Restore on larger hard disk changed disk size

I haven't come across any laptop, or desktop that will boot into Windows from an external drive. Nor have I read of anyone with a system that will do that.

 

If you can boot from a usb, you could probably make a VistaPE USB drive that will boot.

consider:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=193106&highlight=vistape boot disk

 

Briank-thanks for the link. I tried burning the iso like you said, but XP isn't letting me boot from the CD (i.e. I chose the CD as the boot, but it went right through to a normal XP startup).

 

deathbysmurf,

Did you burn the ISO as an image? Or as data.

Try burning it with ImgBurn.

http://www.imgburn.com/

In Nero you would cancel the first screen and choose Recorder, Burn Image.

I burnt it with ImgBurn yesterday and it works OK.

 

Is your Bios set to boot from a CD first, if not you will need to change it

 

Brian-tried both. Sadly this laptop is headed down the tubes right now.

Como-I've got the latest B16 or B17 BIOS installed, and I've always used the F12 at startup to get a boot menu-don't know if that's what you meant.

Already submitted to the devil either way-got online with DellConnect and they're sending me some installer discs and telling me to completely wipe the new drive and then re-install with their cloning program. Was $40 to talk to someone, but the discs are free and it's better than the $250 that GeekSquad wanted.

 

Not familiar with B16 or B17 BIOS, but yes I meant changing the BIOS to boot from a CD.

 

deathbysmurf,

It's unfortunate that the dsrfix CD doesn't boot and all the others did.

Make sure the HPA doesn't happen again. Deal with your current HD. Or make sure Track 0 isn't copied to the new HD.

 

What como means is to change the boot order in the Bios so the CD has priority over the hard drive.

 

Hi,
Sorry to dig up an old thread but I have problem related. I have recently upgraded an 80GB hard drive with a 120 on my XPS M140 with the intention of disabling the Media Direct 2.0 (the HPA problem bypassed) but keeping the restore and utility function. This is the DOS type PC Restore by Symantic. Before performing the cloan I had varified the utility partition and the restore partition was operational on the original drive. Then I zeroed the LBA-3 and verified the old drive would not boot to media direct and would instead perform a normal boot by way of the MD button. I also unhid the HPA partition on the old drive while knowing I couldn't copy it anyway.

Once at this point, I cloaned the old drive onto the new drive using Apricorn EZ Gig II. I manually set the cloan to keep the utility partition and the restore partition at roughly the same size as the old drive and expanded the C: NTFS (windows XP)partition out to fill the gap, leaving everything in the same order in the partition table.

After the cloan, I verified that booting to windows is successful and booting to the utility partition is successful. Additionally, booting by way of the MD button performs as expected after having zeroed the LBA-3 on the original drive prior to the cloan. I can also see that the dell MBR is being used because of the dell blue bar boot screen (it's Dell MBR v3). However the problem is when throwing the cntl-f11 into the que at this screen to perform the boot off the restore partition. The attempt to boot is made, but is thrown out and back to the initial boot screen (POST) only to repeat in a boot loop when again trying to boot off the restore partition. After reading Dan Goodell's site in detail I think I can explain why the loop is occuring, but my problem is not knowing what is within the restore boot sequence that would kick it out and back to the beginning of the POST.

Basically, after performing a Cntl-F11 the restore operation gets to "PBR 3..." and kicks out. It never get "PBR 3...done" as displayed here http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/drmk.htm
The only way I can recover from this is to put in a bootable CD with dsrfix on it and run it to reset the partition table back to the original (as in before Cntl-F11 were put in).

A few things I have tried are as follows:
I used ptedit after the restore partition had been made active and "looping" and looked at its boot record listings. I noticed it's signature was showing AA55 which I thought was wrong and changed it to 55AA. This then allowed the restore operation to display "PBR 3...done" but then hung with the next line stating " ! PBR ". No longer looping, just a hang. Another thing I noticed is that the listing fore serial number is 00000000. Is there a dell restore serial number that the restore MBR is looking for and kick it out? Is there a way I can compare with the serial number on the old drive (see issue below)?

