Re: Win2K Multi-Boot "Invalid BOOT.INI..."

[Web Clark (RR)]

Replies below interleaved with your comments, but let me state a new 
question first just so it does not get lost.  (The question will make 
more sense after you read my response to your comments and suggestion):

Is there a way in a menu.lst to REMOVE the "active" or "boot" attribute 
from a partition?  Then I could be sure that active was only set on one 
primary partition, on one drive.  Something I read suggested that Win2K 
makes the "active" partition the C: drive.  On face value this is not 
consistent with my observation that when booting on a second hard drive, 
that C: follows the first hard drive partition corresponding to the 
second hard drive partition booted (More on this below). Perhaps if NONE 
of the Primary paritions on the first drive have active/boot set, then 
mabe it would make C: the primary "boot" partition on the second drive.  
Then I could get my 8-10 bootable Win2K systems by adding a second and 
third hard drive, getting 3 or 4 each depending on whether I had an 
extended. 

I am not sure that I even need "Active" to be set, since grub boots 
itself, and bootstraps what I specifically tell it to, then ntldr also 
does what I tell it to.  It seems like only a dumb MBR really needs the 
"Active" flag to tell it what to do.  I could use cfdisk to remove 
"boot" (cfdisk term for active) on all partitions and never set it with 
grub (As long as Win2K does not take it upon itself to set it when I boot!).

-----------------
adrian15 wrote:

> > Win2K ignores "hiddenness".  Further, no matter which Win2K system I 
> > boot, it puts its paging file on the earliest Primary partition, 
> > calling it "C:".
>
> Do you use hide and unhide commands from grub ?

Yes, but it does not seem to matter, behavior is the same.  I can boot 
from a hidden drive, and Win2K sees them all.

> > I can move the paging file to the boot partition (e, f, g, etc.), but:
> >
> > [1]   I cannot remove the drive letter from the first primary (C:) 
> > because it says it is using it.  For what, I don't know.  This 
> > bothers me, since this is NOT the system I want to run!
>
> See hide and unhide commands from grub.

Win2K appears to be oblivious to hidden vs. not.

> > [2]   I cannot rename the boot partition from E, F, etc. to "C:" or 
> > anything else - it cannot be changed from its place in the long 
> > ennumeration of ALL partitions.
>
> This is made by cloning a partition that it is C: .

If the clone is any one of the primary partitions on the first hard 
drive (1, 2, 3, or 4 (with no extended), then the booted partition 
becomes "C:", despite the fact that the partition was one of the others 
(specifically it was the second) when originally created.

If the clone is any one of the primary paritions on the second hard 
drive, then the corresponding partition position on the first hard drive 
becomes C:, with the boot drive being some high ennumerated drive letter 
like F, G, H, etc. depending on how many partitions I have.  Pretty 
weird, huh?

If the clone is a "logical" partition, C: becomes the second partition 
on the first hard drive when the first is a 128MB dedicated grub 
partition.  If the first is a Win2K partition that C: becomes the first.

> > I also cannot eliminate the paging file.  What Windows needs a paging 
> > file for with 512MB of memory I don't know.
>
> There are some option of Control Centre to disable the need of paging 
> file or to move it to another place.

Yep, and I can move it, but Win2K does not like that.  It was late and I 
cannot remember exactly the details, but I clearly remember the bottom 
line: When I booted after making it zero it complained that I did not 
have a paging file and told me to make one... but I could not log on to 
make one!  Had to overwrite the partition with my clone.  I did it 
several times same result, and after a while managed to get logged on 
(don't remember details), only to get a dialog box that I better make a 
paging file and that it made a temporary one for me.  Sure enough, it 
made a 20MB paging file.  I don't remember where.

> > If only the grub "parttype" command worked in menu.lst perhaps I 
> > could fiddle the partition types to hide and unhide at boot time.  
> > But it doesn't, and boot-us suggests that other fiddling to the 
> > partition boot record is needed.
>
> Personally I don't like parttype command... again and again... hide 
> and unhide commands.

I agree, this is what "hidden" status is for, but again hiddenness is 
ignored (as noted above).
As I am sure you picked up on, I was wrong - parttype CAN be used from 
menu.lst.  I found something VERY INTERESTING.  If I set parttype to 
"non-FS data" for all partitions except for the grub partition and the 
Win2K boot partition, Win2K STILL assigned a drive letter and could see 
and access them fine!  All of the primary, and the logical up to and 
including the boot logical partition.  Perhaps it is seeing all of the 
partitions that it had previously accessed (before I changed the 
parttype), but this is a wild guess.

> > I don't know anything about Grub2, but it might be nice to have:
> >
> > [1]   Partition hiding that works with Win2K/XP partitions
> > [2]   UNIX dd to copy stuff around with if, of, skip, seek, count, 
> > and bs.
>
> The dd command is already included in the todo list.

Thanks.

> > title Win2K Systems
> > # password --md5 $1$4zCJO1$NIEcy2xPROh5DlxtHtBR90
> > hide (hd0,0)
> > hide (hd0,1)
> > hide (hd0,2)
> > root (hd0,0)
> > chainloader (hd0,1)+1
> > makeactive
> > pause Ready to boot!  Press any key to proceed...
> > boot
>
>
> Why not:
> > title Win2K Systems (1st one)
> > # password --md5 $1$4zCJO1$NIEcy2xPROh5DlxtHtBR90
> > hide (hd0,0)
> > hide (hd0,1)
> > hide (hd0,2)
> unhide (hd0,0)
> > root (hd0,0)
> > chainloader (hd0,1)+1
> > makeactive
> > pause Ready to boot!  Press any key to proceed...
> > boot
Assume that in your proposal (hd0,0) is the Win2K system to be booted 
(In my original system it was a dedicated grub partition).
That would work fine for the primary partitions on the first hard drive, 
but I was hopeing to get more than 2-4 bootable Win2K systems.  
Hiddenness does not seem to matter (much anyway).  Only using either the 
primaries on several drives, or using logical partitions on one drive 
will get me more than 4, or one less if I want a dedicated grub 
partition, and independently one less if I want to have logical 
partitions to use the rest of a huge disk.  The problem is that C: is 
assigned some whako place, and is actually used if you look at some of 
the system status things like processes running.  Not all, just some.  I 
would guess that the Boot partition is used for some purposes, and 
others have a path with C: in the registry.

Thank you very much for the comments and suggestions.  Thank you also 
for all the time you spend helping people here!

> ??????????
>
> and so on...
>
> adrian15
>
>
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