at: http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
Great bit of utility software there!

Thanks again for everyone's help!

- Tim

--

 

[Guest]

We can stop right here. This tells us that Win2K wasn't self-contained on
the NTFS partition, but was spread over two partitions -- the single primary
and the first logical. When you were booting into Win2K, those partitions
were 'C' and 'D', with 'C' being your startup partition (what MS calls the
system partition) and 'D' was the operating system itself (the boot
partition, in MS-speak). Your old BootMagic wasn't loading 'D', it was
loading 'C' and then 'C' was loading 'D'. You have to keep both in order
for your Win2K to work. When you blew away your primary FAT partition, you
broke Win2K. Your Win2K began life as a pair of partitions, and must
forever remain a pair.

Ideally, you should reinstall Win2K from scratch so it gets properly
installed as an independent, self-contained OS on its own partition. If you
don't want to do that, I believe you'll need to recreate an active primary
partition and restore it as a functioning 'C' drive. You might want to ask
the folks at the BING newsgroup for suggestions, but I'm not sure there's an
easy fix. You could split the old-'C' space into a BING partition plus a
new primary for Win2K's 'C', but I think that would break linux (because
/hda2 would now become /hda3, etc.).

Thanks Dan! I recreated the 1st FAT partition, installed BootIt
on it, copied ntldr there, and all was well.

I also converted (with Partition Magic) my 1st NTFS partition,
whereon Windows resides, into a Primary partition.

As for my Linux partition, I booted with my Slackware boot CD and
modified my lilo.conf to know about the new arrangement, and re-ran
lilo with the correct drive as root.

I just like having a separate, 1st "Boot Partition" that is not
Windows-specific, which is why I do things this way.

Anyway, NTLDR alone is the only part of Windows on that first
partition.

- Tim

--

 

[I'm Dan \(dg1261\)]

Thanks Dan! I recreated the 1st FAT partition, installed BootIt
on it, copied ntldr there, and all was well.

Ah, yes -- install BING on 'C'! I normally install BING on its own
partition, so had completely overlooked that option. That indeed is the
easiest solution. Glad your recovery was successful.

 

[Guest]

Ah, yes -- install BING on 'C'! I normally install BING on its own
partition, so had completely overlooked that option. That indeed is the
easiest solution. Glad your recovery was successful.

Yes... one thing is still odd, though. When I first got things working,
I had had BootIt have the partitions as <FAT/BOOT PART><NTFS PART><...>,
but I noticed that everytime I reboot, SOMETHING is swapping the order of
those first two partitions in the partition table.

Is it BootIt? Is it Windows? Is it NTLDR? What could it be?

- Tim

--

 

[I'm Dan \(dg1261\)]

Yes... one thing is still odd, though. When I first got things working,
I had had BootIt have the partitions as <FAT/BOOT PART>
<NTFS PART><...>, but I noticed that everytime I reboot, SOMETHING
is swapping the order of those first two partitions in the partition table.

Is it BootIt? Is it Windows? Is it NTLDR? What could it be?

Yes, that's a feature of BING. In the configuration for the boot item
entry, you can specify the desired order of the four partition table
entries. BING rewrites the p.t. on the fly at boot time. There are reasons
people like that feature, particularly if you like to clone NT/2000/XP.

 

[Guest]

Yes, that's a feature of BING. In the configuration for the boot item
entry, you can specify the desired order of the four partition table
entries. BING rewrites the p.t. on the fly at boot time. There are reasons
people like that feature, particularly if you like to clone NT/2000/XP.

If that's the case, why is it rewriting the partition table NOT in the
order I had BING set it to? What use is automatically swapping the 1st
two partitions, whether I want to or not? Or is it because it thinks that
Windows expects itself to be on the first partition listed in the table?

Oh, and one other thing... when I look at the partition table with the
Linux cfdisk utility, it shows an extra .04MB between the 1st and
2nd partitions, but Windows utilities don't have that. Ever seen that
before?

- Tim

--

 

[I'm Dan \(dg1261\)]

If that's the case, why is it rewriting the partition table NOT in
the order I had BING set it to? What use is automatically swapping
the 1st two partitions, whether I want to or not? Or is it because
it thinks that Windows expects itself to be on the first partition
listed in the table?

Oh, and one other thing... when I look at the partition table with
the Linux cfdisk utility, it shows an extra .04MB between the
1st and 2nd partitions, but Windows utilities don't have that.
Ever seen that before?

At the BING boot menu, click on [Maintenance], click [Boot Edit], and
highlight the Menu Item for a boot choice. Click [Edit], and the "MBR
Details" window shows the order of the four partition table slots. You can
use the [Move Up] and [Move Down] buttons to rearrange the entries in any
order. Note this does not move the partitions themselves, it just
rearranges the entries in the partition table, which is just an index to the
real partitions. Whatever order is shown here is the order your p.t.
entries should be left in after you boot into that OS choice. You can have
different boot choices rearrange the p.t. in different orders.

Windows does not need to be the first partition listed -- the boot partition
is specified in the boot.ini file. For example, if your boot.ini file says
"..partition(2)", Windows must be the second partition listed (regardless of
where the real partition is on the disk). Thus, if you have a Windows
partition listed first and it's boot.ini points to "..partition(1)", you can
clone that partition to a second partition, setup a second BING boot item,
have it dynamically swap the p.t. entries at boot time so partition 2 is
listed first, and the second partition's boot.ini will still be happy with
"..partition(1)". Or, you can do what I do -- leave the p.t. alone and edit
the second partition's boot.ini to point to "..partition(2)". You'll find
more details about the boot process on my webpage,
www.goodells.net/multiboot.

re: extra 0.4MB: I'm not familiar with cfdisk, so don't know what it might
be reading. 0.4MB is about 16 tracks on a standard 63-sector/track disk,
which is less than a cylinder (which is usually 254 or 255 tracks). Maybe
it's an artifact of formatting the partition. Remember that formatting
groups sectors into clusters, and especially with FAT32 the clusters can
become quite large. Partitions have to end on cylinder boundaries, but that
may not equate to an exact number of clusters. Any sectors left over that
can't be used to make another cluster are never used. What did you use to
create the partitions? BING has an option ("align NTFS clusters", or
something like that) that I believe can affect whether there are leftover
sectors. Other than that, I can't guess what it might be reading without
using something like ptedit to check the parameters of the actual
partitions.