OS not bootable - autochk program not found

I was using DDS 9 and OSS a longer time in the following configuration without any problems:

Disk 1: Primary Part 1, WinXP#1 as drive C (hidden when booting WinXP #2)
Primary Part 2, WinXP#2 as drive C (hidden when booting WinXP #1)
... other logical partitions on disk 1 ...
Disk 2: ... several logical partitions ...
OS Selector partition (very small, at the end of the disk)
Disk 3: ... several logical partitions ...
Disk 4: ... several logical partitions ...

No I wanted to upgrade to DDS 10 and TI 10. The first try to install DDS 10 and TI 10 was not successful, I first had first to deinstall DDS 9 and TI 9 on both, WinXP#1 and #2, including some registry clean-up on WinXP#1. But that's another story.
Nevertheless, I finally deinstalled also OSS using the DD 9 boot CD, and booted WinXP#1 as active partition. There I've done a new installation of DDS 10 and TI 10 without any problems. Both products are working fine on WinXP#1 (as far as I've seen until now).

The problem came up after installation of OSS 10 in the OS Selector partition from a boot CD, created using the latest build of DDS 10:
- system WinXP#1 is still booting without any problems
- when booting WinXP#2 I get the message "autochk program not found", resulting in a system shut down

Checking the properties of WinXP#1 and WinXP#2 in OSS I found, that OS WinXP#2 is marked as pri and act, but also as "hidden". The check box is greyed out, so I'm not able to change that.
OS WinXP#1 on the other side is marked as pri and act, and "hidden" is not active.
It seems to me that OSS still keeps the "hidden" attribute of WinXP#2 as it was before the OSS installation, and gives me no chance to change that. A first try to remove the "hidden" attribute with DDS 10 itself was not successful: After booting from WinXP#2, which was again not successful, the "hidden" attribute for partition WinXP#2 was still (or again?) activated.

Before trying other things, I would appreciate any tips and hints how to resolve this situation using DDS 10 and/or OSS. I found several other threads describing similar problems, so I'm wondering why OSS does not allow to remove the hidden attribute ...

Kind regards
Manfred

 

Hi Manfred...
exactly the problem i have! So... is there any HELP out there to make at least two Acronis users happy?
I had a look at the OSS configuration files in the BOOTWIZ directory but i didn't found the solution...

So long,
Thomas

 

So, in the meantime I've tried several things:

1. Booted the Recovery Console from CD: CHKDSK corrected at least one (minor?) error on both, WinXP#1 and #2 partitions, but WinXP#2 still not able to boot.

2. FIXMBR command in Recovery Console brought no improvement, too.

3. I used my old PartitionMagic 7.01 boot floppy disks: The DOS version of PM 7.01 first told me that it has corrected a partition table error, shut down the system and rebooted. Then it was not able to show the partitions on disk 1 (partition error #106). So I started PTEDIT from the PM 7.01 floppy, which showed me partition type 07 (NTFS) for WinXP#1 and 17 (hidden NTFS) for WinXP#2. I changed 17 to 07, and then tried to boot WinXP#2 from OSS - still the same problem as described above.

4. Immediately after the boot failure I started DDS 10 from CD, and checked there the status of the two primary partions:
- WinXP#1 was hidden (greyed out) because of my attempt to boot from WinXP#2 (that's correct, because in this situation WinXP#1 NEEDS to be hidden)
- WinXP#2 was marked as PRI and ACT, but still hidden (greyed out) - and that seems to be the problem! Obviously OSS not only leaves WinXP#2 hidden, it SETS it to hidden. No idea why this happens, especially because exactly the same configuration worked always without any problems with OSS on the DDS 9.0 level, and before that time also with OS Selector 8.0.

The only positive thing: Hiding and unhiding WinXP#1 works fine, so I have no problem to boot and use this system (which is the much more important one, WinXP#2 is "only" my test system).

I would appreciate any help to resolve this problem, and will provide any information necessary.

Manfred

 

Manfred,

I had a similar problem when installing OSS on my laptop. I had two XP partitions and they were supposed to be hidden from each other. When I tried to install OSS, only the currently active partition would boot. The other would always be hidden and I couldn't change the settings in OSS because they were disabled (grayed out).

You could try the following to fix the problem.

After the OSS boot menu comes up, go to the properties for each XP boot partition and remove the folders from the "Folders" section. If I remember correctly this will allow the disabled "hidden" checkbox to become enabled. Make sure the active and hidden checkboxes are correct for each XP1 and XP2 and give it a try. Also check that the file references are correct in the "Files" section.

