Win 2k problem
Bret
second Ide channel as master.
After cloning, neither box will completely load.
They get to the logon, and after logging on there is a message about having
no virtual memory, and instructions on how to do this.After clearing the
error message, it goes back to the logon prompt.Any ideas would be
appreciated.
Adam Warner
I'm sorry but you have just hit the most evil bug in Win2k.
It makes the operating system the least robust to hardware configuration
changes ever devised. In fact Windows NT 4 is much more resilient. If you
want to see whether Microsoft does stupid things, knows about them, and then
doesn't fix them (e.g. in Service Pack 1) then this is your bug (although MS
knew about this before the OEM release of Win2k--how do you know you ask?
Because MS had a KB article about it before then. I have a printout of the
article data 26 January 2000, and the article was "last reviewed" 10 January
2000).
Quite simply when you added a new hard disk Win2k got confused about the
boot drive letter (and/or the swap drive letter). And when Win2k gets
confused about the drive letter it no longer allows you to log in. Win2k
stores the drive letter configuration in the registry. And it is rather hard
to edit the registry when you are not allowed to log in.
My guess is that Win2k thinks the boot drive is now D: instead of C:
In contrast NT4 still allows you to log in if this happens. You then just go
into Disk Administrator and change the drive letter back to C. All fixed.
Here's the KB articles:
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q249/3/21.ASP
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q223/1/88.ASP
(If you read through there is supposedly a way to fix this if the computer
is networked by doing a remote edit of the registry).
I am sorry that Microsoft doesn't care about making their operating systems
robust to hardware changes by fixing a fundamental bug. I have a backup
partition to help protect against this issue, and I use Paragon Partition
Manager to restore the partition when this kind of thing happens. I also
store no work on the boot drive so a simple replacement of the boot
partition is possible.
Good luck,
Adam
Richard Hector
>
> Hi Bret,
>
> > The boss wanted to clone a Win 2k setup, and installed the empy drive on
> the
> > second Ide channel as master.
> > After cloning, neither box will completely load.
> > They get to the logon, and after logging on there is a message about
> having
> > no virtual memory, and instructions on how to do this.After clearing the
> > error message, it goes back to the logon prompt.Any ideas would be
> > appreciated.
>
> I'm sorry but you have just hit the most evil bug in Win2k.
>
>
> Quite simply when you added a new hard disk Win2k got confused about the
> boot drive letter (and/or the swap drive letter). And when Win2k gets
> confused about the drive letter it no longer allows you to log in. Win2k
> stores the drive letter configuration in the registry. And it is rather hard
> to edit the registry when you are not allowed to log in.
>
> My guess is that Win2k thinks the boot drive is now D: instead of C:
Ouch.
It's ages since I played with NT much (3.51), but would this work?
If you plug the other drive back in, will it work?
Then, set up disk mirroring, to do the clone (is that available on the
workstation version?). (Both will have the same letter)
Then, break the mirror, and take the other disk out.
Or maybe, just shut down and take the other disk out. It must have a way
to recover when either disk is gone, otherwise there's not much point in
mirroring ...
Just a thought.
Richard
Adam Warner
> It's ages since I played with NT much (3.51), but would this work?
>
> If you plug the other drive back in, will it work?
Once Win2k has decided upon the new drive letter it is usually too late.
Bret already said that "neither box will completely load." I understood that
to mean that each hard disk is in its own box but now neither computer will
boot.
> Then, set up disk mirroring, to do the clone (is that available on the
> workstation version?). (Both will have the same letter)
>
> Then, break the mirror, and take the other disk out.
>
> Or maybe, just shut down and take the other disk out. It must have a way
> to recover when either disk is gone, otherwise there's not much point in
> mirroring ...
>
> Just a thought.
If you now mirror the partition won't you also be mirroring the faulty
registry entries?
Bret could try putting both hard disks back in the same machine. Win2k may
set one of the new partitions to C: This may allow a login because a C:
drive exists again.
Regards,
Adam
Adam Warner
a problem in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this
article."
They confirm a problem more than one year ago but still haven't fixed it
(who knows, it may be a compelling reason to upgrade to Whistler).
How would you like your "Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server" to
experience this problem? I guess that could be a tad more annoying than not
being able to log into a desktop machine.
Regards,
Adam
Richard Hector
>
> Hi Richard,
>
> > It's ages since I played with NT much (3.51), but would this work?
> >
> > If you plug the other drive back in, will it work?
>
> Once Win2k has decided upon the new drive letter it is usually too late.
> Bret already said that "neither box will completely load." I understood that
> to mean that each hard disk is in its own box but now neither computer will
> boot.
>
> > Then, set up disk mirroring, to do the clone (is that available on the
> > workstation version?). (Both will have the same letter)
> >
> > Then, break the mirror, and take the other disk out.
> >
> > Or maybe, just shut down and take the other disk out. It must have a way
> > to recover when either disk is gone, otherwise there's not much point in
> > mirroring ...
> >
> > Just a thought.
>
> If you now mirror the partition won't you also be mirroring the faulty
> registry entries?
