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Old February 2nd 05, 12:29 AM
Harvey Gratt
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Bob H wrote:

Harvey Gratt wrote:

Bob H wrote:

Harvey Gratt wrote:

Rod Speed wrote:

"Harvey Gratt" wrote in message
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Bob H wrote:


Harvey Gratt wrote:


I'm trying to verify whether PartitionMagic 8.01 will
automatically "fix" the boot.ini file and the partition boot
sector where it resides during the rearrangement of disk
partitions.

Specifically, say I have an XP primary, active partition as the
third partition on my HDD. The first two partitions are logical
partitions. Initially, the boot.ini file would point to the
third partition.

If I now delete the first two partitions so as to make the XP
partition the first partition, will PartitionMagic automatically
rewrite the boot.ini file to make it point to the first
partition so as to make subsequent boot-ups possible?

Thanks,
Harvey






I wouldn't have thought so. You are in fact delting the boot.ini
file when you delete the first 2 partitions, so where will the
boot.ini file be? Deleted as well, I say.
You will have to create another boot.ini file on the same
partition you want to boot from.



I appear to be mis-understanding something. I thought the boot.ini
file resided in the "partition boot sector" which, in the original
setup, would have been located in the third partition (active,
primary).

If not where does it reside? Are the "partition boot sector
(PBS)", boot.ini file always located at a specific location on the
HDD - I thought this was true only of the MBR, which in turn
pointed to the PBS (which is located at an arbitrary location). Is
my understanding incorrect - it would appear so.






Sounds comprehensively mangled to me.

The boot.ini file is a file in a particular partition, it wont even
fit in a PBS.

More likely something works out which is the bootable partition
on a particular physical drive and something works out where the
boot.ini is from that and reads it from the appropriate partition.

Dont know the answer to your original question, I'd personally
ghost the entire physical drive so you can recover gracefully
of PM didnt handle the deletion of the logical drives properly.
Cant see why it shouldnt.

I guess this gets down to understanding the boot process. My current
state of confusion is:

1. The MBR is read from a fixed location on the HDD.

2. The code in the MBR eventually points to a bootable partition
(there may be more than one, but I guess only one is active at a
time) and jumps to the PBS of the active partition.

3. Code in the PBS then starts to load the OS, eventually reading
the boot.ini file located in that partition's root directory (as you
indicated)

4. Now, if the boot.ini file contains lines for mutiple OS's, a menu
appears. A selection here would then cause a jump to the approriate
partition for the loading of the selected OS.

My head hurts. Does the above seem correct? If not, what does happen?

Thanks,
Harvey




Where is NTLDR? Which partition is that on?



Well, if my understanding is remotely correct, I would think it's
located on the active partition pointed to by the MBR. I guess the MBR
points to the PBS which contains code to start the loader function
(NTLDR). NTLDR is probably located on the active partition and it
would access the boot.ini file.

Harvey


Go to: Windows Explorer, Tools, Folder Options.
In Folder Options click on the View tab at the top.
Then un tick Hide protected operating system files.

When you have done that, have a look in the root of each partition to
loctate NTLDR. So, is it in the OS partition or any of the others?

Anyway to keep things nice and sipmle, if you are only using 1 OS why
don't you just put boot.ini in the ctaive Primary partition, if you are
going to delete the others.


It is in the root directory. So it appears that the 4 step process I
described is essentially correct. However, this thread seems to have
wandered off course.

I guess the answer to the original question is that PartitionMagic (PM)
WILL NOT correctly change the boot.ini file. So one question is, will
the boot process get all the way to the active partition boot sector
(PBS),via the MBR, (which I assume that PM CAN correctly set up) and
then hang because the boot.ini file points to a non-existent partition
(originally the third partition)?

A second question is:

Assume I install the Recovery Console in the OS in the original third
partition. When I go thru all the manipulations as above, will the boot
process bring up the Recovery Console (so I can fix the boot.ini file
without needing an XP cd) instead of hanging?

Thanks,
Harvey