Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsnt.misc (
More info?)
Hi,
Resizing the system/boot partition down to below the 7.8GB barrier could prove
difficult now that the system has been rendered inoperable. Somebody else here
may have other ideas on how to proceed, but the only option I see open to you
now is below:
The best suggestion I could make at this stage is (assuming you have backups of
everything on the machine) is to wipe the HDD clean, repartition in a manner
that will satisfy NT and prevent a re-occurance of your problems.
Suggested layout (have a read of
http://nt4ref.zcm.com.au/bigdisk.htm for details):
a primary partition of max 2GB formatted FAT16 - system partition C: (the spot
for NTloader, ntdetect etc...)
AN extended partition using the remainder of the HDD space
the first logical drive in the extended partition of a size that in total with
the system partition above does NOT cross the 7.8GB barrier - boot partition D:
(the partition to put the /WinNt folder in)
a logical drive arrangement using the remainder of the extended partition on the
disk that suits your needs (maybe just one partition E: ?)
Temporarily install a copy NT into drive C: (hence why I suggested making it
about 2GB in size, you may be able to get away with smaller, if other partition
sizes being maximised is important) Don't forget to apply SP6a to this 'parallel
install' after you complete it's intiial installation, otherwise it won't be
able to see and recognise the rest of your HDD correctly.
Once it is operational, you can then restore all your content from backups to
partitions D: and E:
You'll have to modify boot.ini to point to the correct locations for system
startup of your original NT4 installation (now re-instated) You may also have
problems with hardcoded paths in the registry refering to (now wrong) drive
letters, since you tell me your NT4 installation used to be on drive E: - these
can be corrected with registry editor.
A typical symptom of this 'hardcoded paths' problem is a warning on startup that
the 'Protected Storage' service failed to start - reason being is that the
idiots at Microsoft botched the registry entry for this service, and it is in
the form letter:\winnt\system32\pstores.exe, instead of the correct syntax of
%systemroot%\system32\pstores.exe !
I have successfully recovered a system using this technique, and managed to
'teach it' about the fact that it now resides on a different drive letter than
it was installed to originally - even though Microsoft say this can't be done.
I hasten to add that the only reason that it officially 'can't be done' is
because of their EXTREMELY BAD coding practises and lack of discipline when it
comes to registry entries. If everything was correctly entered in the form
%systemroot%, instead of the 4 different syntaxes that I have seen, it wouldn't
have been an issue!
As I said at the beggining however - this whole approach is contingent on you
having current backups of everything on the machine before it fell over - if
not, you can follow this installation procedure in
http://nt4ref.zcm.com.au/bigdisk.htm and everything will have to be reloaded
from scratch. Hopefully you do have backups of all the user data somewhere, so
it can be re-instated once NT4 and the apps are all back and working.
Hope this helps.
Calvin.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram