So how do I start all over from the begining

[adl6009]

The history of this saga starts at http://www.sysopt.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=145349
I am starting a new thread because the aim is about to change.
Since I am unhappy with the results of my first 2 attempts I am thinking of trying again.
My question is how do I wipe out the the new hard drive so I can start from scratch. I mean everything, so its just like I just opened the box.
After I do that My next question is how should i proceed so that I will have the desired rusults?
I am going to install a promise controller card. I will want the new drive to be the boot drive will all the data from the old drive on it. The old drive I want to be a secondary drive to write data to it in the future. These 2 will be on the promise card, each as a master on their own ide channel. My cdrw and dvd reader will be installed as masters on the motherboards primary and secondary ide channels.
I have drive image 2002 and partition magic pro installed on my computer now. Since drive image didn't do it for me the last time I was thinking of using p magic this time, it has an option to copy a partition. The problem with my last attempt is that drive image copied my original 80 gig drive to the larger drive, but also created a 80 gig partition. I would like all the data transfered without limiting the size of the partition to 80 gigs.
Yes, its win xp home style, on a 2.2 p4 dell, original drive 80 gig seagate barracuda, new drive 120 gig maxtor diamondmax plus 9.

[BipolarBill]

Use Zap to clear the drive:

http://service.boulder.ibm.com/storage/hddtech/zap.exe

Listen - unzip that and read the README.


Use Norton Ghost to copy drives and it will inflate or shrink the partition automatically. You know that we use Ghost around here. We never recommend PM for copying drives, right? Now you know why.

Let me ask you this - why do you want to copy the old drive data to the new drive? Isn't that sort of silly? Wait until Windows is set up on the new drive and then copy what data you need. Keep It Simple.

[adl6009]

why do you want to copy the old drive data to the new drive?

Because my hard drive is set up the way I want it to be.

[BipolarBill]

That makes no sense at all. Why do you want to erase the other drive?

Switching from no special controller to either SATA or a Promise drive is going to cause fits unless it's done right. If you switched motherboards, it's even worse.

WHat you have to do is set up conventionally and then add the Promise card so that the driver is installed. After that, shut down, connect the drive to the controller and then change the boot sequence to A, CD, SCSI. If you don't, it won't boot.

While I have you here, I'm going to ask you to keep all of your posts on a particular problem in one thread. This thing is spread out over 3 threads. That's plain dumb. It doesn't serve anyone well that way.

[adl6009]

Sorry about the new thread thing, I thought I was at a turning point. Boy was I ever wrong. I am basically back to square 1.
I chose to use the controller card for the faster access. There was no problem setting it up, 1-2-3. And what a difference in speed. From a rate of 230 mb/sec to 1430 mb/sec. The entire drive was copied in about an hour.
I found the option in drive image to resize the new partition so I deleted the existing partition and copied the drive again. Everything looked fine when I checked it out. Both drives are active primary drives with a copy of windows on it. So I disconnected the old drive and moved the new one to ide1 and tried to boot from it. No good. Won't boot. Says something is wrong with the physical configuration of the drive. I know, Bill said get a copy of ghost.
Maybe tommorow.
Why doesn't drive image work?
Iwould have used zap except my floopy no work.
I am going to delete the old drive so I can use it to store data files. Or I might use it in another machine.
Thank you very much for the help.

[BipolarBill]

You can run Zap from the hard drive, but you need to do a minimal boot.

Listen - is this the same motherboard that you had before? Which Windows version is this?

Does the old drive boot or not? If it does, copying should work - unless this is XP. XP records all factors and copying one drive to the other can cause errors due to the geometry changes between drive. In that case, a repair of XP should help.

Maybe you should start from the beginning...

