Disaster Recovery Failed, won't reboot!

[keeblepj]

Have just replaced my PC's hard drive after a failure. I re-installed the original Windows XP Home from the Dell CD, followed by the Maxtor One-Touch drivers and Retrospect. I did multiple reboots to ensure all was well and stable - it was. I carried out a full restore from my Maxtor and everything went like clockwork (even the desktop icons returned) until the first reboot after the file transfer to complete the restore operation.

 

All I got was "Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem. Could not read from selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware configuration."

 

Help please. If I can't fix this then it's a complete manual system rebuild and a restore of user files only. In which cas I don't really neeed Retrospect!

 

Thanks in anticipation.

[kaikow]

Quote:

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Have just replaced my PC's hard drive after a failure. I re-installed the original Windows XP Home from the Dell CD, followed by the Maxtor One-Touch drivers and Retrospect. I did multiple reboots to ensure all was well and stable - it was. I carried out a full restore from my Maxtor and everything went like clockwork (even the desktop icons returned) until the first reboot after the file transfer to complete the restore operation.

 

All I got was "Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem. Could not read from selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware configuration."

 

Help please. If I can't fix this then it's a complete manual system rebuild and a restore of user files only. In which cas I don't really neeed Retrospect!

 

Thanks in anticipation.

 

---

 

A random thought.

 

What brand of PC do you have?

 

A number of brands have an awful "hidden" partition on the C drive.

You have to first recreate that partition, in addition to formatting the drive.

If this is the case, the PC should have a tool for creating the partition.

 

I doubt that Retrospect backs up such partitions, but I guess Dantz can respond here to verify this.

 

P.S. I just posted this identical response to another query in another forum. Does Dantz have a KB article that addresses the possibility I raised.

[keeblepj]

Thanks Howard,

You are absolutely spot-on. It's a Dell and it does indeed have a hidden partition. I never realised at first as there was only one drive letter, but there is a tiny partition 1 which apparently holds some disc diagnostics. I realised this when I repeated the restore and checked the boot.ini file before reboot. It then became evident that the C-drive of my old disc is on partition 2, hence when restored it looked there for Windows onl to find no partition 2.

 

Problem is that, when re-installing Windows on a new hard drive, if you manually configure the new drive with 2 partitions it calls partition 1 the C-drive and the big partition 2 the D-drive. Can't see how to change this. Currently waiting on Dell for some guidance.

 

Why do they have to make life so complicated!!!

 

cheers,

Phil

[kaikow]

Quote:

---

Thanks Howard,

You are absolutely spot-on. It's a Dell and it does indeed have a hidden partition. I never realised at first as there was only one drive letter, but there is a tiny partition 1 which apparently holds some disc diagnostics. I realised this when I repeated the restore and checked the boot.ini file before reboot. It then became evident that the C-drive of my old disc is on partition 2, hence when restored it looked there for Windows onl to find no partition 2.

 

Problem is that, when re-installing Windows on a new hard drive, if you manually configure the new drive with 2 partitions it calls partition 1 the C-drive and the big partition 2 the D-drive. Can't see how to change this. Currently waiting on Dell for some guidance.

 

Why do they have to make life so complicated!!!

 

cheers,

Phil

 

---

 

It may be possible to modify boot.ini to work around this, but I think it is safer to wait for Dell to tell you what to do.

 

I'm sure that the computer came with instructions on how to recreate the hidden partition when it gets clobbered.

[natew]

Hi

 

 

 

This may help too:

 

 

 

 

 

http://kb.dantz.com/article.asp?article=5445&p=2

 

 

 

Thanks

 

Nate

[keeblepj]

Tech Support ran out of steam and gave me the number for Dell Software Support. The guy there understood the problem and said he could talk me through the configuration of the new hard drive, for £58 !!!!!!!

 

Absolute blackmail. Quite good business, though : Configure the original hard drive in a devious way so that Back-Up software can't restore to it, then, when your back's against the wall charge big bucks to tell you how to get around it.

 

This will be the lat PC I get from Dell!

 

Phil

 

p.s. tried modifying boot.ini, btw, but it only partly worked. Windws did boot, but not properly, lots of stuff missing (e.g. task bar, applicatins etc) so there must be other files that look for partition 2

[keeblepj]

Nate,

Thanks for the KB article. I'll give it a try. Can you just clarify one point for me thugh :

step 3 of the sequence confuses me. Is step 4/5 not referring to the finding the boot.ini file of the fresh XP installation on the new C-drive prior to restoration? Not sure what the catalogue files have to do with this at this point.

 

Thanks, I'm off to try again ...

