Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 15:31:35 +0100 From: Philip Nienhuis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [LIB] Question on W2000 & partitioning
Matt Hanson wrote: .....<snip> > Philip Nienhuis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: ....<snip> > What are you using as a boot manager Philip... > something in W2000? OS/2 boot manager goes first, allowing me to select Win2K's boot manager, various OS/2 versions and (currently) two Linux boot managers (lilo). Then, Win2K's boot manager allows Win2K full install on C:, Win98 on E:, Win2K w/o IE / Outlook / Netmeeting / etc, from G:, and a Win2K recovery console. The two lilo bootmanagers are for Mandrake 9.2 and VectorLinux 4.3. Both include the stock kernels plus kernels patched for the PCMCIA floppy and one for NETBEUI support. All in all I got three (four) boot managers, for (...counting....) 9 operating systems. If you think this is a bit overdone, you are right. My excuse is that the Lib is a hobby object rather than production machine. Nevertheless in the next weeks/ months I'm gonna clean up and simplify things. > > As for a restore, I doubt whether you can simply > restore a Win2K > > from one partition to another one. It is not quite > enough that the > > drive letters are the same (as the registry is > pervaded by it), but > > you must also restore its boot manager + boot files > on C:, > > irrespective of where Win2K is going to end up. The > entries in > > c:\boot.ini are not drive letters but refer to > partition > > enumeration, and must match the physical partition > layout. > > Okay... so tell me if you think this will work: > > Drive 0: 3GB FAT32 Primary [W2000] > Drive 1: 1.5GB FAT32 [Hidden] Primary [W2000] > Drive 2: 1GB FAT32 [Hidden] Primary [W98] > Drive 3: 2.5GB FAT32 Logical [Data] > Drive 4: 70MB FAT32 Logical [Libretto hibernation] > Drive 5: 30GB FAT32 Logical [Data] I can't tell from this distance :-) It looks OK, although I still think you wil encounter some problems. But: why do you hide primary partitions? On my Lib all Windows versions live happily next to each other. Indeed, two Windows versions (W2K full & W98) share _all_ programs in C:\Programs (renamed from Program Files), incl. IE, virus scanners and Office suites, even the swap file. > If I can get BootMagic to install on the existing 1st > FAT32 W2000 partition, it should hide the two > partitions following it that have bootable OSs. When > I 1st installed 2000, I made an image of that 1st > partition when the drive was set up like this: > > Drive 0: 3GB FAT32 Primary [W2000] > Drive 1: 2.5GB FAT32 Primary [Data] > Drive 2: 70MB FAT32 Primary [Libretto hibernation] > Drive 3: 30GB FAT32 Primary [Data] > > I would think that if I restore the W2000 image to > Drive 1 as in the 1st example of partitions above, and > have BootMagic hide Drive 0 and drive 2 when running > the restored image from Drive 1, I would think the > restored copy of W2000 shouldn't have any problems. I never fooled around with PM, but anyway, I fear your proposed scheme won't work. Won't work with restored Win2K's, that is. Chances are it will work only if you *install* Win2K anew on each partition. First of all, you simply do not need PM at all, and for that matter you do not need EZ-drive either. In fact these will make it only more difficult. Second, I suspect your lay-out will have some problems, in any case minor ones, perhaps big ones, because drive letters in Win2K work very very differently from the old stuff in Win9x/ME and DOS. As I mentioned before, W2K needs to have its boot drive letter match the enumerated number of its boot partition, both in C:\boot.ini but also in the registry and in the volume GUIDs on cyl. 0 (beyond the MBR). The latter ones can be fixed (reinitialized) by running FDISK /MBR from a plain DOS prompt. Afterward, once booted in Win2K you will need to run Disk Manager to fix all drive letters. I strongly suggest to run FDISK /MBR, otherwise you run the risk that Win2K simply can't login, or perhaps even can't boot. Why is that? As far as boot.ini is involved: ------------------------------- If your image was from the very first primary partition on you HD, in boot.ini the relevant entry will look like multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(0)\WINNT or so. But if the very first primary on your new layout was for another W2K or Win98, and the non-hidden primary you want to boot from occupies slot #2 or #3 in the MBR, it should look like multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT or multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT. If you look in the registry HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevices you will see a lot of keys for all partitions (also the partitions on removable media like CD-ROM and network drives). Below are the keys for your drive letters, and the key data for each drive letter will (uhmm ... must) match one of the volume key data higher up. That is the sort of thing to deal with when you start fiddling around with Win2K's partition stuff. You can hide the partitions using PM, but Win2K's disk manager will see them nonetheless, because irrespective of the partition type it will just count (enumerate) *all* MBR and EMBR entries. You can't hide MBR entries from Win2K, no matter if it can read them natively or not. (FYI, a hidden partition is indicated by nothing but a partition type byte masked with hex 0x10, e.g. type 0b (FAT32) will be 1b, etc.) As far as volume identifiers (GUIDs) are involved: -------------------------------------------------- Win2K puts info about all (yes ALL) partitions on your hard disk*S* + all removable media HW ever seen