[Rocketmech]

This is a straight forward Copy drive to drive task, right?
Which Drive Image version are you using ? Drive Image 7 has options in the Copy Drive Wizard , to "Resize the drive to fill unallocated space", "Set drive active", "Set destination type" so new drive will be Primary Partition .
The new drive must be jumpered as slave, auto detected in the bios , saved and exit. Then, Copy drive to drive .
Afterwards, remove the old drive or setup as slave. Jumper the new drive as the master. Then you can restart. There should be no problem.
If you buggered it all beforehand, then I would wipe the drive, and start over, like BpB suggests.
Later, you might want to keep the old drive around untouched for a week or 2 , incase theres an issue with the new drive.

[adl6009]

Ok, the new development is I have acquired Ghost. It is installed and ready to go. The only thing is I need to square away the original hard drive again. The problem is when I boot from the original drive I get a boot menu that asks me to pick which OS I want to boot to. The choices are all win xp, labeled 0 to 3, but I do not want this copied to the new drive and I don't know how to get rid of it.
Also, where in ghost is the option to fill the unallocated space. The original was 80 gig and I am copying to a 120 gig drive and would like to have 1 partition.

And to answer those nagging questions-
Same motherboard, only change is a new hard drive.
Win xp home
Old drive boots fine, except for that os menu
I need a straight drive to drive copy
Drive Image 2002 was used before.
Clark Kent is Superman, but no one knows.

Thanks again.

[BipolarBill]

Unhide all system files in Folder Options and then find and edit the BOOT.INI file. Remove what you want, but leave the working selection.

When you copy drive to drive with Ghost, it automatically expands or shrinks the copy - I've told you this already. If you want to copy a partition to a whole drive, you cannot do that. You can instead tell Ghost how big you want partitions to be when copying drive to drive. Just make any partition you want gone as small as you can.

You'll know when you see it.

[adl6009]

boot.ini reads

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition (#1)" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition (#2)" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition (#3)" /fastdetect

Should I just rename it boot.old or rem out certain lines?

[BipolarBill]

If the default boot works, just delete the last three lines.

Just so you know, I recently tried to copy XP from one drive to another and had to repair it each time I did. It was all screwed up even after that.

I recommend that you reinstall XP to the new drive and use Ghost to back up so that the money is not wasted.

[adl6009]

I deleted the last 3 lines and it booted just right.

had to repair it each time
What was wrong, what did you have to do to repair it?

I recommend that you reinstall XP to the new drive and use Ghost to back up so that the money is not wasted.

I don't understand the difference here. If it will work on a fresh install why not an old install?

If I can get the drive copied, and then have to take some reasonably small repair steps that would be preferable to starting fresh and reinstalling all my apps.
Like Rocketmech suggested I will be leaving the old drive untouched for backup purposes.

[BipolarBill]

All I know is that I copied a drive to another 80GB drive (both 80GB) and then connected the drive to a Promise controller. This was XP Home SP1. When I was done, it had to be repaired (product activation problem). When I was done repairing, the C drive was now D and programs wouldn't work. Remapping the registry didn't fix it all. Installer programs were seen as 16-bit apps and wouldn't work.

It may have been the controller change that did it because I have restored my version of Home multiple times and never had issues like that. One time, I copied Home from a 40GB drive to a 60GB drive and then to an 80GB drive with no problem at all.

Go figure.

[adl6009]

So I ghost clone the drive, swap in the new drive and guess what error message I get, "Windows Product Activation: A problem is preventing windows from accurately checking the license code for this computer. Error code 0x80090006"
I guess I have to go figure.


Acording to this web site
futremark (http://discuss.futuremark.com/forum/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=techoperatingsystems&Number=626568&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=0&fpart=1)
If you reinstall win xp just copy the file wpa.dbl from the old instalation to the new and you are reactivated.
I guess I can copy and paste it in booting off the old drive but will it fix the problem?
I guess I have nothing to lose as I can't boot from the new drive at all.

[adl6009]

Since dell provides tech support for the windows products they sell I called and asked them what I should do. After 40 minutes on hold they suggested I reformat and reinstall.