 

Phil

[awnews]

Quote:

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Absolute blackmail. Quite good business, though : Configure the original hard drive in a devious way so that Back-Up software can't restore to it, then, when your back's against the wall charge big bucks to tell you how to get around it.

 

 

---

 

A couple of options (for the future):

 

1) Reformat the entire drive, as a single partition, when you get it and before you start using the machine. Something of a hassle, esp. when you're wanting to use the new machine you just bought.

 

2) Image the entire drive (all partitions) to a file saved to another harddrive (e.g. a second backup drive on the same PC) using Norton Ghost. A restore then just requires an image restore followed by a Retrospect restore.

[kaikow]

Quote:

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Nate,

Thanks for the KB article. I'll give it a try. Can you just clarify one point for me thugh :

step 3 of the sequence confuses me. Is step 4/5 not referring to the finding the boot.ini file of the fresh XP installation on the new C-drive prior to restoration? Not sure what the catalogue files have to do with this at this point.

 

Thanks, I'm off to try again ...

 

Phil

 

---

 

Using fdisk, do you see both the Dell hidden partition and the partition for C?

If so, post your boot.ini here. Might be a very simple edit.

 

Dell's tech support, at least the person you spoke to, is incompeternt.

This is a basic recovery issue that every Dell support person surely must know about.

And, there just has to an article in the Dell knowledge base that addresses this issue.

Try searching for all articles that include "boot.ini".

 

The following is my boot.ini. I've got 4 OS on 3 hard drives. Might give you an idea of how to change the partition numbers.

Code:

---

  [boot loader]

timeout=30

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(2)\WINNT

[operating systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(2)\WINNT="J: Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

signature(32a7e53f)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="G: Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

signature(32a7e53f)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="F: Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="C: Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

C:\="MS-DOS 7"

---

[keeblepj]

OK, tried the advice in Nate's KB article. It did boot up on the first restart after the restore, but on the 2nd restart (that was required to complete the restore) it came back (after an age!) with a screen of hope that was quickly dashed. It looked promising, but there was no taskbar/start button/system tray. Launching Word or XL launched an installer window with multiple error messages to follow, tifs wouldn't display etc etc etc. Shut down and restart takes for ever. Checking the processes running reveals that CPU is max'd out with a DellMMKb.exe so I suspect that this piece of dross is trying to access the stuff in the old hidden partition.

 

Happily I was running dual back-ups with retrospect : first a full weekly system back-up, but also a user file duplication.

 

On the basis that the above didn't work, and I don't know what othr Dell stuff there may be that may trip me up, I'm coming round to the idea of a full system rebuild fom scratch with a restore of user files. This is essentially GoAWest's option 1 but 2 1/2 years after I bought the machine!

 

Waddaya think, fellas??

 

Phil

[natew]

Hi

 

It sounds to me like the restore was incomplete for some reason. Will the machine boot to the point where you can restore a different snapshot?

 

Thanks

Nate

[kaikow]

Quote:

---

Hi

 

It sounds to me like the restore was incomplete for some reason. Will the machine boot to the point where you can restore a different snapshot?

 

Thanks

Nate

 

---

 

Sounds to me that either the DR CD was not correctly buit in the first place, thus missing drivers, etc.; or there's something incomplete about the files being restored.

 

There seem to be two options:

 

1. Pay Dell the money to instruct how to rebuild.

2. Rebuid the entire disk on your own.

 

1 seems the safest choice.

[philhu]

To force your restore to partition 2, you need to create a partition one that is about 32meg that is NOT readable by the bios, so it does not get a drive letter.

 

So, what I have done is to boot a LINUX cd, run that fdisk, create the 32meg partition and force it to a partition type of Linux swap or some rubbish like that.

 

Then, your C partition will be partition 2, since the bios ignores partition 1.

 

I had this proboem on an ide disk, when I took out a cerc-100 raid. It WAS disk 5 and it became disk 1. As soon as I figured out how the (braindead) dell bios worked, it made sense.

 

phil

[kaikow]

Quote:

---

OK, tried the advice in Nate's KB article. It did boot up on the first restart after the restore, but on the 2nd restart (that was required to complete the restore) it came back (after an age!) with a screen of hope that was quickly dashed. It looked promising, but there was no taskbar/start button/system tray. Launching Word or XL launched an installer window with multiple error messages to follow, tifs wouldn't display etc etc etc. Shut down and restart takes for ever. Checking the processes running reveals that CPU is max'd out with a DellMMKb.exe so I suspect that this piece of dross is trying to access the stuff in the old hidden partition.

 

Happily I was running dual back-ups with retrospect : first a full weekly system back-up, but also a user file duplication.

 

On the basis that the above didn't work, and I don't know what othr Dell stuff there may be that may trip me up, I'm coming round to the idea of a full system rebuild fom scratch with a restore of user files. This is essentially GoAWest's option 1 but 2 1/2 years after I bought the machine!