on your PC on HD # 1 cyl. 0 track 0, behind the MBR itself. If something or someone pokes around in this database w/o Win2K's consent, or if Win2K finds that the database doesn't adequately refer to the current partition scheme, it will think the volume info is ruined and it will reassign new GUIDs to all partitions (...rattling HD after booting up, long delays, very irresponsive OS, and finally a message "New devices are installed, reboot?"). A potential problem is that the GUIDs on cyl. 0 must match the GUIDs entries in the mount table in the registry. If not, you run the risk that Win2K may boot but then can't find the program userinit.exe, which is essential for logging in. If so, that is the end of your Win2K => reinstallation warranted. Symptoms: it says: "Applying personal settings", then very soon "Saving your settings", sometimes in an endless loop. The way out in this case is to wipe the GUIDs on cyl. # 0, that's what FDISK /MBR does. Win2K will then reinitialize its Volume ID / partition database. But sometimes even this won't help. Now, just think what will happen if you've successfully restored & run one of your Win2K versions, which has initialized a proper GUID database beyond the MBR, and you are prepared to boot into another, freshly restored Win2K. What will that freshly restored Win2K think about the GUIDs it encounters, and which surely don't match the ones it still has in its mount table in its restored registry? Think on. Perhaps this freshly installed Win2K manages to amend the GUIDs to something it can live with. Then you want to boot again into the earlier restored/installed Win2K. What will that think about the GUIDs it will now encounter (which have been overwritten by the other Win2K)? And so on...... The point here is, you want to _restore_ Win2K, and a restored Win2K always has a mount table in its registry that is suited to a particular HD and partition scheme, and which might no longer fit the actual situation on the HD. So once again, as with Win2K's Disk Manager you are able to assign arbitrary drive letters to any non-boot partition, or just delete the drive letter (leaving the partition itself untouched), I really see no advantage in your proposed partition scheme. It will just make things more complicated. Better have one primary partition with Win98 or Win2K (doesn't matter) plus Win2K's boot manager on it and install other Windozes in logical partitions. Just my .02 c > > In addition, Win2K uses Logical Volume Management, > which is an > > abstraction of Win9x's partitions and drive letters, > and a > > restored Win2K might complain bitterly about missing > drive letters, > > missing paging files, and GUIDs (=volume indicators > which are on > > cyl. 0 track 0 somewhere in an undocumented place > beyond the MBR). > > You also run the risk of seeing it log in and log > out immediately > > again, a consequence of Win2K not being able to find > userinit.exe, > > which in turn is a consequence of not finding its > mount points. > > I'd think the approach I suggested above would get > around those problems... no? I have never used PM together with Win2K, so I can't tell for sure. But I would think: No, not quite. You can't fool Win2K's Disk management, not even with PM. > > Maybe you are lucky, you can try to restore to a > partition with > > the same drive letter and then do a FDSISK/ MBR from > DOS (yes DOS) > > - this will reinit the LVM info (don't forget the > boot stuff on > > c:\). > > Oh man... running FDSISK/ MBR on a Libretto with or > without EZ-Drive loaded always scares me. The world > of MBRs, how many backup copies of them PM, EZ-Drive > and who knows what else creates, has caused me a world > of problems in the past. Yes. The big problem is EZ-drive. I would dump that ASAP. You simply do not need it when you run Win2K. But yes I know, many list members simply can't imagine a life w/o EZ-drive...... Same goes for Partition Magic. Perhaps only the very newest versions are sufficiently Win2K Volume Management aware, but older versions might just screw up things. I have never ever used EZ-drive or PM on my Lib, and in the six years that I have got it and on the 4 or 5 hard disks that I used in it and the 5 to 10 times per hard disk I reinstalled all OS-es I have never ever encountered the endless complications induced by EZ-drive you and others described. > Jim Drouillard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > Normally Win98 will run on any partition except that > > io.sys, msdos.sys, autoexec.bat, config.sys, etc. > must > > be on first partition of first hard drive. If Win2k > > is installed then boot.ini is used to select which > OS > > to run. > > > You guys are talking about a W2000 boot manager. I'm > lost there. Does W2000 have a "Bootmagic/lilo/System > Commander" like function that can be used to boot > multiple OSs on a number of partitions? This is all > new to me. Yes Matt yes! you seem to begin to understand :-) Just peek into the file C:\boot.ini (normally hidden/system/readonly), that is the configuration file of Win2K's boot mgr. If you have just Win2K it will boot the default, i.e. the only Win2K, w/o any delay (as there is no choice :-) ). But if you have more than one Windows installed, it will present you with a boot menu. > >If Win98 is selected then msdos.sys tells it > > where to look for the rest of the OS. Not sure if > > Win2k bootloader will allow you to put entire Win98 > > on Yes you can boot W98 on a logical partition with Win2K's boot manager. > > a logical partition but it should allow you to have > > multiple installs of Win2k on different partitions > > (also selected on boot from the options in > boot.ini). Philip
