The Case of the Phantom OS

[Ralph Hutchinson]

Well, I'm back again for some of that expert advice, but this is a whole
different type of question. My apologies for the long post but I know of no
other way to present a clear description.

I have installed four OS'es on this machine, which is a 2.6Mhz Pentium 4
with two Western Digital 200Gig hard discs and a WD 40Gig hard disc. The
first hard disc is partitioned into four primary partitions (drives). All
are formatted using the Fat32 file system. The multi-boot setup was created
on the first hard disc using Partition Magic 8 installed in Win98se on the
first primary partition (drive). Boot selection is accomplished using Boot
Magic. For drive identification purposes each drive is named using the same
name as the OS installed on it, as shown below. All of the XP installations
have only one Identity.

#1 Win98se
#2 WinXP-1
#3 WinXP-2
#4 WinXP-3

All of the installations boot just fine. When booted, all OS'es, with the
exception of the one loaded, are hidden. The selected drives all show up in
Boot Magic as being on the correct drive and partition.

But here is where the mystery comes in. When booted into any of the first
three OS'es, that drive shows up in Internet Explorer as the C: drive with
the correct drive ID name. But when booted to the XP OS on the fourth
drive, which should show as C: WinXP-3, it shows up as C: WinXP-2.

I decided that it was somehow loading the WinXP-2 OS a second time. So I
went to each one and installed a different desktop. But now when I boot
each one it shows the correct desktop. So then I put some data in the XP-3
OS that is not in the XP-2 OS. When booted, the data does not show up in
XP-2 but, as it should, it does in XP-3. That seemed to confirm to me that
it was in fact loading the correct OS. The question is, why does that
WinXP-3 drive show up with the drive ID of WinXP-2?

And another curious thing. In the Partition Magic program in Win98 that
fourth drive shows as not having any files in it. But in the Partition
Magic program loaded in WinXP-1 in drive #2, it shows the files for the OS
in the fourth drive, which is where they should be, but with the WinXP-2 ID.
?????????

As usual, Thanks guys,

Ralph

 

[I'm Dan]

I have installed four OS'es on this machine, which is a 2.6Mhz Pentium
4 with two Western Digital 200Gig hard discs and a WD 40Gig hard disc.
The first hard disc is partitioned into four primary partitions (drives).
All are formatted using the Fat32 file system. The multi-boot setup
was created on the first hard disc using Partition Magic 8 installed in
Win98se on the first primary partition (drive). Boot selection is
accomplished using Boot Magic. For drive identification purposes
each drive is named using the same name as the OS installed on it,
as shown below. All of the XP installations have only one Identity.

#1 Win98se
#2 WinXP-1
#3 WinXP-2
#4 WinXP-3

All of the installations boot just fine. When booted, all OS'es, with
the exception of the one loaded, are hidden. The selected drives all
show up in Boot Magic as being on the correct drive and partition.

But here is where the mystery comes in. When booted into any of
the first three OS'es, that drive shows up in Internet Explorer as the
C: drive with the correct drive ID name. But when booted to the
XP OS on the fourth drive, which should show as C: WinXP-3, it
shows up as C: WinXP-2.

How did you install XP-3? Was it a clean install, or did you clone XP-2?
When you boot into each XP, take a look in the Disk Mgmt service and check
which partitions are identified as the system partition and/or the boot
partition. Also check which partition (on the 'Disk 1' bar graph) is
labeled 'C:'. Is there any crossover there between XP-2 and XP-3?

 

[Alex Nichol]

#1 Win98se
#2 WinXP-1
#3 WinXP-2
#4 WinXP-3

All of the installations boot just fine. When booted, all OS'es, with the
exception of the one loaded, are hidden. The selected drives all show up in
Boot Magic as being on the correct drive and partition.

But here is where the mystery comes in. When booted into any of the first
three OS'es, that drive shows up in Internet Explorer as the C: drive with
the correct drive ID name. But when booted to the XP OS on the fourth
drive, which should show as C: WinXP-3, it shows up as C: WinXP-2.

This can arise if you have produced #3 by cloning #2. This has left the
enumerations that were recorded in registry unchanged, and it is
actually running the #2 partition for a lot of things. Because it will
for those be using a physical position on the drive, it bypasses the
'hidden' aspect. . Boot it up, run regedit and at
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\Mounted Devices
delete all the entries in the right pane. Then reboot for them to be
re-enumerated. You may find that you need then to readjust a drive
letter for other drives in device management

 

[Ralph Hutchinson]

Alex, Dan, I have a feeling you have both hit the problem. It was not a
clean install but it was installed as a full install over the top of a
previous install which was under a different drive setup. I have thought
about it all night and morning and finally decided that the only thing
different about that install. I'm going to re-format that drive and make
another fresh install and I will bet it will be fine. I have just been
waiting to hear from one if you to confirm my hunch. I have only been
playing around with multi-boot stuff for a short time but have learned a lot
and continue to do so.

Thanks again for the help. You guys are great and always come through!

Ralp