H
Harvey Gratt
Rod said:Rod Speed wrote:
Rod Speed wrote:
Bob H wrote:
Harvey Gratt wrote:
Bob H wrote:
Harvey Gratt wrote:
Bob H wrote:
Harvey Gratt wrote:
Bob H wrote:
Harvey Gratt wrote:
Rod Speed wrote:
Bob H wrote:
Harvey Gratt wrote:
I'm trying to verify whether PartitionMagic 8.01 will
automatically "fix" the boot.ini file and the partition boot
sector where it resides during the rearrangement of disk
partitions.
Specifically, say I have an XP primary, active partition as the
third partition on my HDD. The first two partitions are logical
partitions. Initially, the boot.ini file would point to the
third partition.
If I now delete the first two partitions so as to make the XP
partition the first partition, will PartitionMagic
automatically rewrite the boot.ini file to make it point to the
first partition so as to make subsequent boot-ups possible?
Thanks,
Harvey
I wouldn't have thought so. You are in fact delting the boot.ini
file when you delete the first 2 partitions, so where will the
boot.ini file be? Deleted as well, I say.
You will have to create another boot.ini file on the same
partition you want to boot from.
I appear to be mis-understanding something. I thought the
boot.ini file resided in the "partition boot sector" which, in
the original setup, would have been located in the third
partition (active, primary).
If not where does it reside? Are the "partition boot sector
(PBS)", boot.ini file always located at a specific location on
the HDD - I thought this was true only of the MBR, which in turn
pointed to the PBS (which is located at an arbitrary location).
Is my understanding incorrect - it would appear so.
Sounds comprehensively mangled to me.
The boot.ini file is a file in a particular partition, it wont
even fit in a PBS.
More likely something works out which is the bootable partition
on a particular physical drive and something works out where the
boot.ini is from that and reads it from the appropriate partition.
Dont know the answer to your original question, I'd personally
ghost the entire physical drive so you can recover gracefully
of PM didnt handle the deletion of the logical drives properly.
Cant see why it shouldnt.
I guess this gets down to understanding the boot process. My
current state of confusion is:
1. The MBR is read from a fixed location on the HDD.
2. The code in the MBR eventually points to a bootable partition
(there may be more than one, but I guess only one is active at a
time) and jumps to the PBS of the active partition.
3. Code in the PBS then starts to load the OS, eventually reading
the boot.ini file located in that partition's root directory (as
you indicated)
4. Now, if the boot.ini file contains lines for mutiple OS's, a
menu appears. A selection here would then cause a jump to the
approriate partition for the loading of the selected OS.
My head hurts. Does the above seem correct? If not, what does
happen?
Thanks,
Harvey
Where is NTLDR? Which partition is that on?
Well, if my understanding is remotely correct, I would think it's
located on the active partition pointed to by the MBR. I guess the
MBR points to the PBS which contains code to start the loader
function (NTLDR). NTLDR is probably located on the active partition
and it would access the boot.ini file.
Harvey
Go to: Windows Explorer, Tools, Folder Options.
In Folder Options click on the View tab at the top.
Then un tick Hide protected operating system files.
When you have done that, have a look in the root of each partition to
loctate NTLDR. So, is it in the OS partition or any of the others?
Anyway to keep things nice and sipmle, if you are only using 1 OS why
don't you just put boot.ini in the ctaive Primary partition, if you
are going to delete the others.
It is in the root directory. So it appears that the 4 step process I
described is essentially correct. However, this thread seems to have
wandered off course.
I guess the answer to the original question is that PartitionMagic (PM)
WILL NOT correctly change the boot.ini file. So one question is, will
the boot process get all the way to the active partition boot sector
(PBS),via the MBR, (which I assume that PM CAN correctly set up) and
then hang because the boot.ini file points to a non-existent partition
(originally the third partition)?
