Well, since tips'n'tricks seem to be popular today I thought I'd share with you a trick I learned NOT to do this weekend -- and how to recover from it -- even though it's OS related and not SolidWorks specific. Using Partition Magic to simplify my disk volumes after adding a hard drive: The original HDD was separated into two logical drives, the 2nd (D being the Recovery volume for Windows XP. The Recovery data was copied to the new HDD drive and the original D: volume (primary HDD) was deleted, with the 1st logical partition of the additional (secondary) HDD taking over the D: volume. The unallocated space released by deleting the logical partition on the primary HDD was then added to the C: drive. Result was that Windows wouldn't boot. The reason: the original boot.ini file on the C: drive defines the boot options, and one line goes like this: multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional Edition" /fastdetect Ya see that portion that sez "...partition(2).."? That apparently means Windows is looking for two partitions on the boot drive. When it sees only one partition, it won't boot. Changing the line to read "...partition(1).." allows XP to boot properly. But of course changing the boot.ini file to read properly when Windows won't boot requires a recovery CD or the original installation disk, which I couldn't find -- not that I knew what to do to fix the problem anyway. As it turns out Micro$oft (bless Bill's pointy little head) provides a way to create bootable XP floppies (a series of six of 'em) by downloading a single executable. Booting with those, however, left me at a C:> command prompt, from which it was NOT at all obvious what to do next. Looking through the available commands ("HELP") indicated one command that looked promising, and which I had never seen before. It was BOOTCFG, and one switch to the command was /ADD. As it turns out that switch allows one to add a line to the boot menu by specify the location of the Windows installation ("(1)WINDOWS", indicating a WINDOWS directory on the 1st logical partition), a name for it ("Microsoft Windows XP Professional Edition") and a switch ("/fastdetect") which was then added to the boot.ini file thereby recreating the proper syntax to boot properly. This was almost pure luck, aided by intuition, but it allowed me to boot again. Live and learn. 'Sporky'
Spork, We use a program called "ERD Commander". It comes on a bootable CD that loads winXP from the CD. You're presented with a standard XP desktop. From there, you can do anything you want to your system drive, (including things you can't do from inside the HD native OS). It's a hundred and fifty bucks, but worth it when your faced with these situations. Here's the link. http://www.winternals.com/products/repairandrecovery/erdcommander2002.asp?pid=erd Regards Mark
Sorry for your trouble, but still interesting. Just the record, the boot.ini file is in the C:\ root folder and is an ascii text file. It's not readily available because it's a system & hidden file, so you first have to turn off both of those bits. Then you can edit the file like normal. A good way to recover from something like this is, if available, hook up the hard drive to another working machine and then edit the file. WT
One thing that can help you in these cases where you're messing around with your OS is to install the recovery console from your XP CD -- just search google and it'll tell you how to do it. This allows for repairing issues like the one you are talking about, as well as device driver issues and the like. Very smart to install this before trying something like the /3gb switch... Also, I've fooled around a bit with bootable OSs like Knoppix and WinPE. Both will allow you to boot your machine from CD and are PnP so you can get to the internet to find what you've done wrong. Not sure if Knoppix will let you access NTFS (I had raid0 at the time, so it wouldn't access that drive anyway) but for sure WinPE will. You just boot up, and open boot.ini in text editor then save and reboot. Also helpful is to have XP installed on your old 2 GB hard drive. If you screw up, plug it in and you'll have access to your drive.
'Tis true indeed, and that would probably have been my next step, although my other workstation here is Windows 2000 (not XP). I probably wouldn't have known what was wrong in the boot.ini file, however, although I might have figured it out eventually with some help from online resources. I did go back later and edit the file manually just as you mention to remove the non-working syntax remaining in the boot options.
Quite right . . . and the recovery console WAS installed. And it wouldn't work (locked up). Otherwise I wouldn't have needed to boot from floppies. That last is a good thought. Think I'll do it . . . when I find my installation CD.
Mark, Just a thought in hindsight. PM allows you to make bootable disks for recovery purposes. I believe they are DOS based so you might have been able to fix boot.ini by copying it off your faltering machine, editing it on your favorite still working machine and replacing it. Do you have any DOS skills left? Of if you had linux you might have used the recovery disk to access your boot partition and edit the boot.ini with vi.
8^) No need to medicate yourself, Jonathan. Just be aware of the entries in the boot.ini file before you enlarge the partition. Interesting about the "Ashampoo" application. I wonder what kind of files it decided it could delete?
Yiggles????? Sounds like the Beta test rewards. Whenever you purchase Ashampoo products at our Element5 shop or through certain promotions you earn Yiggles (bonus points), which are displayed in your MyAshampoo area. To become an Ashampoo Premium Customer you must earn 8,000 Yiggles. Do you think that sounds like a lot? There are attractive goodies in store for you for while you're working to earn your 8,000 Yiggles. As soon as you have 2,000 Yiggles on your account you will receive a coupon code that entitles you to a 20% discount whenever you purchase digital Ashampoo products. When your account balance reaches 4,000 Yiggles you get a 40% discount coupon code, and at the 6,000 Yiggles mark it goes even furhter, with a 60% discount coupon code. ....snip
Hello Mark- A setting that has helped me is to go to the BIOS settings and change the Boot Priority. I always set it to 1. CD ROM and then 2. Hard Drive... Now if there is a problem. I stick in the XP CD and boot away. Boot time is slightly increased. Also, I Format my Hard Drives about every 60 days or so. It really helps. Using external hard drives, I can usually do it in about 2-3 hours, total, and still do other work/chores at the same time. A few months ago, I tried to partition the Hard Drive in my laptop and I screwed it up so bad, it wouldn't boot. I purchased a $29.00 external hard drive enclosure and using another computer, formatted it, stuck it back into the laptop, and reinstalled XP. Best Regards, Devon T. Sowell www.3-ddesignsolutions.com
Because 'Windows Activation' may prevent you from doing this. Activation makes a 'hash' of all the hardware in your system so that it can 'detect' when it has been moved around, or put in a different box with a different set of hardware. Jim S.
Right, well it also allows up to three hardware changes at a time. Swapping out a hard drive to install XP would seemingly work just fine even with the online registration.
No. It allows up to three 'votes' associated with hardware to be changed at a a time. The hard drive counts as two votes, and may actually be subject to further restrictions: ========================= Does product activation deter hard disk cloning by comparing these hard disk hashes? One of the forms of piracy that Product Activation guards against is hard disk cloning. Not all forms of hard disk cloning are illegal. However, by comparing the hardware hash originally activated to the current hardware hash, hard disk cloning can be detered by requiring re-activation if the hardware hashes are substantially different. ========================== I would try it first, rather than find out the hard way later when you really need it. Jim S.
