Re: OT: Cloning a multiboot system

["Stephen A. Carter" scarter@xxxxxxxx]

On Mon, 4 Sep 2006 09:54:09 -0700 (PDT), J R FOX wrote:
>--- "Stephen A. Carter"  wrote:
>> However, I didn't
>> try relocating or resizing the WinXP partition in
>> any way, as I'd
>> heard (as you mention) that that can sometimes be
>> problematical.
>
>I would say more like "almost always" than
>"sometimes."  There seems to be some unique partition
>identifier for each Win32 boot partition install that
>is recorded in some not-readily-findable location(s).
>It is quite possibly something _other than_ the NT
>Disk Admin. Signature. The result is one of two or
>three repeatable boot failure scenarios. Either 1)
>Your auto-password entry goes away / is no longer
>acccepted, and you can't get past this, or 2) The
>Pagefile can no longer be found, or 3) There is an
>endless loop of "Loading your Settings" / "Saving your
>Settings." I found a few KB entries on these items,
>but so far no solution that I could employ. In due
>course, I expect to have a Bart's PE cd, which might
>prove useful in future attempts.
>
>I believe that if the mechanism at work here can be
>identified, there must be some way to finesse it.

This may not be helpful for your situation, but FWIW --

Late-model ThinkPads come with a hidden "recovery partition" that
blows away whatever already exists on the hard disk and reinstalls
the factory-default WinXP setup. When this recovery program installs
the OS, however, it initially formats the new bootable Windows
partition as FAT, and doesn't convert it to NTFS until the final
reboot. If you interrupt the installation process just before this
final reboot, I've found, you can resize and move the still-FAT
Windows partition at will, install Boot Manager and other OSes, etc.,
and then when you're done, go back and perform the final reboot for
the WinXP installation and let it convert the partition to NTFS and
write whatever partition-identifier garbage it cares to.

I've used this trick successfully on T23 and T42 ThinkPads, but have
never had the occasion to try it with any other kind of WinXP
installation scenario, so again, just FWIW.


-- Stephen Carter
  scarter@xxxxxxxx
  Nagoya, Japan