MORE --- REQ: Hard Drive Letter Assignments? Help?

[wee]

1) Last night, I configured my machine with a single-partition 30G HDD
as c drive (Primary Master IDE), and a two-partition 80G HDD as f and
g drives (Secondary Master IDE). My two CD drives were assigned d and
e. Both of those are jumper ed slaves. I reran Ghost to do a
full-drive backup from the 30G'er to the 80G'er, rather than a
partition-backup from c to f, as I had been doing. I knew I would end
up with much unused space in the now single-partition 80G HDD, and I
did. I now have 20G of 'data' on both drives.

2) This AM, I re-configured my machine with the 80G drive as Primary
Master IDE, and with NO second HD (I did not connect the 30G HDD at
all). The machine would NOT boot - I got the error message I have
seen before:

A PROBLEM IS PREVENTING WINDOWS FROM ACCURATELY CHECKING THE
LICENSE FOR THE COMPUTER. ERROR CODE - 0X80090006.

3) Next, I turned the machine off and connected the 30G HDD as
Secondary Master IDE (meaning now both HDDs are mounted), and
rebooted. WXP desktop came up just fine. No surprise here because
this happened yesterday. The thing wrong is the same as yesterday -
namely the 80G HDD (now single-partition & NTFS) remains f drive and
the 30G HDD remains c drive - despite the fact that they are NOW
mounted in reverse.

4) Next, I looked at properties for Wordpad Desktop Icon and, as
expected, it pointed to "C:\Program Files\Windows
NT\Accessories\wordpad.exe". No surprise here. I test-executed
Wordpad and created a test file called 'test.txt' and saved it
wherever Wordpad wanted to put it. Then I exited WXP to the Command
Prompt, and looked at both drives. As I expected the 'test/txt' file
was on c not f. This means that the new data (test.txt) is on the 30G
HDD, not the 80G HDD! Imagine the impact on next month's backup!

5) Next, I removed the 30G from Secondary Master IDE again - leaving
the 80G solitary. In an effort to deal with the above license error,
I tried a 'restore' reinstall of WXP from CD to the 80G. It worked
fine. The license error is gone. I looked at properties for Wordpad
Desktop Icon and, as before, and much to my surprise (maybe chagrin),
it points to "F:\Program Files\Windows NT\Accessories\wordpad.exe". I
REPEATED test-executing Wordpad to create another test file called
'test2.txt' and saved it wherever Wordpad wanted to put it. Then I
exited WXP to the Command Prompt, and looked. The 'test2.txt' file is
on f drive!. This means that the new data (test2.txt) is on the 80G
HDD, where it has to be, since it is the only HDD right now! But it
is f drive!

6) Next I looked at ControlPanel. Guess what? The only HDD on the
system is f drive and is the 80G HDD. This explains what I described
in 5). This also means that the reinstall of WXP to the 80G HDD I
described in 5). changed all pointers from c to f! How about that!
It also means that now my machine is now booting to drive f, not c
(which does not exist at all). This is what I was saying yesterday.
How about that!

7) Everything is now working, but I am not comfortable with booting to
and working from drive f. Nor am I comfortable with mounting my 30G
drive when I do a backup some time down the road and having it end up
as drive c! Nor do I know what I will end up with on the 30G HDD when
I do that. I don't dare try it now, in fear of destroying the good
data now on the 30G drive.

What is this poor old man to do? :<(((>

Cya

 

[user]

1) Last night, I configured my machine with a single-partition 30G HDD
as c drive (Primary Master IDE), and a two-partition 80G HDD as f and
g drives (Secondary Master IDE). My two CD drives were assigned d and
e. Both of those are jumper ed slaves. I reran Ghost to do a
full-drive backup from the 30G'er to the 80G'er, rather than a
partition-backup from c to f, as I had been doing. I knew I would end
up with much unused space in the now single-partition 80G HDD, and I
did. I now have 20G of 'data' on both drives.

2) This AM, I re-configured my machine with the 80G drive as Primary
Master IDE, and with NO second HD (I did not connect the 30G HDD at
all). The machine would NOT boot - I got the error message I have
seen before:

A PROBLEM IS PREVENTING WINDOWS FROM ACCURATELY CHECKING THE
LICENSE FOR THE COMPUTER. ERROR CODE - 0X80090006.

3) Next, I turned the machine off and connected the 30G HDD as
Secondary Master IDE (meaning now both HDDs are mounted), and
rebooted. WXP desktop came up just fine. No surprise here because
this happened yesterday. The thing wrong is the same as yesterday -
namely the 80G HDD (now single-partition & NTFS) remains f drive and
the 30G HDD remains c drive - despite the fact that they are NOW
mounted in reverse.

4) Next, I looked at properties for Wordpad Desktop Icon and, as
expected, it pointed to "C:\Program Files\Windows
NT\Accessories\wordpad.exe". No surprise here. I test-executed
Wordpad and created a test file called 'test.txt' and saved it
wherever Wordpad wanted to put it. Then I exited WXP to the Command
Prompt, and looked at both drives. As I expected the 'test/txt' file
was on c not f. This means that the new data (test.txt) is on the 30G
HDD, not the 80G HDD! Imagine the impact on next month's backup!

