Can no longer Boot my XP Partition

Discussion in 'Acronis Disk Director Suite' started by IsTallDon, Jul 2, 2007.

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  1. IsTallDon

    IsTallDon Registered Member

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    Well, I had everything working just fine with XP, Vista32, and Vista64 all installed on one drive (#1 in the boot list on a system with 3 drives) after editing the Bootwiz.oss to remove the Hidden flag from all the active drive setups. I could select any one of the three and each came up nicely. Yea!

    However, I also had a previous installation of Win2K and Win98 on disk#2 which had been using System Commander as a multi boot control. OSS had already found the Win2K operating system, but had all of the partitions on all three drives visable. Also OSS had two Unknown operating system shortcuts, one of which was probably the Win98 and the other was an old phantom copy of WinXP on drive #3 left over from my addition of a SATA drive as the primary XP boot disk.

    Tried getting the Win 2K partition to boot. Had Win2K set as Active in the OSS partition list and then changed the Disk boot order in OSS for Win2k to put Drive#2 first. Also used the OSS Advanced to force hiding of the three OP Systems on Drive#3. Probably was a mistake. When I tried to boot 2K from OSS, got a missing file message and it promptly tried to reboot, but now it could no longer find OSS because it had changed the three OP system partitions on Drive #3 to Unallocated. Booted DD and went in and used it to restore the three partitions on Drive#3.

    Rebooted and was able to get Vista32 and Vista64 to both come up, but now XP will not boot. The splash screen comes up, but after less than 1 second, it dies and the system reboots. Have tried both Safe Mode and "boot to last known good configuration" with exactly the same results.

    I am hoping someone can tell me what file on the XP partition probably got clobbered and whether or not I can restore that file(s) using TrueImage from a backup made about a week ago. Since XP was my primary system, I have made a number of changes since the backup was created so it would be nice if I don't have to go all the way back to that backup. Yes, I was due to make another backup and should have before messing with Win2K, but the road to etc! Too soon old, too late smart.

    So, does anyone know of an easy way to find out what XP op system file(s) has been changed. I probably have access to the drive from Vista32 or I can boot directly from TrueImage on the CD, but haven't found anything I trust to try and compare or check op systems files without creating a lot of garbabe. I also have an XPSP2 install disk, but found trying to do anything with Recovery Console a waste of time.

    Anyone??

    Don
     
  2. MudCrab

    MudCrab Imaging Specialist

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    Make sure you have a current backup before attempting any more changes. Then, at least, you can return to this state if necessary.

    Check ALL your OSS menu entries and make sure the correct partitions are Active and Hidden for each OS. Recovering the partitions with DD may have changed some IDs or some other reference OSS uses.

    Also check the boot.ini file settings for XP are still pointing to the correct drive and partition?

    You can boot from the DD cd and explore the partition, then right-click on the boot.ini file and select Edit. This will bring it up so you can view it and modify it if necessary.

    You might also try a reinstall/reactivation of OSS.

    When you tried to repair XP with the XP cd, did you deactivate OSS first?
    If I were trying this, I'd deactivate OSS, then use DD to hide the Vista partitions and make the XP partition Active, then do the XP boot repair (assuming XP won't boot okay this way). Then reactivate OSS.
     
  3. IsTallDon

    IsTallDon Registered Member

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    Thanks for your reply.

    Unfortunately, no joy. Already had backed up the partition as it stands. XP would boot thru the display of the driver loading which included the boot.ini configuration. It was set to partition 1 as it should have been. Looks like I am going to have to restore the older backup. I plan to try to restore the the current backup to a different partition and then do a dated search to locate the files that have changed in the past 10 day. I'll try copying the significant data files over if all that works. Seems you never need a backup until you don't have one. Sheesh!

    What tangled webs we weave!

    Don
     
  4. MudCrab

    MudCrab Imaging Specialist

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    Have you checked the partition table using DD and made sure that the XP partition is actually the first partition in the list?

    Just because the XP partition is physically first on the drive does not mean that it's first in the partition table list.

    I only ask because I have just recently conducted some tests in this area and wondered if the Partition Recovery process ended up changing something.
     
  5. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    IsTallDon:

    Check also that the XP partition is not hidden when you try to boot XP. The symptom you are describing often happens if XP is booted from a hidden partition. It will start to boot OK then fail and reboot.
     
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