Problems moving 4-partition HD to a new one

bachware · 04 Aug 2010

I just got an Intel X24-M 80GB SSD for booting XPSP3 and Win 7 faster, and it looks like the hardware works fine. Here's my situation:

My system was initially a two-drive one where the first, older 40Gb Maxtor IDE drive has two partitions, and the first is System|Active|Primary, starting out as C: that has the BCD, and is formatted to FAT32, since I have an old 98SE installation there to edit a MIDI module's hardware with an old 98SE app that won't run under XP or 7. So, if I want SE, I F8 during XP startup, select 98 SE, and XP does its old sleight of hand with BOOTSECT.DOS, which then loads IO.SYS & starts DOS, and the usual stuff after that to start SE. It's of course oblivious to the NTFS volumes such as its own D: drive, but I can work with the MIDI module when I want.

The second drive is a Maxtor (now Seagate) SATA

unit whose first two partitions have no OSes, but the third has XPSP3 (partition E, and the fourth Win 7 (partition F, both of which start up flawlessly from the BCD multiboot menu with system drives relettered to C: (first | active), D:, E: (XP SP3) and F: (Win7), and the old IDE drives' C: & D: partitions becoming H: & I: via the BCD — I guess...

So, I wanted to multiboot XP and 7 from the new SSD, made four partitions on it, and copied the SATA drive's C:, D:, E: and F: partitions to corresponding partitions on the SSD, so they're clones of C: through F:; but, of course, neither XPSP3 nor Win 7 will start from. Windows will not allow me to do a system image of 7 because of I: (boots to begin with as partition C being FAT32, which it has to be in order for 98SE to start there, that OS being NTFS-ignorant, right?

I copied E: and F: over to the SSD with EASUS Partition Manager, which worked great, but now startup comes up with "corrupted startup" messages. I messed around with drive letters in DISKPART to ensure they're right, but something (BCD?) resets them. How can I get multiboot from the SSD SATA drive to work as it did from the rotary SATA drive? I finally got it to work kind of by doing a startup repair, but then when I try to load profiles, they sit with a rotating circle for a LONG timek, and things crash. I think something low level is wrong. Do I have to do something by hand with BCDEDIT? I can use BCDEDIT /import to get a previous BCD backup, and restore boot to work as it did before, in order to post this.

I'd like to get the SSD setup working, and use this rotary SATA for back & etc. Thanks.

I hear people going <GROOOAAN!!!!>... I'll bet what I want to do might be pretty simple to implement for a multiboot guru. If I need to re-think what I'm doing, tell me. I'm pretty technically competent. Thanks!!

Night Hawk · 04 Aug 2010

Welcome to the Seven Forums! bachware

Since your partition theme is way out you would expect to see numerous problems to begin with. For a working dual boot of XP with 7 you would need to install each fresh preferrably with XP on the first not 3rd partition followed by 7 on the second afterwards for a clean start.

98 could still be left on the ide drive since that will still be a secondary OS and can be added into the 7 loader by way of the EasyBCD program with some work however. You could opt to run that on the SUN Oracle Virtual Box in order to run the old program you need however and see all three on one drive since 98 would be on a virtual hard drive instead.

For seeing 98 installed on the VM however you would need to create a bootable iso image when going to create the new vhd and start it since VBox will look for bootable media or a bootable iso image to install from.

Simply copying partitions from drive to drive won't work since you leave the boot loader and mbr entries in particular behind ending up with a non bootable SSD. A 3rd party drive imaging program won't be able to add the boot info from the ide drive 98 is on unless adding both drives into one image which fails.

