restoring computer with norton ghost

[jmorris]

OK, so I have norton ghost on the computer,I have backed up the computer onto a hard drive via fire wire. I have restored the drive to same drive via firewire but in seperate partitian. I remove origional hard drive and install hard drive with restored data. Trouble is it wont fire up computer. New info is in drive letter J. Normally this would be letter C. I cant change it! The hard drive I use to run computer is from its sister computer. Same machine. I bought 2 for my kids. The origional HD fried. I cant change letter by going to my computer,device manager,manage drive etc. because I already have a C .Any help? Driving me nuts!

 

[ocnor]

This might help.http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307844&sd=tech

 

[aspirin]

OK, so I have norton ghost on the computer,I have backed up the computer onto a hard drive via fire wire. I have restored the drive to same drive via firewire but in seperate partitian. I remove origional hard drive and install hard drive with restored data. Trouble is it wont fire up computer. New info is in drive letter J. Normally this would be letter C. I cant change it! The hard drive I use to run computer is from its sister computer. Same machine. I bought 2 for my kids. The origional HD fried. I cant change letter by going to my computer,device manager,manage drive etc. because I already have a C .Any help? Driving me nuts!

Hi,

Not sure I understand the problem, but you should be able to boot from any partitions. Have you tried to edit your boot.ini file? There, you can direct the boot-loader to boot from any partitions. Drive letters don't matter at that point, partitions are described something like ...rdisk(0)partition(1)... etc. in boot.ini

 

[jmorris]

Hi,

Not sure I understand the problem, but you should be able to boot from any partitions. Have you tried to edit your boot.ini file? There, you can direct the boot-loader to boot from any partitions. Drive letters don't matter at that point, partitions are described something like ...rdisk(0)partition(1)... etc. in boot.ini

Where exactly would I go to do that?

 

[jmorris]

Let me explain this s little better. I have 2 exact computers. Same make model everything. Computer #1 fried its hard drive. So I put computer # 2's hard drive in #1 to run it so I could do a restore by norton ghost. So I had the "good" computers hard drive in the "bad" computer. I had another "new" hard drive in an external hard drive box with fire wire. I did a norton ghost backup of hard drive. (This is the "good" hard drive I just installed from"good" computer. When I then tried to do a restore computer, the restored image is not C. I am not able to have 2 C drives. It won't boot up when I put the drive from the fire wire setup into computer.. I think because it does not have a C drive and computer is used to booting off C.

 

[aspirin]

Where exactly would I go to do that?

Assuming it is really assigned as a boot drive, there is a hidden system file in the root directory, called boot.ini. The boot-loader uses that to boot your OS.

First, you have to make it non-hidden. They usually have hidden/system/read-only attributes. Go to a command prompt, type in "attrib -s -h -r boot.ini", that will change the attributes, so you can edit it.

Now, it's visible, and you can edit it with an editor. It looks like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn


Edit the part that says partition(1) or whatever.

rdisk(0) means it's the first physical drive, rdisk(1) would mean the second, and so on.

So, in the example above, "rdisk(0)partition(1)" means boot from the first physical drive, and first partition. That translate to drive "C" for me. partition(2) would mean drive "D" or whatever it is named in the OS.

Make sure you edit that in both places, both in the [boot loader] and the [operating systems] section.

After that you can set it back to hidden/system/read-only, with "attrib +s +h +r boot.ini"

If that's your only problem, it should work like a charm, but remember the drive must be formatted as a primary boot drive to begin with.

Good luck.

 

[jmorris]

I'll try that...bit over my head though. Now, why is it I even cloned the good hard drive by norton ghost and still no good. I had the good drive in the computer, the new hard drive in the firewire external box. I cloned it,all went well. I can look at the new cloned hard drive and all the items are there that were on the origionla hard drive but when I remove it from external box and stuff it in computer I just get a blinking line at the top left of the mnoitor. I did make it master with the jumper.
Thanks,Jim

 

[aspirin]

I'll try that...bit over my head though. Now, why is it I even cloned the good hard drive by norton ghost and still no good. I had the good drive in the computer, the new hard drive in the firewire external box. I cloned it,all went well. I can look at the new cloned hard drive and all the items are there that were on the origionla hard drive but when I remove it from external box and stuff it in computer I just get a blinking line at the top left of the mnoitor. I did make it master with the jumper.
Thanks,Jim

Jim,

Because, the boot loader has no clue of which drive and which partition within that drive you meant to boot from. It tries to boot from whatever your boot.ini tells it to do, provided you indeed have a boot.ini file on your primary boot device. That's usually on the first drive, what most people refer to as drive "C". After if read boot.ini, it knows where to boot from.

