involuntary logical drive in extended partition

[bgd]

my C drive upon checking is not even primary. I did not use a win98 floppy
disk to prepare drive for xp, i used its cd.
How do i make it primary? Reformatting?
Also, as usual, i have an 8mb unpartitioned, unnamed space at root of drive
involuntarily because of doing this chore with cd..
This has happened to me several times already on previous systems with nt
kernel (xp, 2k).Does it when it feels like it, i use cd all the time without
this happening in exact same scenario, same pc sometimes.What does this so I
can remember what not to do next time?

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, bgd.

Let's start with some basic questions. We may not need to know all this,
but we do need to know some of it to give you helpful advice.

Will you be dual-booting Win98 and WinXP? Or do you want to "clean install"
WinXP, deleting Win98 in the process? Or do you want to "upgrade" from
Win98 to WinXP? How many hard drives are in your computer? How are they
partitioned and formatted? Where (which volume) do you plan to install
WinXP? It might help if we know the make and model of your computer,
especially if Windows came pre-installed on it.

How do i make it primary? Reformatting?

You'll need to do more than reformat. You'll have to create a new primary
partition, by booting from an MS-DOS floppy and using FDISK.exe. If you
don't have any unallocated space on that HD (maybe because the extended
partition is using it all), then you will have to delete one or more
partitions (primary or extended) to make room for your new primary
partition. AFTER the new primary partition is created, then you can format
it. (I think that some third-party utilities, such as Partition Magic, can
convert a logical drive to a primary partition in some circumstances, but
nothing Microsoft sells will do this.)

But are you sure you need to make it a primary partition? Except for the
System Partition, which must be a primary partition, WinXP is just as happy
in a logical drive.

Depending on the answers to my basic questions above, you might not need to
do any of this. If you just want to install WinXP from scratch, then boot
from the WinXP CD-ROM and follow the prompts. One of the first questions is
whether you want to create and format partitions on your HD. Tell it yes IF
there is nothing on that physical drive that you want to save. Be sure to
back up any irreplaceable files (family photos, financial records, etc.).
Don't bother to back up applications; you'll need to install them again in
WinXP from the original disks so that their setup programs can make the
proper entries in WinXP's Registry. And don't bother to back up Win98's
files; if you need them later, you can get them from the Win98 disk.

If you tell WinXP Setup to upgrade from Win98 to WinXP, then it will try to
migrate your applications and drivers to the WinXP environment - and this
usually works quite well. Have backups of your precious data, just in case.

To set up a dual-boot system, be sure to clean install WinXP into a separate
volume from Win98. When WinXP's Setup detects that Win98 is already
installed, it will copy the Win98 boot sector to a new file, then overwrite
the boot sector with the WinXP version and write WinXP's startup files into
the Root of the System Partition (the Active (bootable) partition on the HD
currently designated in the computer BIOS as the boot device), typically
C:\, but not always. The rest of WinXP's many megabytes of files will be
installed into the \Windows "boot folder" on whichever volume you choose.
By "volume", I mean any primary partition or any logical drive in an
extended partition on any physical drive in your computer. Thereafter, each
reboot will start in the System Partition and then branch to the operating
system you choose by following the "road map" in C:\Boot.ini.

If you want to learn more about all this stuff, you might want to check out
the online version of the WinXP Pro Resource Kit at:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/reskit/c29621675.mspx

Much of this RK is aimed at IT departments of large organizations, but I
find plenty of information that is useful to me in my single standalone
computer situation. Check out the Troubleshooting sections in the back of
the book, especially "Understanding the Startup Process" and
"Troubleshooting Disks and File Systems". A few hours invested here can pay
dividends for today and for as long as you continue to use computers.