Best recommendation is a clean install of XP and 7 to see the new drive bootable and using the Files & Setttings transfer wizard(XP) and Windows Easy Transfer(7) in order to restore the backups made with them to the fresh installs for both. The ide drive would be set up for 98 only and the documentation for the EasyBCD program(free) can instruct on how to see the older Legacy version added into the 7 BCD store. Legacy Windows Versions - EasyBCD - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki

Since the boot loaders for Vista and 7 are identical the information there can apply to 7. If you need help setting up another dual boot of XP with 7 you can refer to the guide for this. Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and XP

gregrocker · 04 Aug 2010

I agree with Nighthawk except that I would not try adding the other OS's using EasyBCD 2.0 once you get XP/7 HD dual-booting. Instead I would set that HD as first HD to boot in BIOS setup (after DVD drive), then boot the other OS's HD by using the one-time BIOS boot menu key given on the first boot screen or in your mobo manual. This makes the HD's independent so they can come and go as you please.

Next, there are many complication including the SSD that make a clean install preferable, but since you've already copied over your partitions, you can see if you can make them boot using the normal procedure when changing hardware which is to run a XP Repair Install from boot then add Win7 to the dual boot using EasyBCD 2.0 from XP which requires installing NetFramework 2.0 to run in XP.

If XP will repair to adjust to new hardware, but Easy won't start Win7 in a dual boot, then follow the procedure to recover the MBR into Win7: mark it active from Win7 DVD Repair console or REpair CD, then run Startup Repair up to 3 separate times with reboots to write the MBR to Win7, then install EasyBCD 2.0 to add XP, accept offered boot files, autocompletes, Save, Restart. Easy works better in Win7 than XP.

If XP Repair Install will not start XP then clean install it to it's SSD partition, install EasyBCD 2.0 to see if you can add WIn7 to dual boot. If not, clean install Win7 to its partition and it will autoconfigure the Dual boot with XP. Leave the other HD's unplugged during all of this, unless you want to make a stab at Win7 including all of them in the multi-boot when it is installed, rather than more practically booting each HD via BIOS which keeps them independent.

You could also of course try to Add the other OS's using EasyBCD from whichever OS you start up first. They then become interlocked and a mess to remove.

karlsnooks · 04 Aug 2010

bachware,

Welcome to SevenForums.

Lad, you are a glutton for punishment. Now I'm going to be cruel and harsh.

Backup any data dear to your heart.

Connect only your SSD
Fresh install XP sp3, and Win 7.
Make 100% sure that the dual-boot works correctly.
Disconnect your SSD.
Connect your other drive.
Put Win98 on it.

Disconnect and reconnect the SSD, and then the win98 drive.
Make sure that the bios is set to boot from the SSD.
When you need the Win98, you can one-time boot to it.

Now if it was me, I'd put that Win98 on some old cheap or free clunker that someone is giving away and simply use at the most XP and Win7 on your SSD.

Good luck. You sure are going to be traveling a rocky road.

Night Hawk · 04 Aug 2010

I should clarify if I were planning to add XP on here locally and not on a VM which it is presently I would refer to the install XP after 7 approach in order to see XP removed later while leaving the 7 install intact.

For both versions a repair install of the copied partitions could end up seeing problems. The addition of the XP entry into the 7 bcd store however is much better.

When always trying to bring up the boot device menu by the need of hitting the assigned F key at the right moment especially if you have a usb keyboard and the make and model board requires a ps/2 type just for that. The board on the new build is an example where a second roll away flexible ps/2 keyboard has to be kept plugged in all the time in case I plan to boot from a flash drive or live cd and need to bring up that.

(the old case with an Asus board saw the boot device menu with only the usb keyboard there)

bachware · 10 Aug 2010

I seem to have solved the multiboot strangeness, and the problem was multiple: Apparently the data for the mechanical SATA drive's XP partition was bad. I had the SDD XP installation running fine, so I reasoned that the former was bad, and used EASUS PartitionMaster to deallocate the partition area, and with it copied the SDD's XP partition en bloc to the unallocated area. Win 7 found some errors in the partition that it fixed. Booting the O/S all partitions works now, even XP, when its BOOT.IN Is configured like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=8
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(3)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(3)\WINDOWS=" ...on the SSD"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(3)\WINDOWS=" ...on the rotary"
c:\BOOTSECT.W98=" Windows 98SE (FAT32 on C: only)"
The only glitch I have now is that Win 7s startup off the mechanical SSD no longer has the nice gradient-flag startup screen, but instead has a black screen with a green-blocks barometer. Anyone have an idea what got munged up for it to start up that way? I guess it's OK, for it visually lets me know that's the installation that's starting up... I did Windows Update on both Win 7s today, so maybe WU munged up the one installation somehow; but everything seems to work fine in all of the O/S installations. Low-level wierdnesses like this are the PITS