 

Waddaya think, fellas??

 

Phil

 

---

 

If you are going to reformat the drive anyway, make sure that you create at least 2 logical drives, preferable 3+.

 

C would be the installed OS and the usual suspects.

D would be for user stuff, other apps, etc.

E could be held in reserve in case you ever needed to make a dual boot system.

F... could be held in reserve or used as needed.

 

NEVER create a drive with ONLY 1 logical drive.

 

If you make a drive FAT32, do not make the drive larger than 8189MB. This restricts cluster size to 4096 bytes. Or use NTFS.

[awnews]

Quote:

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===> NEVER create a drive with ONLY 1 logical drive.

 

If you make a drive FAT32, do not make the drive larger than 8189MB. This restricts cluster size to 4096 bytes. Or use NTFS.

 

---

 

Why not?

 

I've stopped partitioning at all (even though Partition Magic makes it easy to partition, even after the fact) and format all drives as single NTFS volumes. And I don't have to deal with running out of space on one parition while another has space, copying/moving files between partions, dealing with annoying software that *insists* on putting stuff on the C: drive even when you're trying to install it on the D: drive, etc.

[kaikow]

Quote:

---

Quote:

---

 

===> NEVER create a drive with ONLY 1 logical drive.

 

If you make a drive FAT32, do not make the drive larger than 8189MB. This restricts cluster size to 4096 bytes. Or use NTFS.

 

---

 

Why not?

 

I've stopped partitioning at all (even though Partition Magic makes it easy to partition, even after the fact) and format all drives as single NTFS volumes. And I don't have to deal with running out of space on one parition while another has space, copying/moving files between partions, dealing with annoying software that *insists* on putting stuff on the C: drive even when you're trying to install it on the D: drive, etc.

 

---

 

Multiple partitions necessary to have multiboot systems.

Multiple partions allow better file management by being able to isolate non-OS files from the rest and backing up each drive separately.

Facilitates backinng up files.

 

And, on a multiboot system one can put shared stuff in a separate drive, e.g.

 

08/23/2003 17:23 <DIR> Cookies

08/23/2003 05:20 <DIR> ..

08/23/2003 05:23 <DIR> Application Data

08/23/2003 08:21 <DIR> HK Outlook Express Identity

08/23/2003 13:57 <DIR> Local Settings

08/23/2003 17:22 <DIR> Favorites

08/23/2003 05:20 <DIR> .

08/24/2003 14:03 <DIR> OEBackup Output

08/29/2003 16:22 <DIR> EudoraMailboxes

11/19/2004 16:26 <DIR> Recent

09/11/2003 18:26 <DIR> My Documents

 

The above are on a separate drive and shared by all the OS on one PC.

 

It's just a matter of adjusting one's habits.

 

Use whatever works best for you.

[awnews]

OK, thanks for the opinions and comments.

 

From my POV, IMHO, etc.:

 

> Multiple partitions necessary to have multiboot systems.

I don't bother with multiple OSes any more. Too much effort to maintain separate systems and not much reason for me personally (not a gamer, don't need to run old W98-only stuff, etc.). On the rare occasions where I've needed multi-boot (Windows and Linux), I've set up a second *drive* for the other OS or have a couple of PCs set up for different things.

 

> Multiple partitions allow better file management by being able to isolate non-OS files from the rest and backing up each drive separately.

Don't agree here. The OS stuff is pretty much all in the /Windows (/WinNT, etc.) folder regardless of partitioning. Programs are pretty much all in /Program Files or /Programs and data is stored elsewhere (/Documents and Settings if you follow MS's methods, but I also have a separate /MyDocs area). Between this and the use of Retrospect Selectors (for location or file types), I have pretty good control of what I choose to back up. Also, most of my systems do have multiple drives (e.g. the OS + data, a backup drive, sometimes a dedicated data-only drive to make it easy to swap in a bigger data drive in the future).

 

> Facilitates backing up files.

As above, I know where the stuff is (location) and type of stuff (*.doc, *.exe, + Selectors) so I don't have any problem backing up what I want.

 

> And, on a multiboot system one can put shared stuff in a separate drive, e.g.

> The above are on a separate drive and shared by all the OS on one PC.

The problem I've run into with partition drives, esp. with ones partitioned to the extent you use in your example, is that I've *always* run into problems running out of space on one partition while others still have plenty of space. So then I'd end up reformatting, more recently running PartitionMagic to resize a bunch of stuff, etc.

 

> It's just a matter of adjusting one's habits.

> Use whatever works best for you.

