Microsoft → [XP Pro] SATA and boot.ini ARC path issues

OK, after a botched ghost attempt, I'm a little ticked off at Norton...

To make a long story short, I had to use ghreboot.exe from a dos boot floppy to get around the crashing Ghost DOS app. However, this "correction" incorrectly set my XP boot.ini entry to an IDE HDD instead of my SATA HDD.

How my setup looks now:

IDE 1 Disk 1: DVD-RW
IDE 1 Disk 2: IDE HDD
IDE 2 Disk 1: DVD-RW
IDE 2 Disk 2: IDE HDD
SATA 1: SATA HDD (Primary XP boot drive)
SATA 2: empty

After a few hours of digging around on Miscrosoft.com, Google, and reading the FAQs here, I'm still stumped.

In my mind, my boot.ini entry should look like:

multi(2)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="WinXP Pro" /fastdetect

instead of:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="WinXP Pro" /fastdetect

However, that doesn't seem to want to work for me .

Is the SATA controller handled differently w/ regards to XP's ARC pathname conventions?

TIA.

SATA, because it requires a boot-time driver like SCSI drives, combined with reading this Microsoft KB article: »support.microsoft.com/?k ··· d=102873 makes me think that you might want

scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)

Interesting... I didn't think to try SCSI. Off to see the results now. Thanks for the info!

If you use scsi() arcnames, you need the right ntbootdd.sys file to be in place.

»support.microsoft.com/de ··· s;102873

(Installation of NT normally copies the right driver and names it ntbootdd.sys).

It appears that the SATA is a secondary controller (just like an extra SCSI controller).
I'm booting my system from a SCSI card and my boot.ini looks like this:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\Windows="WinXP " /fastdetect NoExecute=OptIn

Notice the rdisk(1) for secondary controller.

OK, so this is quite odd...

I ended up having to reload Windows due to this problem. Went with a slipstreamed SP2 XP install, and the boot.ini entry is as follows:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

[edit]
Forgot to mention that I disconnected the IDE HDDs before starting the XP install.
[/edit]

I have a Gigabyte GA-8IPE1000PRO-G, and when it detects the SATA ports, it says "Detecting IDE Devices", just as it does for the regular IDE ports.

At any rate, I have decided to NOT try Norton Ghost again. What a PITA!

Thanks all for your suggestions.

said by _zathras:

---

Notice the rdisk(1) for secondary controller.

---

rdisk(1) does not mean the 'secondary' controller, it means the second disk in the system.

The documentation is fairly clear about that. multi(0) means that the loader uses INT 13 BIOS calls to access the disk. Thus, it depends on whether you've configured the controller (in the BIOS) for INT 13 support.

»support.microsoft.com/de ··· s;102873

Thereafter, the rdisk numbers should be used in accordance with the BIOS's numbering of the disks. In a fully-populated system with the usual onboard IDE controller, the numbering is

Pri, master: 0
Pri, slave: 1
Sec, master: 2
Sec, slave: 3

If rdisk(1) is right for your system, then my guess is that you have enabled INT 13 support for the SATA controller, and you have exactly 1 hard disk on the onboard IDE.

I have a Asus P4P800 Deluxe mobo and use the SATA and ghost...

this is my boot.ini

also attached how my drives are setup in the bios

the P4P800 has IDE, SATA and IDE RAID controllers

also if ghost hangs when starting it try using MSdos on the bootdisk instead of PC-DOS.. thats how i fixed my issue with ghost hanging on startup

Thanks Dave,
You are correct of course (LOL check the timestamp of my post, that's what happens when the brain no longer functions).
Indeed I have one disk on on-board IDE and another on LSI SCSI, with the SCSI disk containing the XP installation, and the IDE disk doing the BIOS boot.