 

[bgd]

I am booting just xp, using old win98 to verify upgrade when asked. 1 hard
drive installed. There was two, pulled one. An odd note is that there were
two active partitions set after installing second drive(new), partitioning
and formatting it from windows (brand new). One was C: (os) the other was
first partition on new hard drive. I did not know the os could run with more
than one set active. This could be the problem, as all i did to use the new
drive was pull the old one, which had the os, and reformatted, partitioned
the first partition on the new drive again, to make sure i got the letter
C:.It did not ask about logical/extended. It just creates the partition from
xp cd when asked. C: became the logical->extended unnecessary combo, and my
os is in it and running . Should I restack the whole thing because of this?
I am getting a different sound from hd when tasked, but I recently upgraded
to a much faster cpu/ram setup.Again this strange outcome from a simple
repetitive task I've done many times, ended up with this setup
involuntarily. If it will run like this, I will keep my 8hr setup and
tweaking where its at.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, bgd.

Have you found Disk Management yet? It first appeared in Win2K, 6 years ago
this month, but many users - even Windows veterans - have not yet found it.
It handles many functions previously done by utilities such as FDISK and
Format.exe, including "drive" letter reassignment that was done by Device
Manager in Win9x/ME. Perhaps the quickest way to get to Disk Management is
to type at WinXP's Run prompt: diskmgmt.msc

In Disk Management, you can arrange the View to suit yourself. I prefer the
Volume List at the Top and the Graphical View at the Bottom. And check the
very helpful Help file; follow the Related Topics links because it is not
written linearly so we have to hop around to find the nuggets.

The terminology here is not always intuitive. As many writers have said, we
BOOT from the System Partition and keep the operating SYSTEM files in the
Boot Volume. The Status column should show you which volume is Boot, which
is System and which one (maybe more if you have multiple HDs) is Active.
Only one "status" is shown here for each volume; if the System Partition is
also the Boot Volume, then only the (System) label is shown.

Post back with what you see here. Especially, which volumes are System and
Boot?

RC

 

[bgd]

Hi, bgd.

Have you found Disk Management yet? It first appeared in Win2K, 6 years
ago this month, but many users - even Windows veterans - have not yet
found it. It handles many functions previously done by utilities such as
FDISK and Format.exe, including "drive" letter reassignment that was done
by Device Manager in Win9x/ME. Perhaps the quickest way to get to Disk
Management is to type at WinXP's Run prompt: diskmgmt.msc

In Disk Management, you can arrange the View to suit yourself. I prefer
the Volume List at the Top and the Graphical View at the Bottom. And
check the very helpful Help file; follow the Related Topics links because
it is not written linearly so we have to hop around to find the nuggets.

The terminology here is not always intuitive. As many writers have said,
we BOOT from the System Partition and keep the operating SYSTEM files in
the Boot Volume. The Status column should show you which volume is Boot,
which is System and which one (maybe more if you have multiple HDs) is
Active. Only one "status" is shown here for each volume; if the System
Partition is also the Boot Volume, then only the (System) label is shown.

Post back with what you see here. Especially, which volumes are System
and Boot?

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP

Of course I found disk management.. I too had disk manaegment on win2k BETA
7 years ago.
and 2k... and xp pro and xp home.
Many hard drives later and 7 os's 8 pcs 4 monitors and more junk that i care
to remember...
This problem has happened 3 times. System partition is fine, it is indeed a
primary.
Could you answer question about leaving os on logical and extended(boot). I
found it after os was in, before that.. Nothing told me anything. It is not
my error, furthermore, and it ought to be fixed.
To sum it up simply:
1 hd is already in with os up and running.. New hard drive installed,
unpartitioned, unformatted as slave.
Disk management formats and partitions the new drive.
<----This is where error must have happened---->
The root of the new drive is set active .The boot os drive, also has an
active.....
<------------------------------------------------>
There is no indication that it is anything but a primary partition.
the bootable one is removed.
New drive in the old drives place.
XP cd to departition the first partition, to be sure the letter was a C:
Again no indication that it is anything other than a primary.
I did this because the os has showed up as other drive letters in past
scenarios similar.
I went to check about defrag and found that it did indeed become a
logical.extended partition along the way.
After 10 gb of transfers tweaking and setups.. my final question...
Can I continue to run the OS boot partition as a logical and extended
partition?
Thank You.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, bgd.

