Boot.ini Problem, Dual Boot, Under Win XP AFTER Clone

[OldVeryOld]

I have copies of Windows XP and Windows 98SE on a dual boot system. I just upgraded to a larger hard drive. Now I can only boot from the menu (which looks the same as it did on the other drive) to Windows XP. When I select Windows 98SE from the boot selection menu, the screen seemed to go black and hang. (I did not change a thing about the Windows 98SE drive. Not its location in the C: drive partition. Not its size. Windows 98SE is just on a larger hard drive. Windows XP is in its own, D: partition, with E: holding some of the XP software and data.)

Is there a quick and easy way to re-write the boot.ini file to permit the dual boot? (I have my original equipment XP CD-ROM.)

There's more about how I've come to this point in my original (how to clone a dual boot system inquiry here,

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1682392

.)

I've summarized what seems relevant to this boot.ini problem here.

I have no DVD back-up of this system, so please don't suggest that I take any chances with the old drive. It's disconnected, and I plan to keep it that way.

Notes:

1. I have no idea what "informated" means in the other post. I believe my intent was "informed". Please forgive the spelling error.

2. Macrium had directed me to a problem discussion related to another failure to clone inquiry when I asked why their Reflect had not been willing to clone my hard drive (which I'd formatted as FAT32). The posting referenced the need to use NTFS instead of FAT32.

3. Yes, as far as I know, I do have legal copies of XP and 98SE. I had the XP CD ROM out days ago to clean off the original, messed-up attempt at formatting and cloning the old hard drive that would not let me boot XP with the new, larger hard drive as a slave installed in the system.

4. Although I am naturally impatient by nature, I almost never use Windows 98SE. (I still want the dual boot option as before.) I state this rare use of 98SE (since I have XP booting on the new drive) to note that although it is close to the top of my "to do" list relative to my computer over the long term, I can live with some delay in overcoming this problem. I don't want to rush off in the wrong direction or mess up the part of the clone that works to experiment with manual modification of boot.ini.

Thanks to any kind person who can help me to fix this problem.

 

[goombawaho]

Post Boot.ini file and post a picture of device management showing disk and partition types/sizes.

 

[OldVeryOld]

Oh, my...

It's gotten worse.

I tried to "fix it".

Now what is wrong doesn't even begin to make sense to me.


1. I used EASEUS (Partition Master) in an attempt to clone my present drive (c:, d:, and e: directors with Windows 98SE on c: and Windows XP on d to a newer, larger drive, to replace the one I'm using now.

2. I use a dual boot system as I just indicated.

3. The dual boot system menu at start-up gives me a choice of Windows 98SE or Windows XP.

4. I could not get the Windows 98SE version to boot from the cloned disk with the cloned disk as the sole drive (and master) in the computer. I could get Windows XP to boot from that disk under those conditions.

5. I did a checkdisk from the Windows 98SE CDROM, and it found some error on the old hard drive in the Windows 98SE directory and fixed it. Bam! I could boot from Windows 98SE on the old hard drive using the dual boot menu.

6. I thought the simplest fix would be to just erase the newer, larger drive, and clone the old drive back to it, so I told EASEUS software to blank the new disk. I woke up this morning, and my computer was off. EASEUS Partition Master had blanked the newer disk.

7. I reinstalled the newer disk as a slave (with a jumper), booted to Windows XP, and told EASEUS software once again to clone the old disk (with its three partitions) to the newer, larger drive.

8. EASEUS asked to reboot to proceed, I told it to go ahead.

9. My computer hung up during the reboot before EASEUS began to copy any files to the newer disk. The system usually paused at a certain point after checking the CD-ROM drives when it WOULD boot, but this time, it didn't just pause. It hung there. It would not boot up. There was no boot menu.

10. I had the old drive as a master, and the newer, larger drive as a slave when it hung up, to permit cloning, but could not get EASEUS to start the clone. The system just hung there after the CD-ROM check.

11. I thought that maybe it was hung up because the newer drive had no drive partition, so I used a Western Digital CD-ROM to produce a C: partition on the newer drive, with the newer drive installed as sole master. It produced the c: directory in the DOS boot from WD CD-ROM.

12. I tried to reboot the system into Windows XP on the old hard drive with the newer drive as the slave.

13. Now the computer, before it ever shows a boot menu, simply says that it can't find an OS. (Before it hung up at this same point.)

14. When I remove the newer drive (as slave) by disconnecting it, and boot from the old drive, the computer shows the boot menu and I can boot into Windows 98SE or Windows XP.

15. I am utterly baffled. I don't have any idea what to do!

16. Why is my computer looking at a slave drive with a blank partition for the OS when there is a master drive installed that has two OS options available?

17. Why doesn't my computer look to the master drive for the boot.ini file and boot as normal with the newer drive installed as a blank slave (well, okay, a blank slave with a one hundred thirty-something gigabyte large c: directory. What is wrong? Is the c: boot-able directory on a slave a problem? Was this somehow related to the newer drive being designated as a "look here for boot file" directory when it was installed alone as a master when I tried to get the system to boot up by creating a directory on a disk that had been zeroed and left with no partitions, that seemed to stop the boot when it was installed as a slave? How do I overcome this if this is the problem when I want to boot with this drive as just a blank slave with the other drive, the old one, as the master? I'm just wildly guessing...)

18. I don't want to mess with my old drive. I have no back-up disks because my DVD writer died!

19. Can you please H E L P !!!! S O S !!!! S O S !!!! S O S !!!!

Thanks!

 

[goombawaho]

Honestly, you have really screwed things up to the point where I would call a professional. I don't think anyone on here is going to read all that and stick with you.

