Jim wrote:
> "Tim Haynes" <timhaynes@alumni.NO.SPAM.PLEASE.uwaterloo.ca> wrote in message
> news:dnpgke$vjt$1@rumours.uwaterloo.ca...
>
>>Okay, here's a weird one. I think the solution may be simple, but want
>>to see what others think.
>>
>>A friend has a very old 6GB drive that I'm replacing with a new 80GB
>>drive. The 6GB drive has been randomly failing. It will often boot
>>into safe mode but then blue screen after a few minutes.
>>
>>The old 6GB drive previously had Win98 on it, and had been upgraded to
>>WinXP Pro.
>>
>>I cloned the old HD onto the new HD, and tried booting the new HD.
>>
>>Strangely, it tries to boot into Win98 (even shows the Win98 boot
>>graphic for about 2 seconds!) and then immediately dies horribly, asking
>>where COMMAND.COM is.
>>
>
>
> There's something not clear here about how the old HD was configured, or the
> new HD for that matter. I'm getting confused because it sounded initially
> like he had Win98, then upgraded it to WinXP (iow, Win98 has been replaced
> by XP, so Win98 is no more). But now it sounds like Win98 is still there!
> So is this a case of the HD having Win98, BUT THEN, adding a new partition
> for WinXP, iow, a multi-boot situation? If so, are they in their own
> partitions?
>
> Jim

Hi Jim,

Initially, the old drive had Win98, and then it was upgraded (on the
same partition) to WinXP. Not multiboot, not multiple partitions...
Just a Win98 installation upgraded to WinXP all one one partition.
That's why I don't get why the cloned drive even SHOWS the Win98 boot
logo screen at all! It shouldn't even be there anymore, IMO.

Thanks
Tim

>
>
>
>>Now, the old drive never tried to boot into Win98. It always booted
>>into WinXP.
>>
>>Why would the new (cloned) drive try to boot into Win98?
>>
>>Here is how I cloned it:
>>
>>1. Old drive is the slave (D and the new drive is the master (C.
>>
>>2. Used Partition Magic to copy the primary (and only) partition from
>>the old drive to the new drive. It died about halway along because of
>>too many errors (the old drive is failing, after all)
>>
>>3. Used Partition Magic to define and format a FAT32 partition on the
>>new drive. (The old drive had FAT32, and I knew I'd have to use DOS to
>>copy the old drive's filesystem onto the new drive, crossing my fingers
>>that only useless files would be unable to copy).
>>
>>4. Used a WinME boot disk and FDISK to make the new drive's partition
>>the primary active partition.
>>
>>5. Used the same WinME boot disk and LCOPY.EXE to copy the filesystem
>>from the old drive to the new drive. A few files failed, but I wasn't
>>watching to see which ones.
>>
>>4. Set the BIOS to boot the new master drive.
>>
>>5. The new drive starts booting into Win98, then crashes, asking for
>>COMMAND.COM.
>>
>>The boot.ini looks fine to me. It's identical between the old drive and
>>the new drive, and the new drive attempts to boot WinXP just fine.
>>
>>I tried to start a Repair install of WinXP, but the WinXP setup CD
>>doesn't give me the option. It seems to think that whatever is in
>>C:\WINDOWS is useless and that it would be okay to completely overwrite
>>it (losing all settings, users, user files, etc... which we definitely
>>DON'T want to do!).
>>
>>Any ideas on what I can do to make the new drive boot into WinXP?
>>
>>Thanks
>>Tim
>
>
>