Weird ghosting problem.. ghost OS constantly logs on and off...

[rudder]

I am moving an OS partition from a 60 gig drive (it has 3 partitions with OS being on C to a 120 gig drive.

I decided to do a fresh install on the new drive. IT has been 3 motherboard changes without one so now is the time. anyway, I wanted to keep the old install. Got some programs on there I may have a hard time replacing in the near term. The case doesn't really have room for another drive so I wanted to move the old OS to the D: partition on the new drive.

Everything moved fine using both ghost and acronis and even robocopy. The new OS boots up as does the old OS that I moved. However, when I boot the old OS, when windows comes up it immediately logs out the user and starts a vicious cycle of logging on and off. It has an auto login when it boots.

In summary:

old 60 gig has OS on c:
moved that OS to new drive on partition D:
Now boots up but logs off user and I can't stop it.

Is there something I can do to the old OS before I ghost it to remedy this problem?

 

[rudder]

Anyone, anyone, beuller?

 

[dead1ne]

What OS is this occuring in specifically. I'm assuming it's XP or 2000. You say that your keeping it for the programs that are on it. If you only need the programs just boot into your new install and run the programs off of the D drive. That should work fine for all if your programs. If not just keep it as C and make the new install to D on the new drive. If none of these work for your situation then I need a little more information. When you say logon you mean that you type in a username and passwork, right? Are there any error messages, eg. "Windows will be shutting down in 60 seconds" or the like?

I wrote the above thinking about HD access problems. It just occured to me that it could be a driver conflict. A program called sysprep.exe will remove all hardware information from the original install. It is located on the XP cd if you have it in "\Support\tools\deploy.cab" use a program like WinAce to extract it. Then before you run it manually uninstall all of the drivers for the system in add/remove programs. Then run sysprep.exe. When it finishes shutdown the computer if it does not do it for you. Then ghost it to D on the new drive. DO NOT boot it off of the old harddrive into windows that will undo everything that sysprep did. After you have transfered it to the new drive boot it up and it will reconfigure some things and then install all of your drivers. If you need anymore help just ask.

 

[redbeard1]

Something to try, would be to boot to some sort of removable disk with fdisk on it. Then run fdisk /mbr. Cloning to a new drive can change the drive ID, and running this to clear the MBR forces XP to reset it. The more common result, for a problem with a clone, to a drive with multiple partitions, is that the computer sits at the logon screen and freezes.

It seems old school but it does work. Both Symantec and MS have articles about this.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: rudder
I am moving an OS partition from a 60 gig drive (it has 3 partitions with OS being on C to a 120 gig drive.

I decided to do a fresh install on the new drive. IT has been 3 motherboard changes without one so now is the time. anyway, I wanted to keep the old install. Got some programs on there I may have a hard time replacing in the near term. The case doesn't really have room for another drive so I wanted to move the old OS to the D: partition on the new drive.

Everything moved fine using both ghost and acronis and even robocopy. The new OS boots up as does the old OS that I moved. However, when I boot the old OS, when windows comes up it immediately logs out the user and starts a vicious cycle of logging on and off. It has an auto login when it boots.

In summary:

old 60 gig has OS on c:
moved that OS to new drive on partition D:
Now boots up but logs off user and I can't stop it.

Is there something I can do to the old OS before I ghost it to remedy this problem?

Ghost the original drive onto the 120GB drive. Put the new 120GB drive as the first drive in the chain (ie master on IDE0, the first IDE controller). That will solve the problem. (This assumes your old OS was on C:, the first drive in the chain, the first partition; if so, that's exactly where you want to put that partition on the new drive.)

You can also boot using the drive currently attached to C: and change a few things (remove the C:\windows\system32 in front of Userinit.exe in the registry on the "bad" drive, which actually has no problem with it at all) and you *might* get a bootable system with your current drive setup, but the above is easier, faster, and will give you what you're looking for far more reliably.

You can't move boot drives around in Windows. If you installed Windows onto the drive when it was C:, you need to keep it as C: if you expect to boot from it.

 

[rudder]

Thanksf or the info dead1ne. Yes it is XP pro. When I have it boot up I use tweakui and its set to auto logon. I will try the sysprep program. A driver issue makes sense, as I mentioned its been about 3 motherboard changes now on the same OS.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: rudder
Thanksf or the info dead1ne. Yes it is XP pro. When I have it boot up I use tweakui and its set to auto logon. I will try the sysprep program. A driver issue makes sense, as I mentioned its been about 3 motherboard changes now on the same OS.

If you can't boot to it, Sysprep won't help you.

I'm still not clear. Is the 120G HDD C: now, and the 60G HDD D: ? If Windows is installed to C:\ (to the first hard drive partition in the system), you cannot move it to, say, D:, the (typically) second partition in the system and expect it to boot. You could try a repair install if you wanted to boot that OS, but it seems it would be simplest to use your BIOS to switch between the two drives, making each the primary/boot drive in turn as required.

 

[rudder]

I can ghost it from the C: paritition to a D: partition on the bigger drive, and it will boot up fine. I just edit the boot.ini file and point to the ghosted and moved install. After It boots, I have it set to auto login in, but it immediately logs out of windows and gets stuck in a loop. It does not reboot on its own. THats why I am thinking it is a driver issue.

 

[dclive]

Oh - you've got the userinit issue, I'll bet.

It isn't really booting fine - it's just using the files it needs from c:\windows whenever it sees C:\windows in the registry, which it will - all over the place. If you renamed c:\windows to c:\winxp, I'll be willing to bet that your d:\windows installation would no longer work.