backup / restore to larger drive fails

This is for TI10.4942 German

The steps:
- internal 250GB Sata Drive - 2 Partitions (XP Home, XP Pro)
- Backup entire Drive [one image] to external USB Drive (from XP Pro)
- replace internal 250GB Sata Drive with 500 GB Sata Drive
- boot standalone TI10.4942 from CD
- Run Drive restore, accept whatever TI10.4942 offers as options
- a long, long time later (this is incredibly slow....), TI10.4942 says 'success' for the restore
- Boot up the partition with XP Home -> all works ok
- Boot up the partition with XP Pro -> boots up to the point where you already have the dark/light blue XP login background with the XP logo and where it should say "starting up windows", however this message never appears and the systems sits indefinitely on the startup screen.

Since then I experimented quite a bit along the theme of driveletters aso. but to no avail.
Might there be anyone having experienced (and solved) the same or having some ideas? Would be too glad.

thanks and rgds
MD

 

mad64,

This is a drive letter issue.

How were you dual booting? The Microsoft Way? If so, what were the drive letters of each WinXP partition on the old HD? Is WinXP Home the first or the second partition?

It should be fixable.

 

yes, the microsoft way....
on the old drive:
when xp home was booted, the following assignements were shown:
c: xp home drive
g: xp pro drive

however, when xp pro was booted, then the drive letters were as follows:
c: xp home drive
k: xp pro drive

that way seen, xp home is the first partition

what I wonder is why if I do a full drive image and then a full drive restore why this won't work, should be the same as on the original drive, I thought.

But I'm glad to see that you also suspect a drive letter issue, the only question that remains is how to fix...

thnanks for any hint....
MD

 

MD, you should have it fixed in a few minutes. WinXP Pro needs to be G: drive. The following links explain how to use Savepart (Method #1) and why your partition signatures have changed.

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm#method1

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=general;action=display;num=1140647361;start=12#12

Let us know the outcome.

 

If G: doesn't work then try K:

On reflection, it probably should be K:

 

ok, I'll give Savepart a try. I'm booted into xp home right now, when I look up computer management/device management then it inidcates G: for my xp pro partition. Assume this is ok.
Hmm...this will take a moment since Savepart cannot run under windows and my system has no floppy...
being a unix guy, this stuff is rather irritating

but thanks anyway, let you know if I can make it work

rgds
MD

 

This should work. Put the 4 Savepart files on a CD.
Download Magic Boot Disk v2.0 and make a boot CD from the .iso file.

http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2006.02.10-Magic-Boot-Disk/

http://hddguru.com/download/software/Magic-Boot-Disk/Magic_Boot_Disk_ISO_v2.0.zip

Boot to this CD which will load CD drivers. Change to Z: drive (I think it's Z: drive, you will be told) and then remove Magic Boot Disk and insert your CD containing the Savepart files. Run Savepart.

 

I haven't tried this yet. I should. It's my adaptation of a WinXP Microsoft technique to use in BartPE. Using RegistryEditorPE plugin to change drive letters in an OS that is active and can't be booted.

 

ok, here a first rundown on 'savepart':

- decided to get 'ultimate boot cd' since 'savepart' needs some kind of 'standalone' env to run (cannot out of win).
- latest ultimate boot (4.1.1) includes latest 'savepart' 3.40.
- then I do:

• point to new disk
• select element where win is installed
• select directory where win is installed
• choose element (drive) to be modified in registry
• choose element (partition) to be modified into registry
• perform selection
• choose drive letter to affect this partition => strange enough, I only get the choice of C/D/E/I for whatever reasons with C/D being kind of natural choice in this case with C likely being the xp home partition
• when I try to save I get a LBACACHE flush: write error.0180/LBAS#0808

and of course nothing is changed and the xp pro partition still hangs at the very end of the boot procedure. Don't understand why I have not much choice for assigning drive letters, in particular G which is not available.

have to go for a sleep now, plan to continue in a few hours
thx and rgds
MD

 

Weird. Did you try to boot WinXP Pro before running Savepart? This ensures WinXP Pro is active. Maybe it makes a difference. I'm not sure.