It's been a while since I've done this and my situation was a little different as I was trying to install linux on a third primary boot partition and when I installed OSS it didn't configure the XP boots correctly. The final solution was to uninstall OSS, make all the partitions visible using Disk Director, set the linux primary partition as "active", then reinstall OSS. This allowed OSS to correctly detect the 2 XP boot partitions and configure them.

If you don't want to create a temporary linux (ext3) partition, you could try uninstalling OSS, setting both XP partitions visible, reboot from the Acronis CD and install OSS. Then when you boot into OSS, see if you can setup the partition options how you want. This didn't work for me though.

 

Hi MudCrab and @all,

thank you for your tips. I first tried to remove the folders from the "Folders" section in each XP boot partition, but the hide check box for WinXP#2 is still active and grayed out.
Uninstalling OSS, making both boot partitions visible and installing OSS again could be another chance. I'll try that during the weekend.

Another thing which confuses me al little is the fact, that the WinXP#2 partition is the 2nd primary partition on disk 1, but in the OSS properties the files of this system are referred to as #1-3 (3rd partition). BOOT.INI on WinXP#2 referred to partition(2), so I changed that to partition(3) - resulting in a "HAL.DLL missing" boot error. So partition(2) in BOOT.INI is correct, even when the numbering showed within OSS is different. To illustrate this I've included below a small portion of the report created by the Acronis report utility.

Kind regards
Manfred


Num NT L9NO Size FSsize Free FS Type Label ABCHSV
---- ----- ---- ----- ----- ----- ------ --------------- ----------- ------
1- d(0) 75G 14M ATA 0-1-0 ST380013AS 3.05
-1 p(1) --CC 20G 20G 4.4G NTFS 07 NTFS, HPFS WinXP-1.... A-C--V
-3 p(2) ---- 10G 10G 6.5G NTFS 07 NTFS, HPFS WinXP-2.... --CH-V
-2 table 05 Extended ------
-5 p(3) --DD 39G 39G 36G NTFS 07 NTFS, HPFS Daten...... --C--V
-6 p(4) --EE 6G 6G 699M NTFS 07 NTFS, HPFS Software... --C--V
2- d(1) 112G 14M ATA 0-1-0 ST3120026AS 3.05
7.8M free ------
-2 table 05 Extended A-----
-5 p(1) --FF 112G 112G 40G NTFS 07 NTFS, HPFS Multimedia. --C--V
-6 p(2) C--- 16M 16M 11M FAT16 04 FAT16 (<32M) OSselector. --CH-V
3- d(2) 112G 13M SCSI 0-4-0 ST3120026AS 3.05
7.8M free ------
-2 table 05 Extended A-----
-5 p(1) --GG 112G 112G 31G NTFS 07 NTFS, HPFS Video-1.... --C--V
4- d(3) 186G 13M SCSI 0-4-2 ST3200822AS 3.02
7.8M free ------
-2 table 05 Extended A-----
-5 p(1) --HH 112G 112G 55G NTFS 07 NTFS, HPFS Video-2.... --C--V
-6 p(2) --II 74G 74G 25G NTFS 07 NTFS, HPFS Images..... --C--V

 

Hi Manfred,
i solved the problem on my system by editing the O:\BOOTWIZ\bootwiz.oss file (Letter "O" is the OSS home partition on my system).
In the original file changed the line for the "problem XP system" from

<id2222222222 boot_as_ms71="0" boot_as_os2="0" boot_cd_entry="0" boot_partition="3333333333" bootname="bootsect.sys" icon="icon_sys_win" language="german" lba="1" multi="multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS" name_template="Kopie von Windows XP" nthide="0" os_type="ntxp" uninstall_info="1" use_manual_disks_order="0" write_boot="0">
<partitions>
<id444444444 hidden="1" />
<id3333333333 active="1" hidden="1" />
</partitions>
</id2222222222>

to

<id2222222222 boot_as_ms71="0" boot_as_os2="0" boot_cd_entry="0" boot_partition="3333333333" bootname="bootsect.sys" icon="icon_sys_win" language="german" lba="1" multi="multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS" name_template="Kopie von Windows XP" nthide="0" os_type="ntxp" uninstall_info="1" use_manual_disks_order="0" write_boot="0">
<partitions>
<id444444444 hidden="1" />
<id3333333333 active="1" />
</partitions>
</id2222222222>

Try this (on your own risk) - maybe it will help

So long,
Thomas

PS: In this post the partition id's were changed to protect the innocent

 

Thomas,

Thanks for the info. This way looks a lot easier than what I ended up doing. I hadn't thought of manually editing any of the "bootwiz" files.

