Cannot clone Vista-Installation on 2nd Partition

gswkaiser said:
Of course the second one (D:smile:
Click to expand...

Ok...just wanted to clarify that. :smile: Just wanted to make sure you knew which entry was which when selecting it from the Vista boot menu.

Ok, so now please post a screenshot of your Disk Management screen. I want to see firsthand your partition setup...:wink:

-Coolname007
 
You can confirm this with disk management. Whenever you boot into either of the two Vistas, make sure that the partition that has the "system, crash dump..." etc is the partition you were expecting it to be. Partition order won't change, but drive letters will. Beware that both systems may consider themselves C: when you've booted into them. Startup repair is the same case. Don't expect it to label the partitions with the letters you want or were expecting as they normally would be in Windows.

You could also do yourself a favor and change the wallpaper on one of them. I'd be confused too, even if I knew the entrys were working correctly.
 
gswkaiser said:
This was alread posted here: The NeoSmart Forums - View Single Post - Cannot clone Vista-Installation on 2nd Partition
Click to expand...

Oh...sorry. :smile: I'm involved in a discussion in another thread (actually threads...) right now, and so I was a little distracted when I posted that. Ok, so from the screenshot, I noticed you named what is actually D as C...:wink: The *actual* C (at least from whichever Vista you were in when taking that screenshot) is the "system" partition. Yours is a very strange setup indeed...:brows:

-Coolname007
 
<< [FONT=&quot]I noticed you named what is actually D as C>>

This is due to the cloning of drive C to D via acronis true image.

But this is only the volumen label....

The drive letters are OK.

What is strange about the setup?
[/FONT]
 
If its only the volume labels your having problems with open "Computer", right-click, and rename to however you want them identified (Vista1, Vista2, etc.)
 
gswkaiser said:
<< [FONT=&quot]I noticed you named what is actually D as C>>

This is due to the cloning of drive C to D via acronis true image.

But this is only the volumen label....

The drive letters are OK.

What is strange about the setup?
[/FONT]
Click to expand...

However you may want to change it the appropriate name (i.e. D instead of C), so no one gets confused...:wink: What makes your setup so "strange" (actually, *different*) is all of the flags in Disk Management are in German (or some other language), so I cant tell what it actually says...:brows:

Ok, so now that we verified that your second entry is pointed at D, like it should be, you need to tell me which partition is "active", since I can't read German...:lol:

-Coolname007
 
gswkaiser said:
C (C:smile: is the primary and active partition.

C (D:smile: is a logical partition.
Click to expand...

Ok...so from EasyBCD in your working Vista installation, navigate to Useful Utilites>Power Console, and then run the following command:

Code: 
bootsect nt60 D:
Now reboot, and test that entry again, and inform us whether its working after you run that command. :wink: If its still not working, boot from the Recovery Disk again, and run Startup Repair 2-3 times, and it should fix the problem. Your current problem must be with your D's bootsector.

-Coolname007
 
Cool, translations are in this thread, and D: is a logical disk. He's not booting from there, he's booting from C: The BCD on C: should be going directly to D:\Windows\system32\Winload.exe.
GSW, did you verify in disk management which system you were in ?
The "boot" flag ("startpartition" to you) is dynamically attached to whichever system is running at that moment. It's not fixed to a particular partition.
The "system" flag ("systempartition" to you) is fixed to the partition containing the bootmgr and BCD, no matter which system is running.
The letter assignments (C: D: etc) are not physically attached to the partitions, they're just internal labels in the registry of the running OS.
Both systems will call themselves C:\ when they're running, so that's no indication of which one you're in.
 
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Hi, Terry...

Well, that's why i played around with the desktop background....

After saving partition C: with acronis and restoring it to D: I assigned a new desktop picture to the system running from C:.

But when I boot into D:, this new picture is displayed!

So I'm pretty sure it boots from C:, or am I wrong???

Addendum:

I will give it a try anyway....

The system on c: is now much different from the one on D, from 2 days ago, so that I can tell which is which...

I will keep you informed
 
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There are other considerations with cloned partitions.
If you're absolutely sure you're in the old system each time, have a read of this to see what else you need to do.
 
I have booted into the system on drive D: (I hoped), but all the new stuff intalled on C: is available, so this is the system running on C:.

<< have a read of this to see what else you need to do.>>

No, I did not yet, but will do it now....

Addendum:

That looks promising, but I will definitely have to digest that a little bit before going ahead...

THX to all for your support...
 
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I am having a similar issue as gswkaiser...

Finally having succeeded at installing Vista Ultimate, I proceeded to install a number of basic programs and tools. I then used Acronis Disk Director to copy the image of this installation to another partition.

The original installation is on a partition labeled Vista1; the copied installation is on a partition labeled Vista2 (creative and catchy names, huh?).

Easy BCD works fine, and boots me in to either of these Vista installations, as well as my old XP.

