Re: Boot Selector problems

The message <t7K%j.55879$Ht.43820@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
from John Jordan <junk@xxxxxxxxxxxx> contains these words:

Graham C wrote:
For five years I've used Partition Magic's Boot Manager on my existing
Win98 PC. It's been 100% and have never had any trouble with it.

Have just built a new PC and intended to put dual boot Win2000 and XP
on it. I cannot use the above-mentioned software as it's too old.

No XP at the moment, but installed two copies of 2000 and then tried
various Boot Managers. So far I haven't found one which works!

How large is this HD? Win2k doesn't enable LBA48 by default (even with
SP4, IIRC), so using a >137GB drive would be pretty unwise.

That's quite true, but you can do a clean install of SP4 onto a drive
larger than the 137GB limit of LBA28, provided you create only a primary
partition within that limit and save creating an extended partition 'til
_after_ you've installed win2k _and_ enabled LBA48 support (an 8 to 10GB
boot partition is usually ample for the OS).

If you do try to do a fresh install after creating an extended
partition with logical drives and data you don't want to lose, you'll
need to borrow the use of a small disk, install win2k on it and apply
the LBA48 fix then clone it to the boot partition on the big drive.

I landed up having to do exactly this after using ddrescue to clone a
damaged 80GB drive onto a 320GB replacement in which I foolishly
expanded the extended partition to fill the drive and readjusted
partition sizes. With foresight, I wouldn't have bothered resizing the
primary and extended partitions and the 2 logical drives until
afterwards, but I was hoping to do a repair install which failed to come
up as an install option so found myself in the "Catch 22" situation. :-(

I'm now trying to solve the mystery of why a perfectly good 160GB WD
drive hangs on first reboot (exactly the symptom it came into the
workshop with!) after doing a repair install with winXP SP2. The system
box recognises the drive ok and will boot a 6GB drive that has winME
installed (safe mode - don't need the hassle of it reconfiguring for the
'new hardware'). Memory passed memtest86 ok and the 160GB drive also
passed the WD diagnostic.

I've connected the drive with a usb adapter to my own PC and the
expected files all appear to be there (and the NTLDR _isn't_ flagged
compressible! :-). I've copied fresh root files and AV scan came up dry.
I've also taken the precaution of removing the drive letter assignment
before dismounting the drive and transferring back to its box but it's
behaving exactly the same.

Looks like I'll be spending tomorrow (later today, in fact) sorting it out.

--
Regards, John.

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