phantom clone partition mounted at J: as system boot drive

[Kapetanica]

I have an obscure issue which has me baffled and, which I am hoping someone
can help me resolve. The problem is that the C: system partition although
present on the computer has been replaced in the registry by an identical
clone mounted as J:. Changes to either drive seem to be replicated on each
other, but there are networking and path problems.

This came about as I was upgrading the system by migrating the system to a
larger drive, as the original XP installation had only 300MB left and this
was causing some problems. Except for the small amount of free disk space,
the machine was very stable and had a lot of applications configured which
meant a clean install would have been a very tedious slow process.
Originally, the C; partition was on what is now the 9.55GB E: drive (this was
partitioned 8GB C System and 1.55GB D: Swap and set as primary master and
the 18.65GB primary slave was the E: drive) so my upgradde plan was to create
an image of the C: System partition and then reconfigure the primary master
and slave drives.

I did this by firstly creating a full backup image of the C; system drive
using Macrium Reflect version 2.2 (which was on the machine) and backing up
the contents of the E: drive. I then swapped jumpers to make the 18.65GB disk
the primary master and the 9.5GB disk the slave. I then started teh machine
using a BART PR disk which had the Macrium plug-in for BART PE installed.
This alowed me to format the drives into thenew configuration (C: 16.5GB
system partition and D: 2.14 GB Swap partition on the 18.65GB drive now at
primary master and E: Work on the 9.55GB drive now at primary slave) and then
to restore the backup image of the C: drive to the new C: location. all
seemed to be fine and so I restarted teh machine normally.

When the machine restarted, everything was fine, the log-on screen appeared
with the username and domain exactly as it had been at the previous log-on,
but when I entered the password and logged on, the screen displayed an error
message "A problem is preventing Windows from accurately checking the license
for this computer. Error code: 0x80090006" which I looked up. The suggested
solutions related to using either Ghost or Image Drive Pro, which I had no
used, so I took the alternate solution of an inplace upgrade repair using the
original windows xp pro installation disk.

After the repair installation was complete, I again started the computer and
it loaded up as normal, brought up the log-on screen with username and
domain from last log-on, and started perfectly, or so it appeared. Up popped
a couple of missing parth errors, so I opened windows explorer to try and see
if everything was as it should be. It all seemed fine until I noticed the J:
System Drive, and saw that it was an exact clone of the C: drive. I opened
the command prompt and the window opened at J:\documents and settings\etc. I
looked at the environment variable and discovered that everything was
pointing to J: instead of C: and so I wend through the registry and found
that almost every entry which should have started with C:, was starting with
J:.

Can anybody suggest a fairly effortless way of unmounting the j: drive and
restoring the c:drive as the active system drive. It would save me a headache
as the machine cannot be returned to service until it is properly sorted.
Anyone coming up with the correct solution, will be added to my list of
all-time heroes. This current system configuration is below. If you need any
further details, please let me know.

OS - MS XP Professional (back at service pack 1 since the reapir install)
Processor - AMD Athlon 2500 1.1GHz
Gigabyte motherboard with 4 IDE channels and 2 SATA channels with IDE and
SATA Raid
RAM - 1024 MB DDR
Nvidia GeForce FX 5500 Graphics card with 256 MB RAM
Drive and Disk configuration as below

Drive C
Description Local Fixed Disk (IDE 1 Primary Master, partition 1 - system)
Compressed No
File System NTFS
Size 16.50 GB (17,717,219,328 bytes)
Free Space 7.83 GB (8,407,760,896 bytes)
Volume Name System
Volume Serial Number 64196409

Drive D:
Description Local Fixed Disk (IDE 1 Primary Master, partition 2)
Compressed No
File System NTFS
Size 2.14 GB (2,294,849,536 bytes)
Free Space 2.02 GB (2,174,308,352 bytes)
Volume Name Swap
Volume Serial Number DECE7F00

Drive E:
Description Local Fixed Disk (IDE 1 Primary Slave)
Compressed No
File System NTFS
Size 9.55 GB (10,256,887,808 bytes)
Free Space 2.34 GB (2,515,357,696 bytes)
Volume Name Work
Volume Serial Number F85C6169

Drive F:
Description Local Fixed Disk (IDE 3, ITE RAID Array - only disk on this
channel, only primary partition)
Compressed No
File System NTFS
Size 111.79 GB (120,031,477,760 bytes)
Free Space 7.86 GB (8,435,875,840 bytes)
Volume Name Storage
Volume Serial Number 681410A6

Drive H:
Description Local Fixed Disk (SATA 1 - only primary partition)
Compressed No
File System NTFS
Size 232.88 GB (250,056,704,000 bytes)
Free Space 192.44 GB (206,635,036,672 bytes)
Volume Name Main
Volume Serial Number E0004E0F