I also used PTS Disk Editor to verify that the original partition table matched the reference partition table.

One thing I wanted to do was put in the old drive and cntl-f11 to set the restore partition active and then look at it using ptedit. However, since the restore partition boots successful on the old drive I can not get to a prompt to use ptedit to look at the listings for the now active partition. Hitting reboot at the restore screen changes the active partition back to the original with the C: drive active.

Do any of you have an idea as to what the restore operation is doing at the initial point it is being run that might be kicking out. Anything specific it's looking for. I'd really like to try and solve this one. If you have any ideas, I sure would appreciate them.

Thanks,
PP

 

delta_p,

Excellent work. Dan Goodell checks this thread occasionally. He would know.

 

Thanks Brian K, and for your contribution to this thread as well. It has helped me greatly in understanding all this. If Dan Goodell may even be able to respond I’ll add that I believe the loop to be occurring due to as follows:

1. The ‘07’ partition is active and a process of normal boot is occurring,
2. but the process is diverted because the cntl-f11 have been qued,
3. the new process searches for the ‘DB’ descriptor, and changes it to the ‘0C’ descriptor and sets it active and begins to boot off that partition,
4. But for unknown reason is thrown out back to the POST and pursues the normal boot cycle,
5. however ‘0C’ has been activated, so it trys to boot off that partition
6. Step 4 and the loop

4a. Adding another cntl-f11 to the que at this point causes the boot code to
look for the ‘DB’ descriptor as in step 3 but it doesn’t find it because it
has been changed to ‘0C’ by the above process.
4b. So, instead of showing the ‘PBR 3…’ and looping, it simply displays “Cannot restore” and
there is no loop, Just a hung screen with those words.

I believe this to be consistent with Dan’s explanation here http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/dellmbr.htm

Finally, when running dsrfix I can see the the Dell MBR is v3 (version 3 I assume)


PP

 

An update:

still not solved but I learned through this link http://www.notebookforums.com/thread149197.html that I could manually change the partition descriptor using ptedit and reboot to dos cd to view the boot record for that partition. I did this on the old drive and verified the "zero string" for serial number. I also booted up in windows and verified I can get to and open the restore partition with "my computer" having changed the type so that it can be seen by windows. So, at least I can get to the images if I need to given no major HD crash in the future.

Also, I experimented with the signiture description on the old drive changing it from AA55 to 55AA and verified that is causing the " ! PBR" hang on booting to the restore partition. Changed it back and restore boots successfully.

At this point the only differences I can see are the slight changes to the partition sizes and the physical location on the new disk (restore being located further down at the end of a 120 instead of the 80). The only thing that makes me think it's not the size causing problems is that DellUtility boots up fine. So with that, I am convinced the boot code after cntl-f11 is looking in a location that doesn't have the information it's looking for and the only way to fix this would be to alter the boot code to look in the right spot or move the partition start to the right spot.


Thanks,

PP

 

I am not qualified to say but is it possible that you have this problem

 

delta_p, your analysis of the process in post 162 is exactly correct. Everything is operating as designed except for your step 4, but we don't know what's going wrong in step 4. FWIW, I don't see anything indicating you unhid the original partition before cloning it. IME, I have more consistent results if the original is unhidden first (change 'DB' to '0C'), then cloned, then rehidden.

Be careful when examining the PBR signature (AA55). In x86 CPUs, hexadecimal "words" are stored in "little-endian" fashion, where the lsb is read/stored before the msb. When you look at it on disk, it's crucial whether the tool you're using is looking at it as two bytes (55 AA) or as one word (AA55). In your case, they were actually right, you manually reversed them, and the MBR ended up telling you "!PBR", which means "not a PBR" because it didn't see a proper signature at the end of the sector.

(Aside: you can run into the same problem when examining the Disk ID. Those are four bytes, but various tools will look at them as four bytes (eg, AA BB CC DD), or as two words (BBAA DDCC), or as one double-word (DDCCBBAA). Even Microsoft isn't consistent from one OS to another in how it reads this.)

