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

["Chuck Lewis" <clewis@xxxxxxxxxx>]

OW - what fun eh ? The MS Knowledge Base can be great - if you can word your
problem to get a decent hit (i.e. enough to narrow it down and NOT get
10,000 hits BUT not too narrow or you get none...).

Chuck

-----Original Message-----
From: pctech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:pctech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Neil Palmer/DPS
Sent: Friday, September 24, 2004 5:09 AM
To: PC Technical Discussion for iSeries Users
Subject: Re: [PCTECH] Norton Ghost - NTLDR is missing,Win2000 won't boot
from disk

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