I'll agree that it's a matter of personal preference and usage. So I wouldn't agree with the "NEVER create a drive with ONLY 1 logical drive" statement since that's exactly what I do, based on my knowledge and experience and having tried it both way, and the single partition works fine for me.

[kaikow]

Quote:

---

OK, thanks for the opinions and comments.

 

From my POV, IMHO, etc.:

 

> Multiple partitions necessary to have multiboot systems.

I don't bother with multiple OSes any more. Too much effort to maintain separate systems and not much reason for me personally (not a gamer, don't need to run old W98-only stuff, etc.). On the rare occasions where I've needed multi-boot (Windows and Linux), I've set up a second *drive* for the other OS or have a couple of PCs set up for different things.

 

> Multiple partitions allow better file management by being able to isolate non-OS files from the rest and backing up each drive separately.

Don't agree here. The OS stuff is pretty much all in the /Windows (/WinNT, etc.) folder regardless of partitioning. Programs are pretty much all in /Program Files or /Programs and data is stored elsewhere (/Documents and Settings if you follow MS's methods, but I also have a separate /MyDocs area). Between this and the use of Retrospect Selectors (for location or file types), I have pretty good control of what I choose to back up. Also, most of my systems do have multiple drives (e.g. the OS + data, a backup drive, sometimes a dedicated data-only drive to make it easy to swap in a bigger data drive in the future).

 

> Facilitates backing up files.

As above, I know where the stuff is (location) and type of stuff (*.doc, *.exe, + Selectors) so I don't have any problem backing up what I want.

 

> And, on a multiboot system one can put shared stuff in a separate drive, e.g.

> The above are on a separate drive and shared by all the OS on one PC.

The problem I've run into with partition drives, esp. with ones partitioned to the extent you use in your example, is that I've *always* run into problems running out of space on one partition while others still have plenty of space. So then I'd end up reformatting, more recently running PartitionMagic to resize a bunch of stuff, etc.

 

> It's just a matter of adjusting one's habits.

> Use whatever works best for you.

I'll agree that it's a matter of personal preference and usage. So I wouldn't agree with the "NEVER create a drive with ONLY 1 logical drive" statement since that's exactly what I do, based on my knowledge and experience and having tried it both way, and the single partition works fine for me.

 

---

 

The need for multiple OS is caused by the way most apps are implemented.

In particular, two versions of MSFT Office cannot FULLY co-exist in a single OS.

Since I write code in all versions of Office, I have to keep them separate.

 

Ditto for certain CD/DVD recording software, e.g., InCD and Drag-to-Disk cannot co-exist and it is often ne cessary to have both available.

 

Without partitioning a drive, there is no way to do this, so I still say that one should NEVER have just one partition.

 

This thread has strayed, so I am outta here.

[awnews]

> This thread has strayed, so I am outta here.

 

I agree and I'll join you, after one last comment..

 

> Without partitioning a drive, there is no way to do this, so I still say that one should NEVER have just one partition.

 

You're partitioning your drives to meet very specific situations for your specific needs. The average user doesn't install multiple versions of MS Office; a lot of users don't use both (or either) InCD & Drag-to-Disk. I've sometimes used multiple *drives* rather than multiple partitions. So there's a **long** way to go to say "one should NEVER have just one partition."

 

So my advice is -- eat, drink and be merry, and partition or not as you wish, Dell's annoying hidden partition not withstanding.

[keeblepj]

Sorry for absence, was in hospital for emergency surgery on a detached retina. During the convalescence, with little else to occupy me, I rebuilt my entire system from scratch on a single partition. At lesat I know how it's built this time and have left off all the uselesss junk that came with the machine.

 

As there were suspicions about the completeness of the restore I copied across just my user files and now all seems fine. Happily, as well as the weekly full system back-up, I have the Maxtor One Touch button configured to do a duplicate user file back-up, so had a second option to access my user files.

 

Thanks for everyone's help, I've learned a lot.

 

Phil

[kaikow]

Quote:

---

Sorry for absence, was in hospital for emergency surgery on a detached retina. During the convalescence, with little else to occupy me, I rebuilt my entire system from scratch on a single partition. At lesat I know how it's built this time and have left off all the uselesss junk that came with the machine.

 

As there were suspicions about the completeness of the restore I copied across just my user files and now all seems fine. Happily, as well as the weekly full system back-up, I have the Maxtor One Touch button configured to do a duplicate user file back-up, so had a second option to access my user files.

 

Thanks for everyone's help, I've learned a lot.

 

Phil

 

---

 

www,compusa.com is selling Partition Magaic for $9.99 AFTER rebates.

Must be purchased by 27 Nov 2004.

Shipping is one cent!

 

Even I could not resist!

Uncle!

 

I violated my religion and purchased Partition Magic today.

I feel so ashamed!