Setting active drive/partition in XP

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Guest

I'm new to XP pro, but not computers overall. Our small company is preparing
to move from WIN 2K pro to XP pro. I set up and "played" with one of our new
PCs using XP pro and all the various software we use. After little more than
a week, I'm happy with XP pro and confident the system is stable and fully
'updated' (for now).

In an attempt to deploy the setup to the other PCs, I connected a second
hard drive and used Symantec's Norton Ghost 10 (part of SystemWorks 2006) to
"copy my hard drive" to the second 'target' drive from the first 'source'
drive. I selected the options to copy the MBR and set the 'target' drive as
active. After completion, I shut down and removed the 'target' drive.

Upon installing the 'target' drive to one of the new PCs (all identical
machines with identical or nearly identical hardware to the 'source' machine)
all did not work well - the POST went fine and the 'starting windows'
appeared but then the machine froze on what looked like the shut down/log out
screen of XP (blue background with small XP logo). That is a question for
another time perhaps.

The problem at the moment is that when I put the second 'target' drive back
in the original 'source' PC, it is still listed as the active drive and the
'source' drive is listed only as a 'system' drive. The disk management
console with not let me change this (the 'make partition active choice is
greyed out). What am I missing? In this state, XP will not let me format
the 'target' drive and Ghost 10 will not let me duplicate the 'source' drive
to the 'target' and format in the process b/c it is the current active drive.
I also tried to change the active setting using DISKPART inside XP and FDISK
from a WIN98 boot disk - no luck with either (although FDISK shows the
'source' disk as the active disk when it is the only disk connected).

Any thoughts?
 
Xp doesnt run with FDISK.Try installing xp cd,boot to xp cd,at menu select r
for recovery,select 1 for disk C: press enter for password,then type:CHKDSK
C: /R
After type:EXIT Let xp start up.If the OS is damaged,boot to xp cd,select
install xp,repair this copy.If youre pcs are identical w/o any
variations,you can
install 2nd drive from other machine,set as slave,format the drive,then go
to run,
type:XCOPY C:\*.* D:\ /c/h/e/k/r Agree to all in the DOS window,when the
DOS window exits,youre thru,C: and all its contents are on other drive,move
to
other pc.Also,D: being slave,but if asigned diffrent letter then use that.
 
look at

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

rename C: to Z: then D: ? to C:

"D:" being what it was when slaved ?
 
Presuming C:=IDE 0, Primary Master and "target" = IDE 0, Primary Slave.
In BIOS, set Primary Slave to "Not Installed", F10. After reboot, (If your
BIOS supports this option), you should be good-to-go.
Worked on my machine, with two "active" installs of XP [ both as C:].
 
Thanks - I wasn't aware of the XCOPY options - sounds like it works just like
the Ghost Drive Copy feature (but native to XP). I'll give it a try in
combination with the other suggestions here and report back. Just to be sure
though, if only the source drive is connected, should it be labled 'active'
or 'system' under the drive management console? Mine says 'system.'

While trying to figure out the problem with the other secondary PCs not
booting into XP, I did notice that even though all the machines are IBM
machines with the same model number and all order as a group, there are
slight differences. I confirmed the BIOS is the same on all, and it appears
the mother board is the same. One has a firewire PCI card installed (the
source PC actually) but I don't think the additional drivers will cause a
problem on the target machines and if I run sysprep to force hardware
discovery I think all will be fine.

However, I did notice slight differences in some of the machines model and
serial numbers on the DVD and CD burners. They all look the same externally,
but some of the model/serial numbers are slightly differenct. I assume this
is just IBM sourcing and ordering, but will this prevent me from using a copy
of the source setup to deploy the rest of the machines?
 
Thanks - I'll try that on the target machines and see if the copy of the
source system will then work. I assume I'll need to boot to the XP
Installation CD as I can't reach XP currently.
 
Just to be clear (as I am new to XP as stated) should my hard drive be listed
as 'active' in the drive management console or is 'system' correct? This is
the only drive and only partition on the sytem.

Also, if using XCOPY as suggested, will the MBR also be copied to the second
drive?

Many thanks.
 
Dont listen to Andrew E.
He's barmy.
Just to be clear (as I am new to XP as stated) should my hard drive
be listed as 'active' in the drive management console or is 'system'
correct? This is the only drive and only partition on the sytem.

Also, if using XCOPY as suggested, will the MBR also be copied to the
second drive?

Many thanks.
Click to expand...
 
Miescha said:
Just to be clear (as I am new to XP as stated) should my hard drive be listed
as 'active' in the drive management console or is 'system' correct? This is
the only drive and only partition on the sytem.
Click to expand...

A bit of confusion... each drive has an active partition, the system
partition will be active and system.
Also, if using XCOPY as suggested, will the MBR also be copied to the second
drive?
Click to expand...

No, and don't listen to Andrew E., he doesn't know what he's talking
about and proves it here on a regular basis. You cannot use XCOPY to
copy an entire active system drive, it will miss every system file in
use and a lot more. You can use the hard disk manucturer's utility for
doing this, though. They usually ship with a new boxed drive, if not you
can download from their website.

Steve N.
 
Kieth and Steve N: Thanks for the warning and info. Sounds like the drive
listed as 'system' is also active and so working correctly.

As for copying using the software that came with the drive, I've tried this
in the past without success (I thought this is why so many large IS
departments used Ghost to deploy setups to large numbers of PCs).

Anyway, I did try the software that came with both the Maxtor drive and the
Western Digital drive. Copies seemed to work/go fine, but when the drive is
transferred to the intended 'target' it still won't boot. The POST goes fine
and the 'starting windows xp' flashes past and then it jumps to a blue
background with a shrunken XP logo (like the one shown during
logoff/shutdown).

I keep wondering if this is a problem with the cd-key/authentication of the
xp software (or office or ......). I have valid codes for each machine I
intend to run, but I have never gotten XP to boot so I dont' know when it
would prompt me for the new cd-key (if at all). Though the machines are all
SUPPOSED to be identical, perhaps there are minor differences that are not
apparent and the authentication process is detecting this and freezing the
boot (or maybe I'm just trying too hard to figure this out :-).

Any thoughts are appreciated.
 
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