BIOS question/issue? (1 Viewer)

[John Wilson]

This is a follow-on to my other thread here where I had some questions about using DI 2002's Drive Copy utility. Well, I went ahead and copied my 20GB C: partition to a 40GB hard drive. The copy went okay but I didn't tell DI to hide either the source or destination drives after the copy. After the copy, it rebooted but gave me 3 sets of Windows XP Pro OS to boot from. I tried the 1st one and it booted just fine. It sees the 20GB "copy" on the second HDD and it is active. I had hoped that the copy would have been expanded to use the whole 40GB but it still has ~18GB of unallocated space.

Here is the real issue. I powered down and disconnected the IDE and power cables of the second (primary slave) HDD and powered on. Again, I get a choice of 3 sets of Windows XP Pro. I tried each one and only the 1st one works so the other 2 must be on the disconnected HDD. I want to go back to just the original drive but I don't want to have to wait while the boot up sits and waits for me to pick an OS. :frowning:

Did something get changed in the Bios? Can I fix it? Its an Award BIOS on an EPOX MB with a P3-800 and 768MB of SDRAM MMY.

I thinks I'm going to have another look at Norton's GHOST.:b :b

Thanks for your help.

EDIT: Is it possible that since I didn't choose the "hide" option for either the source or destination drives during the copy that 2 additional Master Boot Records (MBR) were added to my original drive? I've tried a system restore to a point prior to installing Drive Image but it did not get rid of the OS choices menu. Can I edit the MBR? How about if I try to do an OS repair using the XP CD? I'd like to avoid reformatting but at this point I'm willing to try anything! Dumb me!:b

 

[MikeAlletto]

On your c drive there should be an invisible file called boot.ini.

There will probably be 3 items listed. Make a copy of the boot.ini file to a floppy or something and then edit the file to remove all but the default options. For windows 2000 mine looks like:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

XP is probably similar. You can also just use msconfig to open the boot.ini file and look at it and check it.

 

[JamesHl]

Does fdisk -mbr still work with xp?

Also, if you want your partition to use the full drive size on the new drive, there are several programs that can resize partitions for you.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Surely if he does an fdisk -mbr then he wont be able to boot at all.

I can't quite figure out how you've ended up with three boot options, but Mike's suggestion will work.

In XP you can right-click on My Computer, choose Properties, then Advanced tab, then Startup & Recovery Settings, then Edit.

When you do the disk-to-disk copy, is there no option to allow you to use the full capacity of the destination drive?

Ghost allows you to resize the destination partitions, bigger or smaller. I would have thought DI would do the same.

 

[JamesHl]

I thought fdisk -mbr just reset your mbr with the data to boot whatever os you ran it out of. In fact, I know this was still the case in 2k.

 

[John Wilson]

You guys Rock!

That took care of the problem. I didn't even think of the boot.ini I also don't know how I got 3 copies of the OS entries but thats what happened when using DI 2002.:frowning:

I would like to expand my c:partition on the new drive to include all of the 40GB but I guess DI won't do it. I have a copy of Partition Magic 5.0 but I think its too old for XP and I'm not sure I want to spend $60-80 for version 8.0:b

Is there any freeware or low-cost shareware out there that will allow me to resize the partition?

Again, thanks for your help with this. Luckily I didn't try it on my wife's computer yet or I'd be in hot water by now. Any great deals on Ghost out there?

 

[Rob Gillespie]

John, an easier way to do it would be this:

Use Drive Image to image your current C: drive and save it to the second HD.

Use FDISK to wipe the current first HD.

Use Drive Image again to restore the image file back to the first HD, but resizing the destination partitions in the process.

You'll have to save the relevent DI files onto floppy and create a boot disk first, obviously.