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I used Ghost to clone a Win98 system (FAT32) on drive C (it's an old computer, really a last resort). Then I used Ghost to clone a Win2000 (NTFS) system on drive D. Only Windows 98 could be booted. Then I installed GRUB for DOS, and wrote the boot information in menu.lst as follows:

title windows 98
root (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

title windows 2000
root (hd0,1)
chainloader +1
Still, only Win98 can be started, and Win2000 can't be started. May I ask what's wrong with my menu.lst content? Thank you very much!

Last edited by unix on 2006-5-17 at 09:44 ]

Is the D drive a primary partition?

The D drive is not a primary partition, but a logical partition, and the C drive is a primary partition.

Why is there no one who can help me?

Logical partitions cannot directly boot Windows 2000. Convert it to a primary partition first.

You clone around, which is quite convenient. But the result of cloning is that the operating system loses the ability to boot. Although the files are not lost, Microsoft operating systems all boot from the primary partition, and it's not easy to boot successfully from a logical partition, but...

You can try the boot capability of GRUB4DOS:

find --set-root /ntldr
chainloader /ntldr
boot

If lucky, this might boot your NT system on the logical disk.

Similarly, the following commands should also possibly boot the DOS/Win9x system on the logical disk:

find --set-root /io.sys
chainloader /io.sys
boot

A newer version of GRUB4DOS (0.4.1 or newer) should be used, otherwise, this function is not available.

There is another issue. If your W2k image was originally captured from the first partition, and you now restore it to the second partition, even if this partition is a primary partition, it may not run normally. Windows recognizes the installation partition.

Similarly, there are problems when reversing the partitions of 98 and 2k. Moreover, 98 has an additional problem: it does not support having more than one primary partition on the boot hard drive.

This problem can be solved with SPFDisk (this is an open-source, free boot manager + fdisk):
1. Install 2k to the first partition (primary)
2. Install 98 to the second partition (primary)
3. Use the remaining space as an extended partition and create logical partitions within it
4. Run SPFDisk, and SPFDisk operates with a fully Chinese TUI menu
5. Create the first boot menu Windows 2000, booting from the first partition
6. Create the second boot menu Windows 98, booting from the second partition
7. Turn off the Windows 2000 automatic hiding of similar partitions function in the advanced settings
8. Install to the MBR

In this way, when 98 boots, SPFDisk will automatically hide the partition where W2k is located, and it seems that 98 is the only primary partition. When 2k boots, it is in the first primary partition, and 2k allows multiple primary partitions, so it's fine.

For safety, after step 7 is completed, you can manually set to hide the 2k partition when booting 98, which will be foolproof.

SPFDisk is downloaded here: http://spfdisk.sourceforge.net/

Of course, GRUB4DOS can also achieve a similar function. It also needs to be installed to the MBR (because the first partition may be hidden sometimes, so it cannot be installed under ntldr!); and place the GRUB directory in the second partition (the second partition will never be hidden, so it can be placed with confidence). The remaining steps have the same logic as the previous text, but it is completed by GRUB commands.

Originally posted by tinybit at 2006-5-17 03:22 PM:
You clone back and forth, which is quite convenient. However, the result of cloning is that the operating system loses the ability to boot. Although the files are not lost, Microsoft's operating systems all boot from the primary partition. From...

No, if you directly use grub to load ntldr, but I have tried it before. Ntldr will not search for the boot.ini in the logical partition, so this still doesn't work.

How is the WIN2000GHOST file generated?

Then we have to add the disk emulation trick. With this usage method, there should be no more failures (if it fails, you can report a BUG). Our map can simulate a logical partition as a (MBR-containing) hard disk, so in fact, it is to treat the logical partition as a primary partition. Note that the first logical partition should be (hd0,4) instead of (hd0,1), the latter is the second primary partition. It seems that the building has made this mistake, so you can first correct the menu item of the building and then try.

map (hd0,4)+1 (hd0)
map --hook
find --set-root /ntldr
chainloader /ntldr
boot

If it is only because BOOT.INI cannot be found from the logical disk after NTLDR starts, then there is no need for emulation, but you can directly copy a copy of BOOT.INI on drive D: to drive C:.

Last edited by tinybit on 2006-5-18 at 07:38 ]

Disk emulation will obviously affect the IO efficiency of the file system and is not suitable as a basic application for daily systems.

First of all, I would like to thank all the friends upstairs. The problem has been solved by myself. Actually, I overcomplicated this problem. Last night, I went to a friend's house and looked at his computer. His computer, like mine, has multiple systems, namely (98 Xp RedhatLinux UbuntuLinux). First, I checked the partition properties. My friend's computer also has 98 on drive C and XP on drive D. Using PQ analysis, I found that drive C is the primary boot active partition and drive D is a logical partition. From this, it can be inferred that my computer also doesn't need to change the partition properties. The only thing that needs to be changed is the MBR of the hard disk. Simply copying boot.ini, ntldr, ntdetect.com, bootfont.bin, pagefile.sys to drive C won't work. The reason why GRUB fails to boot is precisely because of this. First, I need to change the MBR. I don't have a Windows 2000 installation disk at hand, but I have a Windows XP installation disk. Is the boot of XP the same as that of 2000? With a try-and-see attitude, I used the Windows XP installation disk to boot the system. The installation information appeared, and the installation files were copied. Until it restarted, I then took the disk out of the optical drive and booted from the hard disk. The boot menu for XP and 98 appeared. I entered 98, found boot.ini, replaced multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS in the boot menu with winnt, saved it, and restarted. The boot was successful.

Once again, I would like to thank all the friends upstairs and thank everyone for their help! I like the warm big family of the DOS Union!

In addition, brother qwe1234567, the Ghost system of Windows 2000 comes from System Home. www.xtzj.com

Originally posted by fujianabc at 2006-5-17 14:00:
A logical partition cannot directly boot Windows 2000. Convert it to a primary partition first.

Is that the case? My Windows 2000 is working fine in a logical partition.

Originally posted by zjnbwdj at 2006-5-18 11:04 AM:

Is this the case? My Windows 2000 in the logical partition is working well.

What I mean is that the logical partition cannot be used as the boot partition for Windows 2000/xp, but the logical partition can be used as the system partition for Windows 2000/xp.

Actually, to write the bootsector for the WINNT series, you can use "echo y|bootpart winnt boot:c:" to do it. Don't fake an installation once if there isn't one!