[BipolarBill]

I knew that was coming. :(

[Rocketmech]

Maybe the VSN changed during the reinstall . Could a new controller change it Bill? If the VSN changes it could set off the activation, right? I wonder if you check from a command prompt if they are different? Type VOL , to get the Volume Serial Number (VSN) , e.g., 1F2E-3C4B .

Theres two files WPA.DBL and WPA.BAK from the Windows\System32 folder to be copied if needed.

[adl6009]

You made me chuckle.

So I tried the ol' swap the wpa.dbl trick, still no good. Starting to look like I am beating a dead clone doesn't it. Doesn't seem fair that I can't get this done. Should have been easy. How come symantec doesn't say it might not work with xp. In fact I think they say just the opposite. I'll have to take a look at their support group, tomorow maybe.
)-| zzzzzz

[adl6009]

So is that it? You can't do a disk clone of a win xp install. Or is it me, I am doing something wrong? Symantec says it supports xp. Msoft says a lot of stuff about cloning drives by admins and system manufacturers but not much about my cloning one drive. Their sid number prevents 2 cloned drives from networking, but thats not what I am doing. Adding the drive and controller card should not awaken the reactivation monster. And so what if it did, I'm legal.
Hey I gotta tell ya I'm not looking forward to reloading all these programs into a new os install.

[BipolarBill]

Well, to be brutally honest, you would have been done with a reload days ago.

[adl6009]

You can be such a brute. :-@

But seriously, I started out to do something and was unable to do it. All the while those who's products I am using say that I should have ben able to do it. I try to do stuff every now and then so I learn. Even when I fail, I learn. Except in this case. I have not learned why I failed. (I think Winston Churchill said that first.)

Now the fun really begins, finding all those cd's I haven't seen since I got the computer. I hope they are not in the same place I put that floopy drive.

[adl6009]

OK, that was weird. I said what the hell and cloned my c drive with drive image 2002 again. I then swapped it to the primary ide spot on the conroller card and no good, wouldn't boot. Error message says there something wrong with the hard drive configuration. (Old drive removed completely)
Now follow this-
So I put it back with the old drive on the #1 ide and the new drive on the #2 ide channel. And I reboot. I then get the boot menu to pick my os, windows xp or windows xp 1. Just like before. Only this time I pick Windows 1. The computer boots. I check it out in Windows explorer and guess which drive I just boot from. Yup. the new drive.
So how come it works now?
So how come I can't get it to boot on ide 1?
I wonder if it will boot on ide 2 with the old drive removed from the system?
You know I was just about to give up and run with the new drive as the second drive.

[adl6009]

I think I found it. Follow this if you will-
The original drive had a hidden partition, the dell utility partition. Since I couldn't figure out how to copy both partitions and increase the size of the ntfs partition to fill the unallocated space, I cloned the ntfs partition leaving the hidden partition behind on the old drive.
The boot.ini file was screwing it all up. The boot.ini directed the boot process to the second partition on the boot drive. When all I had on the boot drive was the ntfs partition, computer saw it as an improperly configured hard drive.
I chabged the boot.ini to look for partition 1 and presto she boot from the new drive on ide 1.
So far, and its only been about 20 minutes, things seem to be working ok. The one glaring inconsistancy is the icons in the systray next to the clock are different, but thats all right now.
I'll paste the boot.ini's for those who may be curious. If anyone could suggest a correctly formated boot.ini I would appreciate it.

The one that works-
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect

The one that looks for the 2nd partition
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect

I would like to again extend my thanks and appreciation to all those who have helped me with not only this quick course in swapping hard drives but also with the multitude of previous deceptivly simple problems I have recieved help with in the past.

[BipolarBill]

Well, like I said, spreading this all out over three threads didn't help at all. Besides, I don't recall you ever mentioning that this was a Dell system drive.

I do believe that I suggested copying drive to drive at one point or another. WinNT is not forgiving at all of selective cloning, as you have discovered.

Anyway, you learned a lot and you learned it the best way - on your own. Congrats on that. ;)