Re: FIXMBR redux

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From: Richard Rudek (x_at_invalid.xxx)
Date: 06/07/04 

Date: Mon, 07 Jun 2004 21:37:15 +1000

On Fri, 4 Jun 2004 16:48:45 -0500, "*Vanguard*"
<reply-to-newsgroup@to-email.use-Reply.obey-signature.invalid> wrote:

>William B. Lurie said in news:40BDECA0.6020903@nospam.org:
>> Sharon F wrote:
>>> On Wed, 02 Jun 2004 07:40:05 -0400, William B. Lurie wrote:

snip]

>> So I went back to where I was a month ago, when I tried making
>> what PowerQuest describes as a "copy". I installed my Slave
>> drive as Master and formatted it anew, as Active and Primary,
>> and empty. I then jumpered it as Slave, put it in Slave
>> position, put my Master on as Master, and used Drive Image 7.0
>> to "Copy One Drive to Another This copes the contents of
>> your Drive directly to another drive". Actually, I copied only
>> the first (Master) partition of my Master Drive to the Slave.

I've not used it, but presumably your doing ALL OF THIS using Drive
Image's PQRE ?.

>>
>> I used Partition Magic to verify that the Slave Drive contained
>> very close to the same number of bytes as the Master OS. I then
>> shut down, jumpered the Slave Drive as a Single Drive, put it in
>> Master position on the cable, no other drive present, and booted
>> up. It got to where I was when I did this same thing a month
>> ago, so at least it's reproducible. It booted through BIOS, to
>> the place where I could select XP Pro or Recovery Console, I
>> picked XP, and got the black Windows logo screen, and then after
>> the usual wait, the light blue Windows logo screen, which should
>> say "loading your personal settings"........and there it hangs.

[snip]

>Boy, sure sounds like what you did should have worked. The only thing
>that comes to mind at the moment is disk signatures. Each disk has an
>area where a unique signature of hex bytes get written to it. Windows
>NT/2000/XP will use the signatures to identify the device. That is why
>you can configure a partition on a disk as C:, insert a new hard drive
>in the physical scan chain that positions it before your old drive, and
>C: will still be seen as the partition on your now second hard drive.

And this, I think, is the key !

I just reproduced this behaviour on a testbed system, by changing the
logical drive letter assigned to a System/Boot Volume from C: to G:...
:)

In your case, however, I will bet that it is the exact opposite of my
test. ie Your System/Boot Volume is G: (or perhaps another drive
letter).

Window Setup will do this sometimes, when there is an existing primary
partition, setting it up the new Windows installation to boot from a
Logical partition, which is usually mounted as G:. Some Brand-name
systems will, consequently, be shipped this way.

Basically, when the 'cloned' copy is booted, it's Disk signature, if it
has one, is NOT the same as the original, and thus when Windows looks in
the registry at boot-up (HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevices), there isn't an
entry for it, and it will then assign this 'new' volume a drive letter
based upon the 'order' it enumerates partitions/volumes. In this case,
first Active Primary Partition on the first Hard disk, it will be C:.

In other words, at the Welcome screen, Windows tries to initate various
logon and setup tasks, which are stored within the registry (likely the
user-related stuff), but it is failing or try to look in the wrong
place.

Specifically what it's trying to load, I don't know (yet). But it is
probably the whole of the 'user' Registry Hive. Why it doesn't produce
an error message, I think, is just an oversight (bug).

So what to do ?

Looking through the Drive Image 7.0 Help file ("Restoring a Single Drive
Using the PQRE"), there is an option to "Restore the original disk
signature". Try enabling that.

If that doesn't work, then things are likely to get ugly (technical). If
you really want to resolve this, I'll (we'll) need more details about
the system setup. First and foremost, is the wether the System/Boot
Volume is C: or not. Other low-level details, such as those presented by
PowerQuest's PTEDIT32.EXE utility, may be needed. It should be installed
already, in the "Program Files\PowerQuest\Drive Image 7.0\UTILITY"
folder.

I don't have a copy of Drive Image 7.0 here, either.

[snip]

PS: I stumbled across this thread from a link on the Windows XP expert
forums. I don't normally subscribe to this newsgroup, and had to
subscribe to answer this message. I have NOT read all of the other
messages, yet either, so be aware [Insert usually warnings, going of
half-cocked, etc] :).

PPS: like others on this forum (I'm sure), I'm quite busy, so don't
expect too much from me. But I hope I was able to contribute. I'll
likely unsubscribe from this group, as it's generally not one that I am
interested in. But time permitting, I'll try to monitor this thread for
a few days.

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