 

[jmorris]

Huh, I would have thought that if I cloned a hard drive all would be the same. I tried going start,run, typed in cmd then it openned up the screen where I would ping an IP address. I typed in attrib -s -h -r boot.ini and it did not like the comand! Did enter it wrong?Jim

 

[aspirin]

Huh, I would have thought that if I cloned a hard drive all would be the same. I tried going start,run, typed in cmd then it openned up the screen where I would ping an IP address. I typed in attrib -s -h -r boot.ini and it did not like the comand! Did enter it wrong?Jim

No, you didn't do anything wrong. When you typed in "cmd", that probably took you to c:\documents and settings\... subdirectory.

Your boot.ini file is in c:\boot.ini, so go to root by "cd \", you should see the c:\> prompt. That's where your boot.ini resides, and do the editing on the boot.ini file right there.

If you are more confortable doing all these within windows, you can certainly do that in windows explorer, but to edit boot.ini, you would have to muck with the drive it holds the file, "Folder Options", "View", and select "hidden files" to show hidden etc.

I just thought going to the "cmd" prompt directly would be much more easier to explain.

 

[jmorris]

No, you didn't do anything wrong. When you typed in "cmd", that probably took you to c:\documents and settings\... subdirectory.

Your boot.ini file is in c:\boot.ini, so go to root by "cd \", you should see the c:\> prompt. That's where your boot.ini resides, and do the editing on the boot.ini file right there.

If you are more confortable doing all these within windows, you can certainly do that in windows explorer, but to edit boot.ini, you would have to muck with the drive it holds the file, "Folder Options", "View", and select "hidden files" to show hidden etc.

I just thought going to the "cmd" prompt directly would be much more easier to explain.

Hey, first of all thatnks a lot for helping me! This is making me crazy! Now, you lost me with the
Your boot.ini file is in c:\boot.ini, so go to root by "cd \", you should see the c:\> prompt. That's where your boot.ini resides, and do the editing on the boot.ini file right there
Yes, I did go to the c:\documents and settings\... subdirectory when I typed cmd. Sorry, I'm not the best at this stuff. Hey but I can sure mic the hell out of drum kit

 

[aspirin]

Hey, first of all thatnks a lot for helping me! This is making me crazy! Now, you lost me with the
Your boot.ini file is in c:\boot.ini, so go to root by "cd \", you should see the c:\> prompt. That's where your boot.ini resides, and do the editing on the boot.ini file right there
Yes, I did go to the c:\documents and settings\... subdirectory when I typed cmd. Sorry, I'm not the best at this stuff. Hey but I can sure mic the hell out of drum kit

Jim,

Don't worry about the details, all is good at this point. The first thing you have to do with boot.ini is make it visible for editing. That's all I was trying to tell you with that "attrib" or the "explorer" thing. Once you are past that point and edited that file, you can boot from any drive or any partititions you like.

If you are using the "cmd" option, make sure you are editing c:\boot.ini.
The simplest thing would be, wherever directory you are ending up with the "cmd" option, do something like this "attrib -s -h -r c:\boot.ini (assuming you are booting from the C:\ drive) that would directly deal with your c:\boot.ini file. After that, you can type "notepad c:\boot.ini", that would let you do the editing.

Let's assume now your new OS resides on the second drive. You can edit the orignal entry, or even better, to give you a choice of where you boot from, do the the following to your boot.ini:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn


You will notice I added one additional entry at the end of the [operating system] section, now there are two. The only difference from the first one is that I specified rdisk(1) there instead of rdisk(0).

If both windows are on the same drive but different partitions, you would edit the partition(1) part, replacing it with 2,3 ... or whatever.


Now, the next time you boot your machine you will have a choice of where to boot from.

You can even give a descriptive name to the choice, you can replace the string in quotes with whatever you want.

For example, in the above, in the second entry you could say:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Music boot for Jim " /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

Or whatever you like, and that's what your choices will be at next boot.

I know this can be ackward at first, don't worry, we will figure it out.
I don't know jack about micing a drum, so I may ask you for some advice in the future, that's how it should work.