Drive J:
Description Local Fixed Disk (This partition is a clone of C: but runs
system disk. Changes to this are replicated on C
Compressed No
File System NTFS
Size 16.50 GB (17,717,219,328 bytes)
Free Space 7.83 GB (8,407,760,896 bytes)
Volume Name System
Volume Serial Number 64196409

Drive G:
Description CD-RW Disc (IDE 2, Secondary Master)

Drive I:
Description DVD-ROM Disc (IDE 2, Secondary Slave)




Description Disk drive
Manufacturer (Standard disk drives)
Model ST320413A
Bytes/Sector 512
Media Loaded Yes
Media Type Fixed hard disk
Partitions 2
SCSI Bus 0
SCSI Logical Unit 0
SCSI Port 0
SCSI Target ID 0
Sectors/Track 63
Size 18.65 GB (20,020,331,520 bytes)
Total Cylinders 2,434
Total Sectors 39,102,210
Total Tracks 620,670
Tracks/Cylinder 255
Partition Disk #0, Partition #0
Partition Size 16.50 GB (17,717,220,864 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset 32,256 bytes
Partition Disk #0, Partition #1
Partition Size 2.14 GB (2,294,853,120 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset 17,717,253,120 bytes

Description Disk drive
Manufacturer (Standard disk drives)
Model WDC AC310200R
Bytes/Sector 512
Media Loaded Yes
Media Type Fixed hard disk
Partitions 1
SCSI Bus 0
SCSI Logical Unit 0
SCSI Port 0
SCSI Target ID 1
Sectors/Track 63
Size 9.55 GB (10,256,924,160 bytes)
Total Cylinders 1,247
Total Sectors 20,033,055
Total Tracks 317,985
Tracks/Cylinder 255
Partition Disk #1, Partition #0
Partition Size 9.55 GB (10,256,891,904 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset 32,256 bytes

Description Disk drive
Manufacturer (Standard disk drives)
Model ITE Disk Array 0 SCSI Disk Device
Bytes/Sector 512
Media Loaded Yes
Media Type Fixed hard disk
Partitions 1
SCSI Bus 0
SCSI Logical Unit 0
SCSI Port 2
SCSI Target ID 0
Sectors/Track 63
Size 111.79 GB (120,031,511,040 bytes)
Total Cylinders 14,593
Total Sectors 234,436,545
Total Tracks 3,721,215
Tracks/Cylinder 255
Partition Disk #2, Partition #0
Partition Size 111.79 GB (120,031,478,784 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset 32,256 bytes

Description Disk drive
Manufacturer (Standard disk drives)
Model WDC WD25 00KS-00MJB0 SCSI Disk Device
Bytes/Sector 512
Media Loaded Yes
Media Type Fixed hard disk
Partitions 1
SCSI Bus 0
SCSI Logical Unit 0
SCSI Port 4
SCSI Target ID 0
Sectors/Track 63
Size 232.88 GB (250,056,737,280 bytes)
Total Cylinders 30,401
Total Sectors 488,392,065
Total Tracks 7,752,255
Tracks/Cylinder 255
Partition Disk #3, Partition #0
Partition Size 232.88 GB (250,056,705,024 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset 32,256 bytes

 

[smlunatick]

I have an obscure issue which has me baffled and, which I am hoping someone
can help me resolve. The problem is that the C: system partition although
present on the computer has been replaced in the registry by an identical
clone mounted as J:. Changes to either drive seem to be replicated on each
other, but there are networking and path problems.

This came about as I was upgrading the system by migrating the system to a
larger drive, as the original XP installation had only 300MB left and this
was causing some problems. Except for the small amount of free disk space,
the machine was very stable and had a lot of applications configured which
meant a clean install would have been a very tedious slow process.
Originally, the C; partition was on what is now the 9.55GB E: drive (thiswas
partitioned 8GB C  System and 1.55GB D: Swap and set as primary master and
the 18.65GB primary slave was the E: drive) so my upgradde plan was to create
an image of the C: System partition and then reconfigure the primary master
and slave drives.

I did this by firstly creating a full backup image of the C; system drive
using Macrium Reflect version 2.2 (which was on the machine) and backing up
the contents of the E: drive. I then swapped jumpers to make the 18.65GB disk
the primary master and the 9.5GB disk the slave. I then started teh machine
using a BART PR disk which had the Macrium plug-in for BART PE installed.
This alowed me to format the drives into thenew configuration (C: 16.5GB
system partition and D: 2.14 GB Swap partition on the 18.65GB drive now at
primary master and E: Work on the 9.55GB drive now at primary slave) and then
to restore the backup image of the C: drive to the new C: location. all
seemed to be fine and so I restarted teh machine normally.