5) Next, I removed the 30G from Secondary Master IDE again - leaving
the 80G solitary. In an effort to deal with the above license error,
I tried a 'restore' reinstall of WXP from CD to the 80G. It worked
fine. The license error is gone. I looked at properties for Wordpad
Desktop Icon and, as before, and much to my surprise (maybe chagrin),
it points to "F:\Program Files\Windows NT\Accessories\wordpad.exe". I
REPEATED test-executing Wordpad to create another test file called
'test2.txt' and saved it wherever Wordpad wanted to put it. Then I
exited WXP to the Command Prompt, and looked. The 'test2.txt' file is
on f drive!. This means that the new data (test2.txt) is on the 80G
HDD, where it has to be, since it is the only HDD right now! But it
is f drive!

6) Next I looked at ControlPanel. Guess what? The only HDD on the
system is f drive and is the 80G HDD. This explains what I described
in 5). This also means that the reinstall of WXP to the 80G HDD I
described in 5). changed all pointers from c to f! How about that!
It also means that now my machine is now booting to drive f, not c
(which does not exist at all). This is what I was saying yesterday.
How about that!

7) Everything is now working, but I am not comfortable with booting to
and working from drive f. Nor am I comfortable with mounting my 30G
drive when I do a backup some time down the road and having it end up
as drive c! Nor do I know what I will end up with on the 30G HDD when
I do that. I don't dare try it now, in fear of destroying the good
data now on the 30G drive.

What is this poor old man to do? :<(((>

Cya

You might explore a thing called "SIG," or signature relating to XP
installation. I am NOT an expert on this OS, but I have read of
instances where the drive identifier is written by XP to the HD it once
occupied. This might be happening to you? There are ways of clearing
SIG, but you will need to search for the procedure.

Ken

 

[DL]

Remove all drives other than 'new' C as master, repair install of winxp
reboot. reconnect others and reboot

 

[wee]

Remove all drives other than 'new' C as master, repair install of winxp
reboot. reconnect others and reboot

Thanks for response. See my para 5). If I read you right, that is
exactly what I tried. Read from then on to see what developed from
doing the reinstall. I mistakenly used the term 'restore' instead of
'repair'. I did a 'repair'.

Thanks again

Wee

 

[Alex Nichol]

7) Everything is now working, but I am not comfortable with booting to
and working from drive f. Nor am I comfortable with mounting my 30G
drive when I do a backup some time down the road and having it end up
as drive c! Nor do I know what I will end up with on the 30G HDD when
I do that. I don't dare try it now, in fear of destroying the good
data now on the 30G drive.

I think your system got confused when trying the copy to the 80GB which
had multiple partitions - it probably got the files into the wrong one.
It would appear that the 30 G disk is still as it was: If so I would put
it back as the boot drive, reconnect the 80 as slave, and clear
everything off that and start over. Using this time a technique that
does an exact 'clone' copy of the one to the other. You ought to be
able to do that with Ghost: if not the tool I actually use for it is
BootIT NG, from http://www.BootitNG.com ($35 shareware - 30 day full
functional trial)

 

[wee]

I think your system got confused when trying the copy to the 80GB which
had multiple partitions - it probably got the files into the wrong one.
It would appear that the 30 G disk is still as it was: If so I would put
it back as the boot drive, reconnect the 80 as slave, and clear
everything off that and start over. Using this time a technique that
does an exact 'clone' copy of the one to the other. You ought to be
able to do that with Ghost: if not the tool I actually use for it is
BootIT NG, from http://www.BootitNG.com ($35 shareware - 30 day full
functional trial)

I tried that. XP still insists on making the clone a bootable f
drive, and as such the c drive oriented files and apps won't work.

I notice that my problem is not just mine. There are a few posts on
the internet from others having similar trouble but only when using
XP. Something about XP permanently ID'ing a drive. Never heard of
that before. I printed the posts and plan to sit down and read the
threads (about 40 pages!).

Thanks

Wee

 

[wee]

I found that if you add '-FDSP' as a parameter to the Ghost execution
on the floppy in the autoexec.bat file thereon, that the disk-to-disk
clone function seems to work fine. See Below. I don't know about
partitions.

I am running right now with only my 80G (which was the target) as
Primary Master IDE and it is shown as c drive which makes all the
desktop-icons and other properties work. There may be something
wrong, but so far all is fine.

Finally!

This is the new autoexec.bat file:



@echo off

MOUSE.COM

CD GHOST

echo Loading...

GHOST.EXE -FDSP <<<=========================

 

[Alex Nichol]

I tried that. XP still insists on making the clone a bootable f
drive, and as such the c drive oriented files and apps won't work.

I have not heard of that. If the original drive is replaced by the
clone, so it is connected in the same way, the enumeration should be the
same.

You *might* get something of the sort though if you leave the clone in
the same physical place and change the BIOS to boot that rather than the
original. Then the original drive would still be found first - as C in
the enumeration. A second drive then often becomes F - that is the
problem if XP is installed when there is a Zip around (that's not your
case I suppose?), where for some reason that gets found before HDs

 

[Spinner]

I have seen this happen if the computer is booted into Windows with the
clone drive attached in it's former location. Windows writes something to
the drive identifying the drive letter. When you swap the drives and boot
from that drive, it still thinks it is the drive letter that was assigned to
it. I have solved this by deleting the partitions from the target drive,
cloning it and NOT allowing the computer to boot into windows with the drive
attached except as the new master.