A second question is:
Assume I install the Recovery Console in the OS in the original third
partition. When I go thru all the manipulations as above, will the boot
process bring up the Recovery Console (so I can fix the boot.ini file
without needing an XP cd) instead of hanging?
Thanks,
Harvey
What root directory of what partition is NTLDR in?
I believe in the KISS theory, and like I said, if you are only using ONE
OS, why don't you make sure NTLDR and boot.ini are in the root directory
of the first active partition for the OS.
I would not put trust in PM to rebuild/make place any files on another
partition from whence they were moved. Sounds too complicated to me.
On my IBM laptop they (ntldr and boot.ini)are in the root directory (C:\)
of the active, bootable partition containing XP.
Harvey
Ok, so if that is the present case, what was your point then?????
If you install either Win2k or WinXP on any partition other than the first
active primary partition, the OS will by default place boot.ini, NTLDR and
NTDETECT.COM among others on that first active primary partition. If you
delete that partition, then you cannot boot WinXp or Win2k without first
moving/copying those files to the root of the OS and then making that the
first active partition.
But, whatever way you do it, the said files must be in the first active
partition.
Perhaps someone else who is more knowledgeable about the multiboot process
may have further information here. I know you did not say anything about
multiboot, but what you want to do, if I unsderstand you correctly goes
someway towards that.
The original "point" was that the OS resided in the third partition of the
HDD. The first two partitions was logical partitions and were to be
deleted. The ntldr and boot.ini files are located in the root directory of
the third partition (the only active, bootable partition). The boot.ini
file would have an ARC path pointing to this third partition.
So, the original question was could PM be used to delete the first 2
partitions (yes to this) and would PM correctly fix the boot.ini file so
that the ARC path pointed to the first partition where the OS (ntldr and
boot.ini are in the root directory of this partition) now resides
(apparently not).
This appears to be where you are confusing yourself.
Since everything is setup to boot the partition that the OS is installed
on, I cant see why deleting the logical partitions changes anything on
that. It isnt as if there is something that says 'boot the third partition'
and so that fails when it becomes the only partition after the deletion
of the logical partitions.
A second question was (assuming the boot.ini pointed to the wrong
partition):
Assume I install the Recovery Console in the OS in the original
third partition. When I go thru all the manipulations as above, will
the boot process bring up the Recovery Console (so I can fix the
boot.ini file without needing an XP cd) instead of hanging?
You can always boot the CD and do whatever repair is necessary from there.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;330184
The obvious approach would be to run bootcfg /scan
and get it to re-enumerate the available OSs, just one
in your case, with its new partition number.
On my Dell Desktop, which has 2 partitions (the first is a diagnostic
partition, the second is the XP partition) the boot.ini file looks like:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
I would think that the boot.ini entries of ...partition(2) would have to
change to ...partition(1) after the diagnostic partition is deleted.
Presumably. Havent actually tried it tho.
Otherwise, boot.ini points to a non-existent partition from which the OS is
to be loaded, and the boot process would hang.
But you arent necessarily going to just delete that
diagnostic partition. Or are you planning to expand the
OS partition to include the space its currently occupying ?
The idea was to completely remove the diagnostic partition, leaving only one
partition (OS partition). I assume that would imply that the OS partition
would be expanded to reclaim the space obtained by deleting the diagnostic
partition.
To return to your original question, I'd be surprised if
PM actually edits the boot.ini, but I havent tried that.
Not sure what happens if the boot.ini has a non existent partition number
in that line you listed. Its possible that if there is only one partition on the
physical drive it will just assume that thats the one intended.
No big deal if it doesnt, just boot the CD and run bootcfg /rebuild
from the recovery console and have it redo the boot.ini and fix it.
Yeah, the XP cd route appears to be the way to handle this. However, my
other question was whether one could install the XP recovery Console
prior to manipulating the partitions.
What I hope would happen is that the Recovery Console comes up first,
before the boot process hangs trying to find the non-existent partition.
The repair could then be done at that point without needing the cd.
Thanks,
Harvey