I'm sorry if I got a little too elementary in that last post. It's hard to
tell in a newsgroup sometimes whether I'm talking to an expert who skips
some of the obvious steps or a newbie who doesn't know about those things.
:>(

1 hd is already in with os up and running.. New hard drive installed,
unpartitioned, unformatted as slave.
Disk management formats and partitions the new drive.

I'm with you to here.

The root of the new drive is set active .The boot os drive, also has an
active.....
There is no indication that it is anything but a primary partition.

Fine. Still with you, if by "boot os drive" you mean the HD designated as
the boot device in the BIOS. (Not what Windows calls the "boot volume",
meaning the one that holds the \Windows folder.) This Root on the bootable
drive is the System Partition - up to now, at least. You now have TWO
Active partitions, one on each HD.

the bootable one is removed.
New drive in the old drives place.

OK. At this point, the old operating system is GONE with the old HD. And
so is the old Active partition; there still is an Active partition on the
second HD.

XP cd to departition the first partition, to be sure the letter was a C:

"Departition"? Typo? I assume you mean that you removed any existing
partition and created a new one covering the entire HD? About the drive
letter, read on.

Again no indication that it is anything other than a primary.

OK. Was it marked Active? Apparently not...read on.

I did this because the os has showed up as other drive letters in past
scenarios similar.

This is where many users go astray. As it says in the WinXP Resource Kit:
"Windows XP Professional and Windows 2000 assign drive letters differently
from how Windows 98, Windows Me, and Windows NT 4.0 assign drive letters."
Not that those other Windows versions are involved here, but we need to know
that the rules have changed - almost silently! :>(

The new rules are in a section titled, "Creating Volumes During Windows XP
Professional Setup". My Favorites entry used to go straight to that page,
but now it just goes to the top of the RK and we have to "drill down" to get
to the right spot. The URL is:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/reskit/c12621675.mspx#EGAA

Then go to the item on "Disk Management", then "Managing Volumes During
Windows XP Professional Setup", and page down to the "Creating Volumes..."
paragraphs. (Also see KB article 234048, "How Windows 2000 Assigns,
Reserves, and Stores Drive Letters".)

WinXP Setup now looks at ALL HDs and assigns C: to the first Active
partition it finds, even if that partition is on the second or other HD!
Many users outgrow their original HD and get a newer, bigger one to replace
it. They move the original HD to secondary and plug in the new one as
primary master. Then they boot from the WinXP CD and run Setup to install
WinXP on the new HD. And they are startled to learn that their new System
Partition is F: or G:, not C:! And the only way to fix it is to remove the
original (now secondary) HD and leave it disconnected until after WinXP is
re-installed on the new HD. Then they can add the old HD as secondary and
use Disk Management to organize their drive letters (except the new System
and Boot volumes) to suit themselves.

The RK does not seem to anticipate all possibilities, especially the
oh-so-common situation just discussed. The part that might have bitten you
is the sentence that says, "Although you can specify the size of each basic
volume, you cannot specify whether to create a primary partition, extended
partition, or logical drive." Then it says that if it finds a single
primary partition (like the C: you created), Setup creates an extended
partition and a logical drive within it.

If you have only the single new HD connected when you run Setup, drive
creation and lettering are much as we've always known it. But if additional
drives are connected before Setup, the new rules can take us by surprise.

I went to check about defrag and found that it did indeed become a
logical.extended partition along the way.

This seems to confirm that the new rules created that extended partition.

After 10 gb of transfers tweaking and setups.. my final question...
Can I continue to run the OS boot partition as a logical and extended
partition?

Yes. WinXP doesn't care whether \Windows is in a primary or logical volume.

It DOES insist that the System Partition be the Active primary partition on
the boot device.

So, where do you go from here? My suggestion is to unplug the slave HD,
plug in the new HD as primary master, boot from the WinXP CD-ROM and install
WinXP on that new HD, into the new primary partition that Setup will have
created, marked Active and assigned the letter C:. Then shut down, plug in
the other HD as secondary, reboot into WinXP, and use Disk Management to
organize your HDs.

