NT Perplexing problems

[martyv]

There are two problems I have encountered.

1. I am not seeing the windows logon box when NT starts. No errors occur and
the cursor arrow does appear, but no logon.
This is not a timeout issue because I have left the machine in this state
overnight.

2. Attempting to gain access to the machine to try to address problem 1 (by
as yet undetermined method) I installed a second
copy of windows NT in a separate folder on the same drive. Now the disk layout
is as follows

C: NTFS 15M
D: NTFS 1026M
E: NTFS volume set comprised of 3 partitions (2G 4G and 21G)

The new installation sees the first two partitions as NTFS but sees the last 3
partitions as raw. I tried using ftedit.exe from the
NT resource kit which allows it to see the volume set but not the filesystem.
How can I get the second NT installation to access
drive E as NTFS?


System: Compaq EVO laptop 256M memory

Note: Booting the original install with the /sos flag shows that chkdsk is run
on C,D & E and all are seen as NTFS...for whatever
that is worth


Any help would be much appreciated.

Regards,

Martin

 

[wolluf]

did you try VGA mode? last known good config? (on the original).

have you tried booting the original since installing the second (presume you have a menu entry for it - or can add one to boot.ini if not)

btw - the NTFS volume set on drive E: - this is one 'drive' spanning several physical disks? Or is it?
Also, are C: and D: primary partitions?

 

[oaklea2000]

When you are installing are you saying YES to big drive support - if so - this is the problem as NT4 pre SP4 does not correctly recognise larger Hard DIsk's regardless of Partition size.

 

[martyv]

Some clarifications..

This laptop system has a single hard drive which has been partitioned as shown above. The E: volume set is composed of the 3 pieces on a single drive. All three
logical volumes (C,D &E) are NTFS. The second installation sees drive E but not the filesystem on it.

Again, booting the original install with /basevideo or to 'known good config' does not help. The results is still a system that does not display a logon dialog box.

 

[wolluf]

I'm still confused as to the setup. I've never heard of 'The E: volume set is composed of the 3 pieces on a single drive' configuration. afaik, if you have a single drive with NT, you can have up to 4 Primary partitions or up to 3 Primary Partitions and one extended partition. The extended partition can be split into logical drives (each with its own drive letter). So, are C: and D: Primary partitions and E: is really logical drives, E:, F: and G: or could you explain otherwise (as I'm sure I won't be only person who doesn't know about the 'otherwise'). Thanks.

 

[martyv]

You can create a volume set from an extended partition via the disk manager.
For example, if you have an extended partition followed by unallocated/unpartitioned space you can select both items and choose "Extend Volume Set" to create a new volume set. This volume set will consist of the original extended partition and whatever chunk you selected of the unallocated space. As a result the logical volume will be in more than one piece.

NT volume sets can also be configured as stripe sets across multiple physical disks.

I believe that the motivation for making the volume set in my case was to be able to install NT on an 8G drive. Regardless, that is the current configuration that I have to work with.

 

[wolluf]

marty - well I've learned something, anyway! Unfortunately, as I've obviously no experience with your filestore setup, I don't think I can be much help. Just note that NT help mentions such volume sets not visible to operating systems without this functionality (I know that shouldn't apply to second copy of NT... - one question about that, it is serviced packed to same level as original?)