Conference decwet::windows-nt

    re: FRSTSC::TLAUER
    
    >> So i think a simple restore of a NT backup is not bootable, and i
    >> have to first install NT, then apply that Restore to it afterwards,
    >> right?
    
    I think you have that right.  There are other tools to do what you
    want, though.  One can create exact duplicates of a disk quite easily,
    right down to the bootable aspects.  However, the bundled NTBACKUP
    utility is just enough to do the basics.  If you want more features,
    you can purchase it.
    
    Regards,
    
    /Bill

[Posted by WWW Notes gateway]

There are two issues here: what is bootable and where is the kernel file. 
What defines bootability is not the kernel file!!

In order for a drive to be bootable (on Intel machines) to the NT startup
screen (a.k.a - BOOT.INI selections), the drive has to have been formatted
using NT, contain BOOT.INI, NTDETECT.COM, NTLDR in the root directory, and be
the active partition.

In order to boot the NT OS, the NTOSKRNL.EXE file must reside in the path
specified in the selected option in the BOOT.INI file (a.k.a -
multi(0)rdisk(0)disk(0)partition(1)/winnt).

If you follow these two rules, you should be able to restore NT to your hearts
content and boot NT from as many restores as you would like.

Jim Rose - formerly a MCT (who needed to perform such restores & rebuilds to
keep his sanity)
[Posted by WWW Notes gateway]

re .3: wait a minute. I need BOOT.INI, NTDETECT.COM, NTLDR in the FAT-formatted
disk which is accessed as the very first disk from the firmware/bios, right? And
this one does NOT need to be formatted by NT. It's simply a dos partition with a
boot manager to be able to select several OS defined in BOOT.INI. Then, in order
to boot NT in particular, i'll need the above files on the FAT partition/disk.
All of them are existant since i still can boot my original NT disk.

>In order to boot the NT OS, the NTOSKRNL.EXE file must reside in the path
>specified in the selected option in the BOOT.INI file (a.k.a -
>multi(0)rdisk(0)disk(0)partition(1)/winnt).

Since i applied a full backup of my original NT installation, the new disk
should look exactly as the old one, i.e. the path to NTOSKRNL.EXE should be as
valid as on the original disk?

Furthermore, if there really are no dependencies like pointers in the MBR/boot
sector of the disk to be booted, then why can't i boot this new disk after
jumpering it to the same scsi id as the original one (and removing that one, of
course), and making sure that the partition number is the same on both disks
(i.e. the 1st)?

And since the boot process already accessed the disk with the restored NT, i'm
quite sure it tried the right way at least to the disk. Playing a bit with the
partition definitions in BOOT.INI i'm again sure i offered the right partition
in at least one of several settings. So, from my point of view it has to be a
problem on that disk, and since it reports that NTOSKRNL.EXE is missing/damaged,
i thought of problems with pointers to that file, since at that point you don't
have a file system available to FIND it simply by it's name???

Any more ideas?

-- Thilo

    Thilo,
    
    did you check mark in backup to save/restore the registry?
    
    I did an exercise a few months ago. I had a full save of my system
    disk. This disk developed a corrupted registry. I restored the disk
    contents to a scratch disk but couldn't get it to boot. Installed NT on
    this disk first and restored my original disk over it. Besided having
    all the files back it still did not show up all installed features of
    my old system. With a bit under pressure (hey, this is my WORKstation)
    I re-installed everything from scratch.
    
    I too would like to know how I can restore my system disk from scratch
    if deus ex machina strikes.
    
    Guenther

Re .4 - 

When you format a drive using NT format is puts information in the boot sector
to tell it to look for ntldr in the root directory.  If it is found, it then
takes control and loads BOOT.INI.  On INTEL systems, it is not required to
have a FAT boot drive, although I like to configure it that way because it
make the recovery process a lot easier.  All things is meaningless in your
situation, however, because if you are getting a corrupt NTOSKRNL.EXE message,
you are past the boot section of the OS load.

I would suggest verifying (again) that the BOOT.INI is pointing to the correct
partition on the correct drive.  Keep in mind that if the bus slot has
changed, or the SCSI is different, or the partition number is something other
that what was originally configured, NTLDR will not be able to find
NTOSKRNL.EXE (and unforunately, MS does not let you browse for it if the
initial look fails).  Also, (as mentioned in the last message) make sure that
you verify that the registry is getting backed up properly along with the rest
of the OS files. The message "NTOSKRNL.EXE is either missing or damaged" will
come up in either of these two situations.

James Rose
[Posted by WWW Notes gateway]

re .4, .5: you both owe me two hours stolen from my wife/life last night ;-)

OK, i again did a restore to verify i'm also restoring the registry, and when i
activated that option, i felt absolutely sure that i did the same of the first
restore, however, the results were the same. To be precise, i get the 'missing
or corrupt ntoskrnl' message only if i put the drive at the same scsi id as the
orig. drive, just modifying BOOT.INI to point to the new drive didn't work: id
did not even access the new disk.

After putting the new drive at the orig. scsi id of the old one, i tried to boot
in VGA mode, since you then get much more info what's being loaded, and voil�:
it loaded ntoskrnl, HAL.dll, and one more file before telling me that again
something seems to be hosed, together eith the recommendation that a repair
session might help. So i did the repair session with a freshly built repair disk
(i re-established the original disk configuration to get a repair disk for the
old config). This worked fine, at least it did repair something. But now it had
built a winnt35 directory on my dos partition together with new boot options
pointing to that partition!!! Ok, this is another problem, i think i can
workaround that in modifying SETUP.LOG on the repair disk to point to the right
partition, but i still wonder why an actual repair disk still points to a
partition where my NT installation originally had been done (i've moved it again
some months ago). This makes me quite unsure that a freshly created repair disk
really is able to repair your ACTUAL configuration?? Oh well...

Over the weekend i'll try the above: modify setup.log and redo the repair
session, put some candles around the machine, and send a prayer at midnight to
whomever is responsible for designing the boot process for NT. And maybe
something else to the one responsible for NTBACKUP..., again :-(


nevertheless, many thanks for your patience (if anybody is still reading)

-- Thilo 

    re: .7 by FRSTSC::TLAUER
    
    When you created the new repair disk, did you actually update the
    repair information first?  Take a look at the time stamp of the files
    in %systemroot%\repair.  I "think" that's where the system looks for
    files for the repair disk.
    
    I would still go with the method of doing a brand new bare
    installation, then restoring from backup, *with* restoration of the
    registry.  Installation doesn't take long.
    
    /Bill

    With regards to BOOT.INI:
    
    multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\winnt
    
    Remember that the disk number is relative, and not related to LUN.
    missing or corrupt NTOSKRNL usually indicates that the path (above) is
    wrong. Try booting DOS (if it's intel) and editing the file, and
    rebooting.
    multi, disk, rdisk all stasrt at 0 and partition starts at 1
    partition(n) counts primary partitions first, then extended partitions!
    
    MAybe some of that helps
    
    		Jon.