Well, this one is a challenge to me.
It happened once before and it happened again: I had a bad or corrupted W2K system (some bad hardware update or system file gone bad). I managed to reboot the system with an old backup drive (I backup entire drives, disk to disk copy). So, I put the disk with the bad system files and setup as a slave disk elsewhere in my IDE bus. I need the data files so I want to copy them from the newer, non-booting disk to the older, booting disk. Both are running W2K-SP4.
Problem arises as the new drive (which should be "C:") now becomes "G:" or "F:" and guest drive (the non-booting one with the most recent files) becomes "C:".
I try to boot the working, older drive by itslef and kaput. no go. The newer, non-booting drive is still not booting, same hardware error or ntldr failure as is the case now. The only way this system boots is with both drives in. It runs from the older, working one, but takes the newer one as the "C:" drive, including system variables and registry keys point to "C" and the local as "G". Baffling.
Someone out there has an answer? Maybe a clue?
I would really hate to chuck it all. After all, I was making hard-disk backups, which have worked as restores of other configs in other PCs before. But the need to have the needed, newer files caused me to put the second disk in and after that, no go.
When it happened last time, I copied the mainroot files, WINNT files and Program Files to backup directories (I was able to make such copy of the drive with the drive as a "secondary" or "data" or "guest" drive in another PC. That saved my skin. Then I took the disk back to the faulty PC; then simply installed W2K(with SP4 slipstreamed -thanks to the forum). That reset the boot sector I guess to that drive. Next, I took the disk back to the other "host" PC, put the disk again as another data disk, booted, deleted the maindir files, the Winnt files and Program Files from the disk in question. Copied the backup files from the secondary directories where they were saved (maindir, Winnt, ProgFiles, etc).
Took the disk back to the faulty PC and rebooted. Voi-la! It worked. Booted the PC from the new system, no problem. Still the older Disk, though. So, I took the newer disk back to the "host" PC, deleted the boot files, copied the needed data to another location on the network and then moved those files over wire to the faulty PC's "older disk". Now my system was up to date.
Too much going around.
Does anyone have an answer that is better than this?
I really hate MicroSnot for such crappy software. Broken linux installs are repaired in minutes. This one repair job took me 5 hours, what with the damn W2K install and all.
I'd love to know a shortcut (time shortcut). I'm at a different location now so I don't have the luxury of the "Host" PC. I must use a spare disk and build the "Host PC" on it. Then, backup the working (ex-working) older disk files (as guest disk) and install W2K on it too. Then delete the installed files, copy back the older system files and see if it works. Then, I must move the files from the newer, bad disk into temporary storage (same PC, only 2 available bays, IDE ports) and then move it back to the working disk... AGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH! Too much unnecessary suffering!!!!
So, this challenge is for you guys. I tried looking the Microsnot techguides, but they're generally useless unless you need the basic stuff. What happened to my system, according to one of their techs, friend of mine, is unseen or undocumented. And my recovery procedure, although unkosher, seemed ok to him. There's got to be a better way.
Anyone?
Valenalx