Thanks for letting me know Savepart is on the 'ultimate boot cd'.

I think you should be trying to make WinXP Pro the K: drive but it doesn't seem to offer this choice. In my BartPE technique above I don't know which drive letter would refer to WinXP prior to the swap so you would have to look at the registry at the time. Could be difficult.

PS. I think WinXP Pro should be "Active" before running Savepart. You want to edit its registry and not the WinXP Home registry.

 

When I had a similar problem(T.I 9.0) with my winxp pro not booting after restoring to a larger harddrive. It took me 3 days of trying to get it to boot(repartioning,winxp repair installation,reloading the image several times, trying different harddrives). before I was finally able to fix it.I fixed it by using "paragon justboot corrector" to change the drive letter on my os partiton back to c:. The program is burned to a cd, and you boot from it, it'll scan your harddrive and will show all your drives and there drive letters, from there you can change them ,if a drive letter that you want for your os is taken you must release it first.It took me less than 5 minutes to change and apply my settings, when I rebooted, I had a working computer again. You have to buy the program to apply any changes, but if the demo shows that your harddrive is intact it 'll probably work, for me it was worth the purchase , I know I'll eventually use it again.It might or might not work for you, but if you tried everything else this is something that you might try as a last resort.http://www.justboot.us/boot_corrector.htm

 

yes, weird is probably the right word. I also tried the hint to remove the entries out of the 'Mounteddevices' registry entry by doing an offline 'system' hive edit out of the running xp home partition. I completely deleted all entries in there and they get indeed reconstructed while xp pro boots, but again, boot process stops a few seconds [2-5] before the login screen should be ready (background and logo there, only the user tags missing).
So maybe it's something completely different, who knows.
Have no time today to work on this [so retrofitted the original 250gb disk which boots xp pro like a charm....] but since I do have this 500gb disk I also want to use it, so something has to happen and if it means complete re-install [which of course then leaves me with the question what exactly for I do own Trueimage]. I'll keep you posted on the development of this issue.

thx and regards
MD

 

good hint, will have a look at that utility definitely.
thx and regards
MD

 

I've asked a friend for his opinion.

I think the problem arose because the partitions were resized up during the restore process and this caused a different partition signature calculation for WinXP. My guess is if you again restore the image to your 500 GB HD and don't resize the partitions then both OS would boot. I know this leaves unallocated space but I assume it could be used for data.

"paragon justboot corrector" sounds interesting.

 

I'm not a Savepart expert, but AFAIK it draws your drive letter choices from whatever currently exists in the registry. So, you really can't change a new partition to any drive letter you want, you are instead "correcting" a drive letter already in the registry to use a replacement partition signature.

It seems reasonable to me that your new XPPro registry, which contained a reference to K: when initially cloned, might have been altered when XPPro tried to boot, such that it lost the K: reference, and hence it's not showing up in Savepart. IOW, if you had used Savepart before trying to boot the new XPPro, you might have been offered the K: choice.

If it were me ... (well, okay, if it were me I would dump the dopey MS-style dualboot and spend the time to setup a proper dualboot. But if I were trying to retain the MS-style dualboot) ... I would try recloning the XPPro partition, then using Savepart before attempting to boot the new disk.

I would also use Savepart from a proper DOS boot disk. I suspect it crashed because UBCD may not be a proper DOS boot--isn't it something like a DOS shell running inside linux?

This is the first I've heard of "Justboot Corrector". It looks like it might do the trick, but I notice it costs money. Ironically, for jonyjoe81's purposes, he could have more easily accomplished his task with a simple "fdisk /mbr" from a Win98 boot disk. Jonyjoe81 needed to correct a system drive letter back to C:, and that's a piece of cake. It's correcting a system drive letter to something else--like K:, in mad64's case--that's difficult.


