Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 23:30:04 -0800 (PST)
From: Matt Hanson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [LIB] Question on W2000 & partitioning
Philip,
Thank you for your >very< informative explanation of
how Windows 2000 deals with partitions. It explains a
good deal of the problems I've been experiencing
trying to get W2K and W98 boot booting on my 100.
(On boot managers:)
> Philip Nienhuis <[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote
>
> 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 you may be able to tell, computers in general are a
hobby for me. I know so little about the beasts the
thought at working with troubleshooting and repairing
them sounds like the nightmare of nightmares to me!
8-0
> But: why do you hide primary partitions? On my
> Lib all Windows versions live happily next to
> each other.
I had a problem years back with adding WinNT to a
system set up with Win98. If what you describe about
W2K and partitions applied to WinNT back then, then
that may explain the partition problems I had back
then. After installing WinNT, W98 wouldn't boot
properly as it complained about a couple of partitions
that weren't there. After the 'best minds' I could
find on the problem told me: "FDISK /MBR", and if that
didn't work, reinstall everything... I found my own
work-around. I just created 2 tiny dummy partitions,
and W98 was happy.
So I guess I've just been paranoid about having one
version of Windows seeing another ever since then.
But if WinNT was doing what you describe W2K as doing,
it may have been useless.
> 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.
I read that process on your website, but thought I'd
go the route I had in the past. Guess that was the
beginning of my present problems.
> 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.
Okay... but I'm still afraid I'll loose my logical
drives >8GB if I run that booted from a floppy.
I'm guessing that you run that from a command prompt
from within W2K, right? If I booted the system from a
FD, and ran it from the A:\ prompt, I'd guess that the
Libretto's BIOS limitation would result in the
partition data >8GB being totally wiped out.
> Why is that?
> As far as boot.ini is involved:
> -------------------------------
> If your image was from the very first primary
> partition on your 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 #2or #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.
I've just deleted the 2 partitions I had for W2K and
W98, created new ones in their place, and restored W2K
& W98 images to them respectively. These are
approximations:
Drive 0: 3GB FAT32 Primary [W2000]
Drive 1: 2.5GB FAT32 [Hidden] Primary [W98]
Drive 2: 2.5GB FAT32 Logical [Data]
Drive 3: 70MB FAT32 Logical [Libretto hibernation]
Drive 4: 30GB FAT32 Logical [Data]
I see W2K's Disk Manager has indeed found the W98
partition as you pointed out, so I guess that explains
why the entry in boot.ini now appears like the 2nd
example you gave above:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
> 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.
I've noticed that. It creates a folder named "System
Volume Information" on every drive installed to the
system, as WXP does. After I lost my 30GB >8GB data
partition when PM froze converting the partition to a
logical one, I had to put the drive in the WXP desktop
to copy my MP3s back to a newly created >8GB
partition. I was wondering if the "System Volume
Information" folder it created may have made problems
when I put the drive back in the 110 and booted W2K.
> 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?").
Oh boy... that sounds >very< familiar. I've found
that merely installing or uninstalling EZ-Drive will
cause W2K to go through that.
>> 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.
Well... as I wrote earlier this year or sometime last
year when we thrashed all this out, if you want to do
any partitioning with Partition Magic at all from
within Windows on a >8GB HDD, you >have< to install
EZ-Drive. Otherwise the PM partition GUI will run
right off the right side of the screen, and I assume
PM won't partition correctly.
> 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.
I've been using PM fairly successfully since getting
it to set my hard drive up for Slackware back in 1995.
But it's been dealing with >8GB HDDs in the Librettos
where I've run into all kinds of problems with it. So
I'm more than willing to learn another way.
>> 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.
Is there no way of installing W98 onto another
partition >after< installing W2K, and then getting W2K
to dual-boot both? I've put in so many hours setting
it all up the 1st time, and made images at 3 points
along the way. It'd be a lot easier if I could start
with 2 new partitions. Then restore the image for W2K
made before I set W98 up on another partition. And
then either set up W98, or restore a W98 image to the
2nd partition if I could figure out some way to
dual-boot them both at that point.
Or if I have to reinstall W2K, how about restoring a
W98 image to drive 1, and then do a fresh install of
W2K on drive 0?
Matt
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