When the machine restarted, everything was fine, the log-on screen appeared
with the username and domain exactly as it had been at the previous log-on,
but when I entered the password and logged on, the screen displayed an error
message "A problem is preventing Windows from accurately checking the license
for this computer. Error code: 0x80090006" which I looked up. The suggested
solutions related to using either Ghost or Image Drive Pro, which I had no
used, so I took the alternate solution of an inplace upgrade repair usingthe
original windows xp pro installation disk.

After the repair installation was complete, I again started the computer and
it loaded up as normal, brought up the  log-on screen with username and
domain from last log-on, and started perfectly, or so it appeared. Up popped
a couple of missing parth errors, so I opened windows explorer to try andsee
if everything was as it should be. It all seemed fine until I noticed theJ:
System Drive, and saw that it was an exact clone of the C: drive. I opened
the command prompt and the window opened at J:\documents and settings\etc.. I
looked at the environment variable and discovered that everything was
pointing to J: instead of C: and so I wend through the registry and found
that almost every entry which should have started with C:, was starting with
J:.

Can anybody suggest a fairly effortless way of unmounting the j: drive and
restoring the c:drive as the active system drive. It would save me a headache
as the machine cannot be returned to service until it is properly sorted. 
Anyone coming up with the correct solution, will be added to my list of
all-time heroes. This current system configuration is below. If you need any
further details, please let me know.

OS - MS XP Professional (back at service pack 1 since the reapir install)
Processor - AMD Athlon 2500 1.1GHz
Gigabyte motherboard with 4 IDE channels and 2 SATA channels with IDE and
SATA Raid
RAM - 1024 MB DDR
Nvidia GeForce FX 5500 Graphics card with 256 MB RAM
Drive and Disk configuration as below

Drive   C
Description     Local Fixed Disk (IDE 1 Primary Master, partition 1 -system)
Compressed      No
File System     NTFS
Size    16.50 GB (17,717,219,328 bytes)
Free Space      7.83 GB (8,407,760,896 bytes)
Volume Name     System
Volume Serial Number    64196409

Drive   D:
Description     Local Fixed Disk (IDE 1 Primary Master, partition 2)
Compressed      No
File System     NTFS
Size    2.14 GB (2,294,849,536 bytes)
Free Space      2.02 GB (2,174,308,352 bytes)
Volume Name     Swap
Volume Serial Number    DECE7F00

Drive   E:
Description     Local Fixed Disk (IDE 1 Primary Slave)
Compressed      No
File System     NTFS
Size    9.55 GB (10,256,887,808 bytes)
Free Space      2.34 GB (2,515,357,696 bytes)
Volume Name     Work
Volume Serial Number    F85C6169

Drive   F:
Description     Local Fixed Disk (IDE 3, ITE RAID Array - only disk on this
channel, only primary partition)
Compressed      No
File System     NTFS
Size    111.79 GB (120,031,477,760 bytes)
Free Space      7.86 GB (8,435,875,840 bytes)
Volume Name     Storage
Volume Serial Number    681410A6

Drive   H:
Description     Local Fixed Disk (SATA 1 - only primary partition)
Compressed      No
File System     NTFS
Size    232.88 GB (250,056,704,000 bytes)
Free Space      192.44 GB (206,635,036,672 bytes)
Volume Name     Main
Volume Serial Number    E0004E0F

Drive   J:
Description     Local Fixed Disk (This partition is a clone of C: butruns
system disk. Changes to this are replicated on C
Compressed      No
File System     NTFS
Size    16.50 GB (17,717,219,328 bytes)
Free Space      7.83 GB (8,407,760,896 bytes)
Volume Name     System
Volume Serial Number    64196409

Drive   G:
Description     CD-RW Disc (IDE 2, Secondary Master)

Drive   I:
Description     DVD-ROM Disc (IDE 2, Secondary Slave)

Description     Disk drive
Manufacturer    (Standard disk drives)
Model   ST320413A
Bytes/Sector    512
Media Loaded    Yes
Media Type      Fixed hard disk
Partitions      2
SCSI Bus        0
SCSI Logical Unit       0
SCSI Port       0
SCSI Target ID  0
Sectors/Track   63
Size    18.65 GB (20,020,331,520 bytes)
Total Cylinders 2,434
Total Sectors   39,102,210
Total Tracks    620,670
Tracks/Cylinder 255
Partition       Disk #0, Partition #0
Partition Size  16.50 GB (17,717,220,864 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset       32,256 bytes
Partition       Disk #0, Partition #1
Partition Size  2.14 GB (2,294,853,120 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset       17,717,253,120 bytes

Description     Disk drive
Manufacturer    (Standard disk drives)
Model   WDC AC310200R
Bytes/Sector    512
Media Loaded    Yes
Media Type      Fixed hard disk
Partitions      1
SCSI Bus        0
SCSI Logical Unit       0
SCSI Port       0
SCSI Target ID  1
Sectors/Track   63
Size    9.55 GB (10,256,924,160 bytes)
Total Cylinders 1,247
Total Sectors   20,033,055
Total Tracks    317,985
Tracks/Cylinder 255
Partition       Disk #1, Partition #0
Partition Size  9.55 GB (10,256,891,904 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset       32,256 bytes