Back to the boot process...

The bytes in a MBR or PBR contain CPU instructions, and are what the CPU relies on to continue the boot process. The instructions in the BIOS say to load the first sector of the hard disk (which we know to be the MBR) into ram, then sets the CPU instruction pointer to point to that part of ram and the CPU picks up the next set of instructions from there. The BIOS is then done. It doesn't need to know anything about partitions or what's on the disk, it just says, "I don't know, that's not my job. Whatever was in that first sector will tell you what to do next."

The instructions the CPU is now following are in the MBR copy it loaded into ram. Those instructions locate the active partition and tell the CPU to load the first sector of the partition (which we call the PBR) into ram, then changes the CPU instruction pointer to point to the PBR copy in ram. Then, just like the BIOS, the MBR says, "I don't know what's on the partition, that's not my job. Whatever was on the first sector of the partition will tell you what to do next."

Depending on OS, those instructions next look for specific files on the partition being booted.

As you can tell, the programming at these early stages is pretty elementary--and unforgiving. If the code that gets loaded into ram isn't proper CPU instructions, the CPU is stuck with no way out. You'll get either a hang (blinking cursor) or a CPU reset, where it starts the whole process all over again from the top.

In your case, it looks like you may have some bad code in PBR3 or in the boot files PBR3 is trying to find.

Fortunately, this is often easy to correct, particularly in the case of a DOS-type DSR partition. You've already learned how to unhide the DSR partition and look at it after booting from a different partition. Basically, you need to do that and add the DOS "sys" command to repair the PBR and boot files.

So the process is:

1. Use ptedit to unhide the DSR partition (change 'DB' to '0C') and make it active ('80'). To avoid confusing DOS in the next step, there should be no other unhidden FAT/FAT32 partitions (ie, keep the Util partition 'DE').
   
   
2. Boot from a MS-DOS 7.1 boot disk (such as a Win98 boot floppy or CD), which will leave you the A:> prompt.
   
   
3. Verify DOS has designated the DSR partition as C:. (Do a "dir c:" and check the list of files.)
   
   
4. At the A:> prompt, issue the command: "sys c:". This creates a proper boot sector and copies the boot files from A: (your boot disk) to C: (the DSR partition).
   
   
5. Rehide the DSR partition. (You can use Dsrfix for this.)

Remove the boot floppy/CD and test your DSR partition.

Since the DSR partition is FAT32, in step 2 you have to boot a FAT32-aware OS, such as DRMK or the MS-DOS version underlying Win98.

Step 4 actually replaces the existing corrupt DRMK with MS-DOS from the boot disk. It works, but if you'd rather keep the original DRMK you'll need to boot from a DRMK boot disk in step 2. If you have a Dell Utilities and Drivers CD, it should boot DRMK, so you should be able to boot from it and break out of the menu it normally boots to and get to the DRMK command prompt. The same command, "sys c:", works from DRMK just as well as from MS-DOS.

HTH,

Dan Goodell


(OT: Brian, my daughter is now in Australia--she likes it, and is blogging from there on www.goodells.net/whitney)

 

Dan,
Your process fixed it . All is well, and I want to thank you.

I used Magic Boot Disk to boot off of and ran "sys c:" Dell never gave me any cd's with my computer . The Restore partition now boots to the Restore/Reboot option screen (as shown second here http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/drmk.htm )with the addition of the win98 splash screen in place of the DRMK (1st screen). If I ever get my hands on a Dell Utilities and Drivers CD maybe I'll repeat the steps and replace the DRMK.

Thanks again for your help in this,

PP

P.S. you were correct in that I did not unhide the restore partition prior to cloaning.

 

That's good to hear.

There's no functional difference between DRMK and MS-DOS 7.1, so I wouldn't bother looking for DRMK. If you want to suppress that Win98 splash screen, that's easily done by editing the msdos.sys file.

