Windows 7 adding to Win2000
(I realize that Disk Director is not fully comparable with Windows 7)
Assume the following is all done from the bootable CD - not from within the OS.
If I take an existing system running Win2k and split the primary drive to add a new partition and then install Windows 7 as dual boot, will Windows 7 be able to read the newly created partition?
If after Windows7 is installed, and I need to change partition sizes will that be ok?
I heard rumors that Win 7 does not like 3rd party partition managers.
Thankyou for those very clear instructions - I will try it inn the next few days.
"Several users have reported corruption that appears several days later if you install to a DD-formatted partition."
I think that is what i had heard re 3rd party managers
The existing w2000 system has 2 drives, with the second drive using dynamic drive and it appears the MBR is on the second drive.
I put a new drive in as the second drive and cloned the first drive to it, leaving an empty space after. Then I made the new drive #1 - pulled the old #1 and put back in the second drive.
Then I rebooted - simple change - but it no longer boots up. I then replaced the old #1 drive and it no longer boots either. This makes no sense, I changed nothing on either of the old drives.
The only think I can think is that win2k knows that the first drives is not the same as before and get confused and messed things up.
I'm really stuck now, I cant access the computer - although no data has been lost as far as I can see.
Bob:
I don't think that Disk Director supports Dynamic Disks; I know that True Image does not. This may be one of the issues that you're seeing now.
If you cloned disk #1 to a new disk and then attempted to boot Windows when there were two drives attached having the same Disk Signature, Windows will modify one of them. Usually it will leave the first boot disk alone and modify the second disk. This would explain why your original drive no longer boots.
If you have True Image, now would be a good time to make an image of the old disk before attempting any repairs. I would then try to view the old disk using the Disk Director boot CD. Check to see if the Win2k partition is set as "Active", and if not, make it active and then try again. You may also need to replace the MBR boot code on the disk and repair the Win2k partition boot record. To do this, boot from a Win2k CD and go to the recovery console and try the following two commands:
fixmbr
fixboot
Hopefully you can get the OS working again.
1. Windows was not booted up with both the old and new clone attached at the same time
2. I discovered that leaving the win2k CD in the tray and rebooting will bring win2000 up on the hard drive using with either the old or new copy installed as drive #1
3. fixmbr did not solve it
4. later I rebooted again and did fixboot - still did not fix it - wins2k was still usable, however fixboot messed up the drive partititions
500gig drive had a C: 333gig and the rest empty
after fixboot
1. the first part of the drive was empty
2. then a very small partition then Disk Director marked with a red C
3. then my original C: partition
3. a partititon marked as being Novell
I deleted them all and cloned the drive again - this time it wont run at all - gives an NTLDR problem - went into recovery and did fixmbr - strangley this time it asked for my admin password (it did not earlier) this fixed it enough that I can boot again to win2k, but i still have to have the install CD in the tray
I've got a working system, but I'll wait till next week - the other problem is that the WIndows 7 I was going to install is an OEM version that will not install from the CD but requires all kinds of setup and presinstall on another machine and should not have been shipped to me unless it was accompanied by a computer
I will get back to this next week - thanks for the help