For anyone that's interested, these threads deal with this same problem and are what I based my solution on.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=125363
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=85966

 

Hi Thomas,

that's absolutely great, thank you very much! Removing hidden="1" for my WinXP#2 partition in the bootwiz.oss file resolved the problem on my system, too.

In addition, the "hidden" check box in the partition properties within OSS is no longer greyed out. All problems resolved, once again "thank you"!

But in the end that seems to be a bug in OSS: Hiding a partition, which is at the same time the active boot partition. And it seems not to be very complicated for the developers to remove this bug. But it took a while and several threads and discussions to find that solution. Great idea from you, Thomas, to have a closer look into the OSS files and to remove that string from bootwiz.oss.

Kind regards
Manfred

 

Thanks Thomas.. sorry it took so long 2 thank u..

i certainly appreciate it.

 

Hello you two,
I am using DDS and OSS 10 and I got the task to install a XP dual boot with opposite hidden partitions like described in your thread.

Its nice to see your solution of your problem. How would you suggest an initial installation of XP in the double? Is there a way to circumvent this bug or whatever it is in the first place? Or do I have to confront that and wipe out the error like you did it?

By removing that

will the XP partitions still be hidden to each other? It is most essential that this feature can be used.

Your help in this regard is very much appreciated.

Regards...

 

lost most control of my fingers so pleaqe bear with me, it hurts like hell 2 type.


<partitions>
<id444444444 hidden="1" />
<id3333333333 active="1" />


u dont remove the hidden line u correct it by moving it 2 a line o its own and using the id of the other partition. the <id4444444444444, <id333333333333333 are the partition id's defined by OSS in the bootwiz.oss file. if u look higher thenthe line and follow the already inserted id on the beginning of that bad line "<id3333333333 active="1" hidden="1" />
compare the id to the partition defined id';s. its very straight forward if u look at the partition ids themselves.
now the problem it solves is both the active & hidden gADGETS are ghosted. u know what happens when u set a partition 2 active? well its considered the boot partition and winbloze tries 2 boot from that partition, have the hidden bit set as well and now u dont have a partition 2 boot from cause its "hidden".

hope i made that one clear 4 u.. Thomas gets all the credit 4 this find and i appreciate it, it saved my old blind butt much time..

now, myself i had oss off with xp pro installed. then from DD10 i created another primary partition on the same drive set that one active and the xp pro partition 2 hidden that way the new partition is blank but active. stick vista in the dvd and install. after done reboopt with DD10 in the DVD then hide the vista partition, unhide the xp pro partition save it DD10 will now reboot with xp pro (the 1st partition being active). then after making the change to the Bootwiz.oss file as Thomas stated turn OSS back on u will notice those gadgets (or buttons) are no longer ghosted So u r ready 2 go.

Note...
u can always boot to a diff primary partition by setting it active while u hide all other OS partitions.. its just easier/Quicker 2 do it with a util such as oss.

hope that heps yah...

 

@VahlefeldD

I've done my 2 XP installations the same way as RTShaw already described. But up to DD10 I never had to edit the bootwiz.oss file, it always worked fine. I got the problem the first time when I upgraded to DD10.

But not only that, a few days ago I got the same problem once again when I updated to the newest DD10 and TI10 build levels: Due to some problems after the completion of the updates (e.g. the rescue media builder showed still the old DD10 build, not the new one) I had to uninstall DD10 and TI10, followed even by a manual removal of remaining DD10/TI10 directories and files (e.g. under c:\program files\common files). Then I've done a new installation of DD10 and TI10. Both products now worked fine again, except the fact that I had to edit the bootwiz.oss file again. So the problem still exists, even with the newest DD10 build level.

But when you know what to do it's a task of only 2 minutes.

Regards, Manfred

 

I know Acronis knows about this problem and it gets really frustrating when u send em jpgs, explanations, code fixes,then u get a msg back have u tried "Reinstall blah..." Damn i sent my credentials along what else do they need? my id?. Only thing i can think of is they are trying to fix other stuff too(i guess)..