! Of course, I had to make sure to offline the Win7 partitions for XP, lest it overwrite 7s SR points.

Night Hawk · 11 Aug 2010

Here when planning out a dual or multiboot each primary is brand new from the start. Previous for having the two 7 betas running each one on a second primary for the pre-existing Vista/XP dual boot the first primaries had to be shrunk a bit. The betas then ran well for their time on fresh primaries.

Likewise it sounds like you would have seen far fewer problems simply planning a few clean installs on fresh primaries once everything had been backed up rather then copying from the SSD over to a Sata II drive for that XP install to insure the best results. Prior to the beta release I tested that with the Vista install on an old ide drive and copied the primary right over to the sata it would end up on.

Results? The Vista install simply had to be replaced from being swap of drive types. Following the reformat of the copied primary a fresh install still failed! From there nuking the drive to see both new primary and clean install lasted until last fall with the retail release of 7!

As for protecting the 7 restore points once option would be turning the 7 drive off in the XP Disk Management tool leaving the 7 unseen and unavailable while booted in the older version. Once that is done you are hiding the 7 drive from XP where XP won't be able to see the 7 points.

That would also mean removing the entry for XP from the 7 BCD store to isolate it further. The better option used for Vista as well as for 7 would be following the guide for this. System Restore Points - Stop XP Dual Boot Delete - Vista Forums

That's from the SF sister forum's tutorial section there and applies to 7 as well.

gregrocker · 11 Aug 2010

Wasn't overwriting of restore points in XP/7 DUal Boot fixed in beta?

Night Hawk · 11 Aug 2010

The problem was originally one seen with Vista not so much with 7. The last time XP was on a separate drive here however was back with the RCs later to be run only on VMs once I got into some 64bit compatible updates for a few things.

With Vista one project involved hiding the Vista primary to protect points from being canceled out when booting into XP. That was completely discontinued for 7 however. While multibooting last year with both XP and Vista along with the RCs I can't recall not seeing restore points available especially on the 64bit RC then.

bachware · 11 Aug 2010

Thanks for your ideas. It was strange that XP gave such obtuse error messages when trying to start the second installation that had bad partition info, but I guess it's not surprising. Lesson learned: Strange startup behavior on a drive merits Chkdsk of the drive.

Doing complete reinstalls would've forced manual reinstitution of all my customizations, and therefore taken almost as much time as the in-place copying/tweaking. Also, I share app installations on the common C:\Program Files, and reinstalling all the apps for the new installation would've been a pain, overwriting stuff. I'm satisfied with it as now. So far, everything works great: With the SSD installation, I get from Win7 selection on the BCD menu to its profile-selection screen in 15". Another 15" after selecting, and it's ready to work. Phenomenal!

I did get the SRP block info from this forum, though: to create HKLM\S\MountedDevices\Offline\DOSDevices for the Win7 drives in XP. Works fine: In XP, those drives then have no letter, so XP can't touch 7's SRPs. Stupid engineering for M$ not to let XP coexist with 7 on the same system without a manual Registry hack...

The green Win 7 startup barometer (Vista's) in one config was due to its BCD store entry not having a locale field set. Whether it was DualBoot Pro's or EasyBCD's fault is irrelevant. DBP showed in details mode that the locale was missing, and I couldn't find any way of setting it in that app; but EasyBCD 2 had a locale field that showed English, even though it was missing; however, setting it to Finnish and back to English inserted the locale into the profile, and the nice Win7 gradient flag came back.