Lessani,

Perhaps your first attempt went wrong because your your boot.ini
syntax was false - no first partition is specified!
Page 1288 of the Microsoft Windows XP Professional Resource Kit
indicates that all partitions must be assigned a number and the first valid
number is 1.
Do you not have to specify partition 1 before you can specify partition 2?
--
Uncle John
<lessani@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1133536944.046638.192350@f14g2000cwb.googlegr oups.com...
> Hi,
>
> I don't really expect a reply to this, I am just posting a little
> tutorial. I spent hours trying to work out how to do this, and everyone
> seems to think its impossible, but my persistence paid off.
>
> === MY FIRST ATTEMPT (FAILURE) ===
>
> I used my friends IBM the other day, and it had a Disk2Disk recovery
> feature on it, which I thought was pretty cool. So I tried to make my
> own one (as best I could). I didn't want to use any third party
> software to use as a boot loader, so I chose to use the one built into
> XP.
>
> Dual booting XP with a DOS partition is EXTREMELY easy, I simply set up
> my partitions like so,
>
> 1:1 FAT32 ACERDOS 4GB DOS O/S / Recovery Partition
> (ACTIVE)
> 1:2 NTFS ACER 10GB WINDOWS O/S
> 1:3 NTFS ACERDATA 25GB Storage for My Documents etc.
>
> I didn't actually want to use DOS, I just needed a DOS interface, so
> using Partition Magic, I set up my partitions. Then I booted using a
> Windows 98 Floppy (but on CD - available here
> http://www.allbootdisks.com/index.ph...filecatid=1866
> ). I used
>
> X:\> FORMAT C:\ /Q /S (where X is your CD drive)
>
> The two switches at the end signify,
>
> /Q - Quick format
> /S - Make the partition bootable
>
> So, now, when I turned my laptop on, it would boot into a dos prompt,
> great! Then I installed Windows XP onto the 2nd partition. When Windows
> was finished being installed, I was then presented with a problem.
> During the installation, it had set up the boot loader by itself, but
> it also meant that it used the 1st partition as the boot partition.
> Now, as I wanted the 1st partition just to be used for recovery, its
> really meant to be hidden. But in Windows, I now had this,
>
> C:\ ACERDOS
> D:\ ACER
> E:\ ACERDATA
>
> Which meant, not only was the 1st partition visable, my Windows
> partition was on drive D - which can cause problems for some older
> legacy applications. So I had to scratch that whole idea.
>
> === THE SOLUTION ===
>
> This time I set up the partitions like so,
>
> 1:1 FAT32 ACERDOS 4GB DOS O/S / Recovery Partition
> 1:2 NTFS ACER 10GB WINDOWS O/S
> (ACTIVE)
> 1:3 NTFS ACERDATA 25GB Storage for My Documents etc.
>
> I then installed Windows XP first, and set up the boot loader myself.
> Again, I booted off a Windows 98 CD, and performed the following
> actions,
>
> X:\> FORMAT C:\ /Q /S (where X is your CD
> drive)
> X:\> SYS C:\
>
> The second operation copies the neccesary system files to the drive. I
> booted into Windows once again, and edited my BOOT.INI like so,
>
> [boot loader]
> timeout=30
> default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOW S
> [operating systems]
> multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP
> Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
> c:\="Acer Recovery"
>
> I gave it a test, by restarting the computer and selecting the "Acer
> Recovery" option, but it just made the computer return an error,
> something along the lines of,
>
> I/O Error accessing boot sector file
> multidisk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\BOOTSECT.DOS
>
> So, I had to make my own BOOTSECT.DOS, I did this like this. Boot into
> Windows, then open notepad, and enter this information,
>
> L 100 2 0 1
> N C:\BOOTSECT.DOS
> R BX
> 0
> R CX
> 200
> W
> Q
>
> Then, save the file as READ.SCR . Reboot onto your Windows 98 Bootable
> CD, then go to your C:\ drive (which is the FAT32 partition, the NTFS
> drives are ignored when in DOS), and type,
>
> C:\> DEBUG <READ.SCR
>
> This will either, just display all the information in the file, and
> freeze at the end (which hopefully shouldn't happen if you followed my
> instructions right - but if it does happen, then erm......start again
> ?). Otherwise, it will create the BOOTSECT.DOS - awesome! Then, once
> again, boot into Windows, and copy the BOOTSECT.DOS to your C:\ drive -
> which in my case was ACER (NTFS).
>
> To hide the FAT32 drive, I did this,
>
> CLICK START
> CLICK CONTROL PANEL
> DOUBLE CLICK ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS
> DOUBLE CLICK COMPUTER MANAGEMENT
> CLICK DISK MANAGEMENT
> RIGHT CLICK The first partition (FAT32)
> CLICK DRIVE LETTERS AND PATH
>
> Then it is up to you, you can remove the drive letter, and Windows
> won't see it, or, like I did, you can mount the drive as a folder in
> another partition.
>
> So, if I need to get onto that drive, I simply access it by opening
>
> C:\Restore
>
> And that displays the contents of my first partition, Magic. Make sure
> your BOOT.INI contains,
>
> [boot loader]
> timeout=30
> default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOW S
> [operating systems]
> multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP
> Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
> c:\="Acer Recovery"
>
> And that is you finished. You can now boot into DOS or Windows and have
> both hidden from each other. What I plan to do is, take this one step
> further.
>
> I copied my Norton Ghost boot disk onto my Recovery Partition, and I
> edited the AUTOEXEC.BAT (again, on the FAT32 partition) to contain,
>
> ghost.exe -clone, mode=restore, src=c:\orig.gho, dst=1:2
>
> The switches all mean,
>
> mode=restore //This tells ghost what it is doing, whether backing
> up or restoring
> src=c:\orig.gho //This tells ghost where the file it wants to
> restore is location
> dst=1:2 //This tells ghost where to restore the image
> file, being the 1st disk and the
> 2nd partition
>
> So now, when I select my Recovery option, it loads ghost and restores
> the partition instantly. I know its a bit dodgy making it restore
> instantly, but thats my risk.
>
> Enjoy your new restore partitions kids!
>