Msdos.sys is an ordinary text file, but it has the "Hidden", "System", and "Read-only" file attributes set, which makes it just a tad more difficult to edit. When booted from a DOS boot disk, the commands are:

• attrib -s -h -r c:\msdos.sys
  
  
• edit c:\msdos.sys
  
  
• attrib +s +h +r c:\msdos.sys

You can google for the whole list of msdos.sys parameters if you want, but I just use:

[Options]
BootWarn=0;
BootWin=1;
Logo=0;
​

Dan Goodell

 

FWIW, I have a spare drive handy and decided to play around some more to try to isolate the cause of this problem.

Again, the original drive was already prepared as per above only on this go around I unhid the restore partition (change DB to OC) per Dan's suggestion above.

After cloning the original onto the spare and first booting to the dsrfix cd to fix the partition table, dsrfix had to fix OC back to DB (because I had changed that) and it obviously had to fix the reference partition table because of the new drive.

Booting to Dell Utility is again fine, booting to win XP is again fine, but a problem with booting to Dell Restore was again present, although slightly different in details this time. After cntrl - F11, it got to "PBR3.....Done" then hung with a blinking curser on the next line. I immediately knew from Dan's comments above what the problem was and ran his solution which fixed it.

So, problem is in the Apricorn transfer process somewhere, but it's nice to know there is a solution.

Thanks,

PP

 

post 77 is very helpful. I upgrade 60gb to 200gb seagate for my dell e1705. Tried all methods, but no working. Even follow post 77, still no working when use hdat2. When I press Yes to accept set max address, the command was aborted by program due to errors! I figured out the MBR may be damaged. What I did is boot with windows recover DVD and choose Recovery. In command line enter fixmbr, after it is done, reboot laptop with HDAT2 and follow the post 77, everything is OK NOW!

 

Guys - thank you so much for your help in the post above. I had a seagate 120GB drive and it was truncated to 60GB. I tried everything and last of all I tried HDAT2 and the 48 to 28bit switch which worked first time. I've restored without the MBR and track 0 Thanks guys. Acronis support, Seagate and Dell were all not much help.

Dan Goodell - thanks for your website - great information.

thanks David.

 

THIS WORKS GREAT AND FAST!!! I just did it
If you have already made the mistake of NOT following MudCrab's instruction above and now have 2 Partitions on your drive. Do the above stepa and it will merge them together....quick and painless...BUT, do know

-the empty space has to be formated before you run Acronis Secure Zone
-It has to be totally empty or ASZ will leave a partition sized to hold whatever is in it (ie I created a folder so when I did the above, ASZ left a 16MB Partition....now I cannot do the same to get rid of it....its too small to create a ASZ?

ps I tried Acronis Disk Manager also but it said it would take HOURS to complete...this took minutes

 

If you have two partitions and you only want one, you can use Windows Disk Manager to delete the unwanted partition. Then you can do an TrueImage Partition Restore with Resize and resize the unallocated space into your single system partition. This topic below covers that discussion.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=216107 Post #20

 

Hey guys. I have a Dell E1505. I was looking to do a harddrive upgrade, till I saw this thread and thought "woh! why's it got to be so difficult??!". But I should be able to follow the steps. Just a few questions:

OK, the drive is a Western Digital 160GB, and I will be using Apricorn EZ-UP cloning software and enclosure, both from NewEgg.com.

Questions:

1. Do I run the sectedit.exe program BEFORE I clone and on the original drive?
2. Do I resize AFTER the clone?
3. Do I have to run the sectedit.exe program AFTER I clone and on the new drive?
HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

4. Can I reinstall Media Direct somehow on the new drive?

Thanks.

PS It has a restore partition and it has Dell Media Direct.

 

HaveADellE1505,

GroverH has a guide on this topic but the site isn't working at present.

 

This link has a little explanation but it also includes a link to my cloning guide. Also check line 3 of my signature below. Both guides includes a special page written by Brian K about Dell. Be sure and read this page before deciding how to proceed.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=1309360&postcount=5