If I've misunderstood what you want to do, let me know.

RC

 

[bgd]

You explained it very well. I am surprised at the logical, extended rules
however. Again this has happened very few times to me in same scenarios.
Yes it was a primary active before I made it the volume boot. I guess my
step to change would be not to reformat/partition if the cd would find it as
"C:", which I am assuming it would have. Thanks for thorough help, much
appreciated. As for system partition, it is labeled system, on primary
partition, but not marked as active (D, the boot volume however is marked
as active, on the logical extended, containing windows.
Thanks Again!

 

[bgd]

I just confused myself again....
ntldr and boot.ini, ntdetect is on partition labeled HEALTHY(system) D:, and
marked as active.
Am I backwards?

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, bgd.

Am I backwards?

I guess it depends on what the meaning of "backwards" is. ;^}

ntldr and boot.ini, ntdetect is on partition labeled HEALTHY(system) D:,
and marked as active.

All correct, except that I would expect the System Partition to be assigned
the letter C:, not D:.

WHERE is Drive D:? Does Disk Management show it on Disk 0? In the
Graphical View, is it the first volume on Disk 0? Is the colored bar over
that volume black? Or blue? As shown in the Legend near the bottom of the
screen, a black bar indicates a Primary partition. Blue means the extended
partition, and the blue bar will extend over multiple logical drives if they
exist in the same extended partition.

As the Help file explains, there will be no more than one label shown for a
volume, even if multiple Statuses apply. So if D: is the Active partition
and also the System Partition, the screen will just show (System) and you
will not see a volume marked (Active).

Which volume is marked (Boot)? Is it C:? The (Boot) volume is the one
where the \Windows folder (and all those multi-megabytes of subfolders and
files) resides. Is it on your Disk 0, or Disk 1? Is it the first volume on
that HD? Is it a logical drive?

The most confusing part about this whole subject is terminology. We use
"boot" to mean different things in different contexts. Ditto "drive". And
even "partition". "Drive" letters actually are assigned to "volumes". Not
drives, because a single hard drive can have several volumes with different
letters. And not partitions, because the extended partition does not get a
letter. But each logical drive within the extended partition gets a letter.
And "drive" letters are not assigned permanently. I try to use "volume"
consistently to mean either a primary partition or a logical drive. But
Microsoft isn't consistent. As you can see in Disk Management in the Layout
column, each volume is labeled "Partition". And in Boot.ini, each operating
system is located by rdisk(#)partition(#), where the partition(#) count
includes both primary partitions and logical drives.

We don't boot from the boot drive. We boot from the System Partition. The
boot volume (too often called the boot partition or the boot drive) holds
the boot folder, named \Windows by default. NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM and
Boot.ini are in the Root of the System Partition, not in the boot volume -
unless the System Partition is also the boot volume. Confused? No wonder!

But if you booted from the WinXP CD-ROM with only a single HD installed, and
you ran Setup and let it partition and format that one HD, then I would
expect the System Partition to be C:, not D:. The boot volume might share
C:, or it might be on a new logical drive D:. If your System Partition is
D:, I wonder how that happened.

RC

 

[bgd]

It flim-flammed the flim flam into a more messed up flim flam, and it took
the xp cd to delete the crazy partition, fdisk to create another primary,
and then finally the xp cd to format and find the wrong ntldr on D: drive
(couldn't find hal after setups first reboot), so i installed windows again
with the xp cd and it got it right as a primary system. on C:. The last step
was deleting an xp from boot.ini that did not exist on a partition
3...(again, all involuntarily it did this without my intervention.) I should
have just done this work as I thought. There is an error and it aint mine...
Thanks for your help sincerely, thorough replies. Up and running great,
files and settings transfer wizard did alot. , and hard drive is sounding
like I am accustomed to. The very first partitions created should not be
done with disk management or even the xp cd booting. Old Fdisk to set a
primary active partition seems to be my best luck with brand new hard
drive... I forgot how i set it up in the first place, its been well over a
year.
;o)
Again, thank you.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, bgd.

Congratulations! And you're welcome. ;<)

RC