Have them clone the ORIGINAL hard drive to another drive and put only XP on it. Then re-jigger the original drive to boot only to 98. Keep them on separate drives and use a boot loader to choose between the two or even plug/unplug them as needed.

Not elegant, but will get you back to functional. And seriously, get rid of Windows 98. You should ACTUALLY be getting rid of XP as well. To even mention 98 is kind of embarrassing.

 

[vacunita]

First thing I would do, and since you haven't mentioned it is:
[ul]
[li]What does the BIOS say about the hard drives?[/li]

[li]Second what types of Hard drives are they? IDE? SATA? [/li]

[li]If IDE how are the jumpers set? [/li]

[li]If a mix what is the order in BIOS for them? [/li]

[/ul]







----------------------------------
Phil AKA Vacunita
----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

Web & Tech

 

[OldVeryOld]

Vacunita (and others):

First, answering questions:

1. BIOS sees all hard drives, automatically identifies them, and sets them up, in automatic mode. I don't have to designate master or slave in BIOS.

2. Hard drives are EIDE.

3. Old, smaller hard drive was master. Newer, larger hard drive was set for slave when I was trying to clone from one to the other. (With the old one disconnected now, I simply have the newer one set as sole master.)

4. There is only one drive in the system, now that I've been able to re-boot in Windows XP with both drives present, and copy from the old drive to the new drive. All drives show as "healthy" in Windows XP disk management console.

History of Today's Fix to Permit Me to Boot to XP with Both drives functioning:

I somehow fixed the problem today. I was fortunate to have a copy of a Western Digital boot CD-ROM they sent out years ago still with me. I believe it knocked out the old partition on the blank, newer drive... Or something like that. I know that in the end, after trying to knock out the old partition, all I had to do was press enter when the software asked for an OS, and the system booted to Windows XP. I mention this knowing that the first time this happened the system simply stalled on the new, no OS disk.)

The Present Situation - Somewhat Improved:

I'm back to booting to Windows XP on the newer disk. Windows 98SE still won't load from the boot.ini menu on the newer disk. The old disk is now disconnected. I ran the Windows 98SE upgrade install CD, using a DOS boot from the WD CD-ROM, and it checked all the disks and fixed a registry problem in Windows 98SE, but then stopped the install claiming some "F:" disk could not be accessed. I believe this is a RAM drive created by the DOS boot. It's not a fixed disk, and I'm told to reboot without it if I want to re-install Windows 98SE, which seems like it might be one solution, if Windows 98SE simply won't boot up.

I'm waiting for feedback from the web in this regard, including the partition management software company. I'd like to make 98SE bootable as it was before on c:. This either involves something I don't know about partitions and boot sectors and boot.ini files (plenty of room there), or I simply need some way to get the Windows 98SE upgrade CD-ROM to be rendered loadable while I can only create a set-up disk from XP. (I've got until 2014 to replace XP, per Microsoft's life cycle plan for the product. I hope to be in a position to purchase a low end laptop by that time with the OS pre-installed...)

 

[OldVeryOld]

A Long Time Ago, In a System that Used a Smaller Hard Drive...

1. Downloaded "ToDo Backup" from EaseUS. Set it to clone drive, "sector by sector", from old to new drive (using a teeny-tiny "sector by sector" check box at the bottom of the clone hard drive screen that one could miss even if one were looking for it).

2. Rebooted twice after clone into XP (which EaseUS says is required for XP after cloning). I told EaseUS software to shut down system after each sequence of operations it performed.

3. System would boot to either Windows 98SE or Windows XP from boot.ini menu at start-up following "sector by sector" clone using "ToDo Backup", as long as I didn't use EaseUS "Partition Master" to subsequently re-size the Windows 98SE directory. (Had to re-clone the XP partition using "ToDo Backup" when I attempted that action on 98SE partition, move the XP partitions around, and expand one XP partition with "Partition Master" to recover the space I'd intended to expand the 98SE partition to use, because any use of "Partition Master" renders the 98SE partition un-bootable from boot.ini menu at start-up.)

4. I was able to use Partition Master to move and re-size the XP partitions to suit my needs, since this is the operating system I usually employ.

Notes:

1. "ToDo Backup" did most of its work from a Linux screen after closing Windows. It was a free, 15 day download of "ToDo Backup", that I have now de-installed. (I didn't have to do anything with Linux.)

2. On first clone attempt "ToDo Backup" froze in Linux screen, and I had to reboot. It then recovered on its own and automatically proceeded to use Windows XP for clone when machine was booted back into Windows XP. This seemed to work.

3. If you only have Windows XP or later versions of Windows, I suspect that you can achieve satisfactory results using EaseUS "Partition Master" and its "Clone Disk Wizard" from its Wizard menu option at the top of "Partition Master" screen. This option lets you re-size the partitions, move them, and, of course, clone them or an entire drive to another drive with both drives plugged into the same computer. (For clone: New drive as slave. Old drive as master.) The home version was a free download, but only for home use. Don't try to use "Partition Master" with Windows 98SE!!!! Manufacturer says it is not compatible with Windows 98.

4. I was able to clone all old partitions to newer, much larger (greater than 32 GB) FAT32 partitions, including XP. I don't have the fastest system as a result, but I also don't have to wonder which of my old programs would not function with an NTFS (NT file system) formatted partition.

5. EaseUS "Partition Master" and "ToDo Backup" both have a nice option that lets you tell the software to shut down your computer when it is finished with the cloning and re-sizing. It's a happy little touch for home users who want to go to bed and not waste electricity.

 

[madonnac]

could you use something like Microsoft Virtual PC, and run your 98SE programs in the virtual machine?