RE: Cloned XP Professional boot partition - and lost the login prompt
From: SW Shark (Shark_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 06/15/04
- Next message: Carey Frisch [MVP]: "Re: Authentication number not valid for access to Word"
- Previous message: Mark: "Re: Symantec Ghost"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ]
Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2004 04:47:01 -0700
"Tim Staddon" wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Before I go on, I'd like to point out I'm MCSA certified, and I have
> deployed Windows 2000 and XP in corporate environments using RIS, Unattended
> AND 3rd party imaging tools like Zenworks, Ghost and DriveImage.
First of all certification means nothing at all, experience does.
> I have a Seagate 60GB hard disk which has failed its SMART test and is
> rapidly filling up with bad sectors. Thankfully, the 16GB boot partition
> (FAT32) is secure enough at the moment to copy across to another drive, and
> the other partitions (for data) are backed up. This is a development / test
> machine, not networked, and is running XP Professional with the Service Pack
> 2 pre-release installed.
>
> Like I've done a thousand times before, I booted into DOS, and cloned the
> active boot partition to a new hard drive (a Samsung) using Norton Ghost,
> and did a bitwise comparison of the partition on both drives. It did copy
> OK. I've checked the boot sector - fine.
If you have a failed cluster the same cluster would be empty on the cloned partition i.e. a bitwise comparison would be passed.
A clone is of course made before system failure and tested on a similar system to ensure that the image actually works properly!
> When I take the old HDD out and set the new one as primary, it boots to the
> OS menu okay. DOS sees the same C drive as it did with the old disk - a 16GB
> FAT32 partition containing a bunch of apps and a Windows directory for XP
> Pro.
>
> XP boots OK, however the user list never appears on the blue GUI screen.
> CTRL-ALT-DEL doesn't do anything either.
> I get the same thing when I select Last Known Good, Safe Mode, Safe Mode
> with Networking, and Safe Mode Command Prompt.
Probably because this is one of the damaged clusters that had to contain that information.
> I've cloned the drive a second time, this time using Partition Magic 8, and
> AGAIN it's copied fine, verified OK, but still the same problem.
The same problem as before, if you have bad clusters you're going to image them to the new drive.
> The swapfile is definitely copying over OK - I've hardcoded XP to use a
> swapfile of 128MB, it's located on the FAT32 partition.
Why saving the Swap file on a FAT32 on the same harddrive, you gain no extra performance by doing this. As an MCSE you're told to move the SWAP file to another harddrive to improve performance!
> The ONLY thing that's changed in the system, is the hard drive, so AFAIK
> there should be no issue whatsoever in doing a forensic clone of the boot
> partition from the old HDD to its replacement.
>
> So, I'm wondering if Device Manager is fixated on the fact that the boot
> partition is located on a Seagate disk. Could that be the reason why ONLY XP
> seems to have a tough time? In which case, what's the simplest way to force
> it to recognise that the boot drive is now a Samsung?
>
> If I'm lucky I can copy it across a couple more times before the Seagate
> gives out completely, so any suggestions would be gratefully received.
>
You might try a repair of the failed clone and cross all your fingers and toes and hope that it works and I do hope that you've learned from this experience :-)
- Next message: Carey Frisch [MVP]: "Re: Authentication number not valid for access to Word"
- Previous message: Mark: "Re: Symantec Ghost"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ]
Relevant Pages
|