I was kind of relying on it working again (ie, either the registry is
now OK, or at least it can be fixed) with both drives installed.
In other words, it was an idea for an alternative cloning technique.
I should also qualify "It's ages since I played with NT much (3.51)"; I
didn't play with it much then either - and in fact it was Citrix
WinFrame.
Richard
Adam Warner
> I was kind of relying on it working again (ie, either the registry is
> now OK, or at least it can be fixed) with both drives installed.
>
> In other words, it was an idea for an alternative cloning technique.
OK. I misunderstood.
By the way this also demonstrates a design flaw in where Microsoft gets its
information about drive letters. Instead of putting the info in the registry
where you need the OS running to access the entries they should have put the
info in boot.ini. Then all you would need to do is edit boot.ini to fix the
drive letter problem (using another computer).
If all the ironies I've discussed aren't enough, you can no longer use "Disk
Management" in Win2k to switch the drive letter back if it has gone wrong.
Microsoft returns the error message "Cannot modify the drive letter of your
system or boot volume." That's why you have to edit the registry directly
(again you didn't need to do this under NT4).
A tip for anyone that uses Win2k. If you find the boot letter is wrong in
Win2k under "Disk Management" after you have been altering you disk format
(e.g. by formatting a partition in DOS) never reboot until you have fixed
the boot letter in the registry.
Anyway Bret: It's not your fault and you have some KB articles to show your
boss as to what has happened and that Microsoft confirms there is a problem.
Good luck with resolving it.
Regards,
Adam
Robin
for this level of support. And are proud of it
and will defend MS to the Hilt. WHY?
This sort of problem if it ever surfaced in
Linux would be fixed very quickly.
Go figure............
Bret
today, I'll post the results, fingers crossed :)
"Adam Warner" <icon...@ihug.co.nz> wrote in message
news:94otkn$8fp$1...@lust.ihug.co.nz...
Adam Warner
> And there are people in this group willing to PAY
> for this level of support. And are proud of it
> and will defend MS to the Hilt. WHY?
>
> This sort of problem if it ever surfaced in
> Linux would be fixed very quickly.
(grin) Since Linux doesn't use drive letters but maps partitions to
directory names that you can choose this kind of D: drive being confused
with C: drive stuff doesn't arise.
But I agree if it did arise in Linux the bug wouldn't last long.
Imagine you have a hard disk "a" and a second hard disk "c" (both master
hard disks on the first and second IDE channels).
If you have linux on the first partition on hard disk "a" then that is hda1.
That is mapped to the root directory "/".
Say you have some data on the first partition on the second hard disk. Well
you can map hdc3 to, say, "/data". Then when you change directory to "/data"
you see the data on hard disk 2. It's very nice (mount points are now
available in Win2k).
Regards,
Adam
Patrick Ford
> And there are people in this group willing to PAY
> for this level of support. And are proud of it
> and will defend MS to the Hilt. WHY?
(1) Windoze is the only thing they have ever used.
(2) They are too stubborn to admit that maybe they made the wrong choice.
--
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Richard Hector
>
> But I agree if it did arise in Linux the bug wouldn't last long.
>
> Imagine you have a hard disk "a" and a second hard disk "c" (both master
> hard disks on the first and second IDE channels).
>
> If you have linux on the first partition on hard disk "a" then that is hda1.
> That is mapped to the root directory "/".
It may be (mine isn't). You can still get similar problems though - if
you shift your disks to different controllers, or swap master & slave,
etc. You could easily add a new disk and find that all your mount points
are wrong.
However, since all the config is in text files, it's easy to boot from
floppy and fix it if you do screw it up completely.
Patrick Ford
> And so begins another MS vs Linux thread :)
WTF are you on about? I said nothing about Linux.
Please post BELOW the quoted text you are replying to.
Adam Warner
> > If you have linux on the first partition on hard disk "a" then that is
hda1.
> > That is mapped to the root directory "/".
>
> It may be (mine isn't). You can still get similar problems though - if
> you shift your disks to different controllers, or swap master & slave,
> etc. You could easily add a new disk and find that all your mount points
> are wrong.
If you move a hard disk to a different controller position then your mounts
will not line up. Guaranteed.
If you just add another hard disk while leaving the other hard disks in the
same place your mount points will NOT be wrong. How could they? hda is
master on the first controller, hdb is slave, hdc is master on the second
controller and so on.
And as you say, the ability to boot from a floppy enables you to fix up
problems as well.
Regards,
Adam
T-Boy
> Aik Khoon Goh wrote:
>
> > And so begins another MS vs Linux thread :)
>
> WTF are you on about? I said nothing about Linux.
>
> Please post BELOW the quoted text you are replying to.
>
quote:
And there are people in this group willing to PAY
for this level of support. And are proud of it
and will defend MS to the Hilt. WHY?
This sort of problem if it ever surfaced in
Linux would be fixed very quickly.
end quote:
W2K is regularly copied from PC to PC (user info and setup included), I
won't bother to elaborate, there is no need as the information is
readily available both from third party vendors and MS. Indeed, I think
that's why no answer has been (bothered) to be provided.
--
Duncan