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 persistance 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!

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!
>

Uncle John wrote:

> 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...

There was a first partition specified, it was the C:\ drive. Windows
was installed on a second partition, and the restore information was on
the first partition - which can just as easily be referred to as C:\
(because it can be read in DOS).

Ben