Dan Goodell
Understanding MultiBooting

 

yes, i might try without resizing, however, why did it work for the xp home partition which also was resized ? Is it because this one is a primary and active partition on the C: letter and hence gets treated differently?

thanks to all for their valuable inputs, as said, it might take a few days until I've get again time to work on this. I will keep you informed on any progress.

rgds
MD

 

I think it's because the WinXP Home partition started in the same position on both HDs. At the start of the HD. But the WinXP Pro partition started further along on the new HD and would thus have a different partition signature calculated.

Dan has stimulated me to do further testing. My thoughts in Post #8 came from

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/223188

but I made it sound too difficult. This is all you need to do.

Using the ReatogoXPE version of BartPE and the RegistryEditorPE plugin I changed some drive letters.

http://regeditpe.sourceforge.net/

https://sourceforge.net/project/screenshots.php?group_id=107708

Initially I renamed a data drive. From E to Q. I booted back into WinXP and the partition was now Q: drive. In ReatogoXPE again, I renamed C to R. Trying to boot to WinXP again caused a freeze at around the Welcome screen stage, just a blue screen without a logo. In ReatogoXPE again, I renamed R to C. WinXP then booted normally.

I'm happy with my test and it can obviously do something that Savepart can't do. You can choose any drive letter that you like, as long as it's appropriate.

If you don't have a ReatogoXPE CD then it's about an hour before you are ready to try this method. As you don't know which drive letter has been assigned to WinXP Pro it may take a few attempts of changing letters to K to get it correct.

Good luck with whichever approach you take.

 

Before I didn't know what cause my problem , but reading the last 4 comments it now makes sense to me. When I had done previous restorations , I always made sure the c: partition on my new drive was 1GB larger (in this case it should have been 21GB) than my image partition which was 20GB (about 4GB being in use). On the larger hard drive that I was planning to upgrade it had two partitions a 19GB and 180GB.Since the 180GB partition had data on it, I left the smaller partition as is and loaded the image there (which T.I 9.0 had no problem downsizing to fit it).The spare hard drive that I also tried also had a 19GB partition that's why it didn't boot either. If I had stuck to my previous 1GB larger stratgedy that I had always use I think I would have been O.K. From what I've read here, I think you will have problems only if you try to restore a larger os partition into a smaller os partition.( I had never had problems when restoring a smaller os partition to a larger os partition) I think this is at least one problem solved as to what will cause drive letter changes.

 

ok, since I was too curious, I inserted another nighshift...since all your inputs, hints and tips aso. started to to give me some ideas....

The good news is - it works now, meaning, I can now boot either the xp home or the xp pro partition on the new 500gb disk
The not so good news - I'm not 100% sure why this is, since at one point in time I changed 2 settings at once (well knowing that you never should do this...), being just too tired for more individual steps and exactly after those 2 steps it worked
The rather (depending on personal preferences) not so bad news - Possibly you don't need any special tool to fix it (depends a bit on my 2-step procedure)

This is what I've done:

1. My neighbour drops by, sees what I'm trying to do and offers me to use his (2+ year old) copy of a (with acronis competing) disk-manager tool. Luckily, this tool can already handle a 500gb sata-II.
2. boot xp pro from old 250gb disk (k
3. run diskmanager (dm) tool and note down partition serial # of k: and c: partition
4. boot xp home from old 250gb disk (c
5. rund dm tool and note down partition serial # of c: and g: (when xp home is booted, the partition with xp pro on is drive g
6. boot standalone recovery version of dm [250gb disk]
7. note down partition serial # of d: (is what the tool shows in standalone mode for the xp home partition) and e: (the xp pro partition)
8. outcome - the partition serial # shown is the same for a given xp version, ie. I only get two different partition serial #
9. exchange 250gb drive with new 500gb drive (with the restored data from TI10)
10. boot standalone recovery version of dm
11. partition serial # for the xp home partition on the 500gb drive is identical to the one of the xp home partition on the 250gb drive
12. partition serial # for the xp pro partition on the 500gb drive has changed (!)
13. use the dm tools capability to change back the xp pro partition serial # to the one displayed for the 250gb drive
14. boot xp home from the 500gb drive
15. start up 'regedit' and search for 'MountedDevices'
16. Lookup entries '\DosDevices\C:' and '\DosDevices\G:' [the xp pro partition as seen when xp home is booted]
17. The next step is possible because 'regedit' can load a hive of an os not booted if it has access to the corresponding file, which is the case here since I can access the xp pro parition from xp home [via drive G:]
18. use 'load hive' [possible when 'HKEY_USERS' branch is selected] to load the registry file 'G:\Windows\system32\config\system' [belongs to xp pro], note: you need to give a dummy name which is used as branch starting point under 'HKEY_USERS'
19. Follow now this newly loaded hive also to the 'MountedDevices' entry
20. With not too much surprise, I find that the '\DosDevices\K:' entry [the entry for xp pro in this registry path] shows completley different data compared to '\DosDevices\G:'
21. edit the '\DosDevices\K:' entry to contain the same data as '\DosDevices\G:'
22. unload this hive
23. reboot system - select 'boot xp pro' - and oh wonder it boots

many thanks to all you friendly people that led me to the right steps with your tips and hints and explanations. Obviously, imaging a multi-os drive and restoring it to another drive isn't exactly an out-of-the-box operation. An interesting experience for a unix guy though.

rgds
MD

 

"... use 'load hive' [possible when 'HKEY_USERS' branch is selected] ..."

Thanks, mad64! I always figured there must be a way to edit one registry from the other, but that's the tip I've been missing for a few years now. The "Load Hive" option was always grayed out (I guess I was never on the right branch by accident), so I thought maybe I was supposed to be using the "Connect Network Registry" option instead, but there was just no way to do that.

For the benefit of other readers here, the "Load Hive" feature was added in WinXP, so the editing must be done from XP (or later, I presume). The "Load Hive" option is only active when you select the [HKEY_USERS] branch or the [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE] branch. It is grayed out when you select any other branch or sub-branch. You can load the secondary hive with a dummy name under either branch.

The first half of mad64's steps are exploratory in nature and are optional. Steps 15-22 are really all that are necessary. Since we know XP-Home's G: drive and XP-Pro's K: drive are one and the same, all that is needed is to let the working XP build that signature and then use the same partition signature in both registries.

So, to paraphrase mad64's procedure:

1. note what drive letter the non-working XP (Pro, in this case) is supposed to have for itself (K:, in this case);
   
   
2. boot the working XP (Home, in this case);
   
   
3. determine what drive letter the working XP has given to the non-booting XP partition (G:, in this case);
   
   
4. start regedit, highlight the [HKLM] branch, select the regedit option 'File->Load Hive', and load the file 'G:\Windows\system32\config\system' under a {dummy} name;
   
   
5. locate the two registry entries:
   
   [HKLM\System\MountedDevices\DosDevices\G:]
   [HKLM\{dummy}\MountedDevices\DosDevices\K:]​
6. Cut and paste the key value from 'System' to '{dummy}'.
   
   
7. Highlight the {dummy} branch, select the regedit option 'File->Unload Hive', and exit regedit.

Done.

This works as long as you've got a working XP to boot into. If you have a Win2K/XP hybrid, Win2K's regedit doesn't have the 'Load Hive' option, so you'll have to use one of the other alternatives suggested earlier. And to reiterate, this is only a problem with a MS-style multiboot, not with a pure multiboot in which each OS sees itself as the 'C:' partition.



Dan Goodell
Understanding Multibooting

 

And a clever guy too. Thanks for all the feedback. It is much appreciated. I've learnt a lot.