Description     Disk drive
Manufacturer    (Standard disk drives)
Model   ITE Disk Array 0 SCSI Disk Device
Bytes/Sector    512
Media Loaded    Yes
Media Type      Fixed hard disk
Partitions      1
SCSI Bus        0
SCSI Logical Unit       0
SCSI Port       2
SCSI Target ID  0
Sectors/Track   63
Size    111.79 GB (120,031,511,040 bytes)
Total Cylinders 14,593
Total Sectors   234,436,545
Total Tracks    3,721,215
Tracks/Cylinder 255
Partition       Disk #2, Partition #0
Partition Size  111.79 GB (120,031,478,784 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset       32,256 bytes

Description     Disk drive
Manufacturer    (Standard disk drives)
Model   WDC WD25 00KS-00MJB0 SCSI Disk Device
Bytes/Sector    512
Media Loaded    Yes
Media Type      Fixed hard disk
Partitions      1
SCSI Bus        0
SCSI Logical Unit       0
SCSI Port       4
SCSI Target ID  0
Sectors/Track   63
Size    232.88 GB (250,056,737,280 bytes)
Total Cylinders 30,401
Total Sectors   488,392,065
Total Tracks    7,752,255
Tracks/Cylinder 255
Partition       Disk #3, Partition #0
Partition Size  232.88 GB (250,056,705,024 bytes)
Partition Starting Offset       32,256 bytes

Your dilemma may have originated when you first cloned the older hard
drive to the newer larger one. Once the clone was completed, you
should have disconnected the old small hard drive and reconfigure the
new drive as the sole master drive. Once the newer driver had booted,
you could then re-install the older drive as slave.

When XP boots with two drives set to start XP, most XPs get confused.

 

[John John (MVP)]

It's a write off, start again and reclone the old "C" drive to the new
one, this time *before* you boot the clone for the first time go in the
BIOS and disable all the other hard drives or open the case and unplug
the power to all but the newly cloned drive, you don't want the clone to
see the other drives when it boots for the first time, after the clone
has been booted once you can then enable or reconnect the other drives.

What you are seeing is a well known issue with cloned drives, the Mount
Manager keeps a database of previously assigned drive letters and it
persistently reassigns the previously assigned letters to the same
drives, when you booted the clone the Mount Manager assigned the drive
letters based on the information in its database and assigned the C:
letter to the same old drive so it had to use the next available letter
for the newly cloned drive. This could have been fixed fairly easily if
you hadn't performed an in-place upgrade (repair install), an in-place
upgrade re-enumerates the disks and forces new drive letter assignments,
now the changes made cannot be reversed, only a clean install or a
recloning of the old drive will fix things.

On thing that isn't quite normal is the behaviour of the C: and J:
drives that you describe. If I understand your explanation correctly
you are saying that any changes that you make on one drive or the other
is automatically replicated to the other drive, if I understand this to
be the case if you delete or create a file on one drive it is
automatically deleted or created on the other drive? This would
indicate that you have an NTFS Junction Point between these two drives,
this isn't quite normal, Junction Points are not usually created without
specific user input and it is rather difficult to create Junction Points
without the use of special tools or commands, I can't understand how
they would have come to be. See here for more information on how to
identify and remove these Junction Points:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/205524
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896768.aspx

Removing Junction Points (if they are present) will not fix the drive
letter mixup caused by the reinstallation, you have to start again from
scratc to fix that problem.

John

 

[Kapetanica]

Thanks for the help - I have 2 new all time heroes. I recloned the c: drive
and selected the option to use a standard windows xp mbr rather than the
existing mbr or the mbr in the image. I shut down the machine, disconnected
the power connectors from all the other HDDs and then botted up. I logged on
without problems all my old desktop configuration coming up as before. I shut
down again, reconnected the HDDs and rebooted and everything is back up as it
should be but with 8.5 GB free space on the system drive and plenty of room
to work.

As for the NTFS junction, don't ask me how I did it, but yes I ceated a file
test.txt on the c: drive and it was there on the j: drive. I opened it and
wrote the word test, saved and closed it and opened it on the c: drive and
the change was there. I then deleted it and it was gone from both. I don't
think I could reproduce it if I tried, but it must be possible, but to what
benefit, I don't know.

Anyway, my very grateful help for your advice.

 

[John John (MVP)]

You're welcome. As for the NTFS junction it could very well be that one
of your programs could have created it.

John

 

[John John (MVP)]

Oh, and by the way, that other drive could also be a "substituted"
drive, some older programs like to work with substituted drives. You
can find these drives by issuing the SUBST command at a Command Prompt.

John