Re: Norton Ghost - NTLDR is missing, Win2000 won't boot from disk -- PCTECH

Problem resolved.

The solution was buried in this Microsoft document:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=255220

Checking the boot record (used the Utility on the Ghost 9.0 CD) I could 
see the new drive had 240 heads, but the boot record (after restoring data 
from the old drive with Ghost) restored the number of heads in the boot 
record for C: as 255.

The description of the conditions I had matched:

CAUSE
This behavior occurs because the Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows Me 
installation was improperly cloned on a different-geometry drive and the 
following conditions also exist: 
The system/boot partition is formatted with the FAT32 file system.
The computer boots using INT-13 extensions (a partition larger than 7.8 
gigabytes with a System-ID type of 0C in the partition table).
The Heads (sides) value in the FAT32 BIOS Parameter Block (BPB) is 
inaccurate. This must match the geometry of the physical drive.
The Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows Me boot code ignores the head value 
in the BPB and boots even when it is invalid. The Windows 2000 boot code 
uses this value and causes the boot process not to succeed if it is 
inaccurate. 


These were the steps that fixed the problem, and allowed the installed 
Win2000 on C: to boot from disk without the "NTLDR is missing" error:

RESOLUTION
To resolve this behavior, correct the invalid Heads (sides) value in the 
FAT32 BPB to enable the Windows 2000 boot process to continue. The easiest 
way to update the field is to rewrite the Windows 95, Windows 98, or 
Windows Me boot code by using the following procedure: 
1.      Restart the computer with a Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows Me 
Startup disk that contains the Sys.com file (this file is included by 
default).
2.      At a command prompt, type sys c:. This command rewrites the 
Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows Me boot code with accurate BPB 
information.

<<I verifies the "Number of heads" in the boot record for c: had been 
changed to 240 after this step>>

FINALLY:

after you run the sys c: command you can boot to the Recovery Console, and 
then use the fixboot command to rewrite the Windows 2000 boot code. 


After the sys c: from a Win98 boot diskette, then fixboot from the Win2000 
Recovery Console, I could boot from the HDD into Win2000 again.


...Neil




Neil Palmer/DPS <neilp@xxxxxxxxxxx> 
Sent by: pctech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
2004/09/23 21:20
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Subject
[PCTECH] Norton Ghost - NTLDR is missing,       Win2000 won't boot from 
disk






The specific problem is contained in the last paragraph.  Skip to that if 
you don't care to read the story of how I got there.  :-)

Purchased Norton Ghost 9.0 a few days ago to help with replacing a failing 

12GB drive (starting to run check disk on reboot many times, taking about 
40 minutes, and finding several bad clusters each time) in my ThinkPad 
A20m with a new one (can't buy 12GB laptop drives anymore, so bought a 
40GB drive, Seagate, half the price IBM wanted for the same thing). Before 

purchasing Ghost 9.0 I called Symantec, went through the menu options and 
selected sales, and said I wanted a specific question answered before I 
put out my money to purchase it.  I was forwarded to some Tech Support, 
that seemed to me to be in India (no offence intended, but very difficult 
to understand the gentleman, and he also seemed to have difficulty 
understanding me).  Anyway, my specific question was "Will Ghost 9.0 let 
me save off my entire 12GB hard drive in my ThinkPad to a network drive or 

DVD, replace my 12GB HDD with a 40GB HDD, and reload the entire HDD?". 
After putting me on hold a few times, he came back with the answer "yes". 
So, I purchased it (online download of a 190MB file because it isn't in 
the stored yet, apparently it was only released a few weeks ago to replace 

Ghost 2003).  Had to download it a second time as there was an error 
unzipping it the first time.  Burned it to CD and installed it.  Ran my 
backup (to another PC on my Home LAN).  Of course, it failed the first 
time after running for a few hours.  Finally finished, took around 7 hours 

(I was using about 11GB of  my 12GB drive, backing up over a 100Mbps LAN 
with no other traffic).

Restoring via booting from the Norton Ghost 9.0 CD I finally managed to 
get it to map a network drive (that seems very flaky) and restored in just 

under 4.5 hours (again, failed the first attempt).  Tried to boot the PC, 
failed with "NTLDR is missing".  Searched with Google and found several 
references (yes the drive does have ntldr in the root directory, as well 
as ntdetect.com and a good boot.ini).  The first time I tried the disk was 

new and unformatted, I tried this again after re-formatting, and 
partitioning the drive so C: was less than 32GB (it's FAT32), I set C: 
partition at 30GB.  Still failed to boot from disk.  Tried Symantec online 

support for Ghost 9.0, no references to NTLDR at all - not much of 
anything actually.  Tried to get Symantec tech support at 800-745-5062 - 
what a joke that is.  Follow the prompts and they recite options for all 
the older versions of Ghost, but no Ghost 9.0 - so I tried the next 
version, Ghost 2003.  That routed me to total silence for over 30 minutes 
before I hung up.  Tried to get their customer service and decided to 
select the option for a refund (as I was pretty annoyed with them at this 
time) and after going through the phone maze they give you a number, I 
called the number, it's no longer in service.  After over an hour on the 
phone I finally got a human by selecting options for sales, and explained 
my story.  He checked with a supervisor and said they would look into the 
problems with the support line, and why there was no option for support 
for Ghost 9.0 - so I asked them to call me back and let me know when the 
support phone problem was fixed and I'd try again.  No call back after 9 
hours.

Investigating things via Google some more I came up with options for 
trying the Windows 2000 Recovery Console, and trying fixboot or fixmbr. 
Been there, done that, got the T-Shirt.

Where am I at now ?  Well I created a Win2000 boot diskette (ntldr, 
ntdetect.com & boot.ini copied from a Win 2000 Pro PC (mine actually, I 
put the "dying" disk back in for a while) after a full format of the 
diskette on my Win2000 Pro PC.  If I leave the diskette in the drive when 
I start my ThinkPad Windows boots up completely, EVERYTHING is on my hard 
drive, and EVERYTHING works (and the 3 files on the diskette are in my 
root drive on C: - hidden system files).  I just can NOT get the stupid 
HDD to boot up from disk.  The only thing "unusual" about my set-up is 
that the ThinkPad was originally Windows 98SE and I updated it a few years 

ago to Win2000 Pro.  The Windows root directory is named WINDOWS and not 
WINNT.  Any clues ?

...Neil
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