Booting into Vista1, this install sees itself on drive C, and sees the Vista2 partition as drive G. No problem here - everything works fine.

The problem arises with Vista2, which, when I boot into it, sees itself on drive G and Vista1 on drive C.

This might not be a problem, except that the original OS and all associated software was installed on drive C, and looks to drive C for its operation. Therefore, after I log in to Vista2, it operates off of Vista1. So what I need to do is reassign the drive letters for these two partitions, so that Vista2 sees itself on drive C, and sees the Vista1 partition as a different letter.

Unfortunately, the disk management utility in Vista does not permit me to change the drive letter of the boot partition, so that when I am booting into Vista2, I am stuck at drive G.

How can I manage to reassign the drive letter for Vista2 to drive C?

I've attached a snip of my disk management status.

Thanks for your help (again),
Dennis
 

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OK. Having spent several minutes putting together my problem description, Terry apparently replied in the interim with the solution in the multibooter document. I took a quick look at that before, but must have missed the obvious. This is probably my solution - I'll give it a try.

Once again, thanks.

Addendum:

To follow up on my results, the directions provided at the multibooters link worked like a champ, with the caveat that attempting to execute compmgmt.msc as a new task resulted in an error that a certain snap plug-in was missing. So I had to execute the diskmgmt.msc command instead in order to bring up the disk management function. Otherwise the one change to the registry as indicated resulted in success.

I have to admire those folks who support this forum as well as the developer fo the multibooter site for their willingness to share their computing intelligence with us. Here's to you tech gurus that help us muddle through the Microsoft OS maze!

Dennis
 
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Terry, could that drive change trick work here for the cloned system? About the only other thing I can think of other than recommending a re-install at this point/or a reset of bcd store with EasyBCD.
 
Still awaiting further reply from gswkaiser.
I believe his problem is caused by the fact that Vista uses disk ids and not the BIOS (like NTLDR) to locate the entries in the BCD. No problem with a Vista installed from the DVD, but a clone causes duplication which needs to be sorted.
Dennis used Acronis disk director and gsw Acronis true image. I've never used either (I have Paragon tools and a copy of Gparted available), so I don't know why they had similar but different problems, but I'm hoping that the information on the multibooters site will help gsw fix his problem too.
It could be, that when he locates and boots his 2nd Vista, he too will find a disk letter discrepancy which will need to be fixed, but for the moment he has to fix the ids so that he can find it.

btw Dennis, glad that you happened to find the thread, and the link, at such an opportune moment, and that it fixed your problem for you.
 
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Well the reason I mention it is both systems are available for accessing files. His cloned system, while his entry may work though thier pointing to seperate partitions, may actually be using the files of the other system i'm afraid, which would explain why even after changing the desktop background on one of the two systems and choosing either entry, he still gets the same system.

From my understanding of Acronis documentation, the clone feature is really for transferring systems onto a new hard drive, such as when a user wants to upgrade to a bigger hard drive but keep thier system. But for cloning to the same hard drive as we can see, complicates things.
 
Terry60 said:
Still awaiting further reply from gswkaiser.
Click to expand...
Hi, Terry, here I am....

Just a remark to my previous boot attempt to D:

Although the system on drive C: was loaded, WINDOWS felt "somewhat" realted to drive D: already.

Because when I tried to go back to a previous restore point, it told me, the system rstoration was not enabled, which is true for drive D:...

Booting back into C:, I cound do the systeme restoration without any problem.

============================================================================

Now, I have tried to understand the "Multibooter" article, and it looks like the key to my problem.

I am a bit confused, however.

Because it says:

If you do not have the MS bootmanager configured and the Vista you want to generalize is on a primary partition on the boot hard drive, then the easiest way to apply this change to its BCD is to boot into that OS and open a command prompt window, (how to do it from another OS or the Vista DVD is covered below). You might have to open the command prompt with elevated privileges by right clicking and choosing 'Run as administrator' then just type these separate commands, pressing Enter after each one. You should get a message after each. “The operation completed successfully”. If you get any other message from either of the first two commands then something is wrong with your set up and you may not be in a boot drive primary, or you might have the MS bootmanager configured, so you should go back and read the whole of the previous paragraph.

Using the {default} identifier in the first two commands here can work equally as well, except you would have less of a chance of receiving an error message if you were changing the wrong BCD or the wrong boot Object.

bcdedit /set {current} osdevice boot
bcdedit /set {current} device boot
bcdedit /set {bootmgr} device boot
bcdedit /set {memdiag} device boot
Click to expand...

Do I have the MS bootmanager configured, or not????

So my simple question is: can I use the last 4 commands just from my active Vista booted from c:?

What can happen, if somethings goes wrong?

Will my Installation be lost?
 
gsw, your first paragraph is confusing me. I'm not sure whether you're successfully booting the 2nd Vista or not ?
Can you select the 2nd (cloned) system from the boot menu, and whichever system boots, go into disk management and take a screenshot and post it here.
 
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