my SSD adventure

Post by c***@nycap.rr.com
Or: how to throw a bunch of money at my hobby computer without much to
show for it.
I've always steered away from adding an SSD, mainly because I'm still
running XP. But recently I read that modern SSDs could withstand more
abuse, even XP. I don't if that's true but it got me started thinking
about one. I boot XP, Win7 and Win10, I didn't intend to install XP on
the SSD anyway.
My motherboard is an Abit IP35Pro XE, circa 2008. SSDs were not heard
of yet. It does have two PCI Express X16 slots and it seems you can
put an SSD into them with an adaptor.
https://www.newegg.com/p/17Z-0103-00002?Item=9SIAVF7EVS4360
but I couldn't figure out how I MIGHT be able to boot from it.
Then I discovered 2.5" SATA adaptor boxes to make it fit into a
desktop hard drive bay.
https://www.newegg.com/orico-1125ss-bk-hard-drive-caddy/p/0VN-0003-001F4?Item=9SIA1DS9EZ7409
The only company that seemed to offer an instructions in this venture,
that I could find anyway, was Crucial. I purchased a 1TB SATA 2.5"
SSD.
I thought I could make my SATA power cable JUST stretch far enough to
reach my hard drive bay, but turns out I needed an extension cable. I
had SATA5 open to connect to.
Crucial's online instruction said to download free their special
version of Acronis True Image and use a USB cable. I hated True Image
when I had it and have long been using Macrium for imaging, and they
wanted me to CLONE my drive to the SSD. I wanted to transplant Win7 to
a SSD partition of my choosing. So ignored that part of their how-to.
When all the stuff in hand I installed the SSD into the 2.5 adaptor
box. It didn't feel like the SSD plugged into their jack very far.
Also there was no way to screw it in securely like mounting a regular
hard drive is done. I wedged some popsicle sticks behind it and
wrapped electrical tape to keep them in place. Hitched it in and BIOS
showed me SATA5 was still unconnected. Booted Win7, no SSD showing in
DiskManagement. Same with Win10. Couldn't think of anything else, so
back to Crucial's instruction.
Crucial wants you to connect the SSD with a USB to SATA cable.
https://www.newegg.com/startech-usb3s2sat3cb-usb-to-sata/p/N82E16812400542?Item=N82E16812400542
Booted Win7, connected SSD via the USB cable and there it was in
DiskManagement. Don't need no True Image which wouldn't install on
Win7 anyway, not enough updates. Guess Crucial insists on Win10 if you
want to use their stuff.
I created a good-sized primary partition and imaged today's Win7
Macrium Backup into it. Took a LOOONG time. Said it was using Trim.
I rebooted and connected the SSD to SATA5 without using the adaptor
box, just let it hang. Tried adjusting BIOS to boot SATA5 (and
unplugging Boot drive to avoid unpleasantness) Nope Disc Boot Failure.
Not unexpected as this Win7 install expected to boot off a BCD menu.
Fixed BIOS boot back to normal and plugged boot drive back in. Booted
regular hard drive Win7. Brought up EasyBCD and made a new entry for
When I booted "Win7 on SSD" from my new boot menu entry the darn thing
booted!
Booting XP the new drive shows as G: and ominously has the wrong
VolumeID, the name of regular Win7 partition. I was very leery of
changing the name or letter, chose to leave it alone (and worry about
it, but never use G: while in XP).
I put the SSD into the adaptor box, without horsing it into the drive
bay slot. Does't show in BIOS. The SATA connection in the box
apparently is not meant for Crucial stuff? I wrote them a note asking
for fix. So I just left the SSD hanging on the SATA cables in the
bottom of the hard drive bay.
The new Win7 booted slightly more snappily, and behaves slightly more
snappily. Not almost $200 worth which is about my investment with all
experimenting I did. Nord VPN won't run, says "Nord background process
not running". Wrote Nord a note.
If you made it this far – now you guys can tell me how I should have
done it.

We just wouldn't do that.

That's an NVMe sled. On an old computer.

https://www.newegg.com/p/17Z-0103-00002?Item=9SIAVF7EVS4360

And a weird one at that. It has an x16 edge card, even though
it has no intention of using x16 wiring. The edge card only
ever needed to have x4 wiring, because the adapter is cheap and
has no PCie switch chip on it. If it had a switch chip, it might
have cost $100 more.

The aluminum heatsink isn't necessary.

*******

Given the vintage of your machine, the NVMe in the sled won't run
at full speed. the 1000MB/sec bandwidth will run at about half of
that, when PCIe buffer size in chipset is taken into account.
The NVMe storage will run at 500MB/sec to 1000MB/sec instead of
3500MB/sec native.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_P35

LGA775
PCI Express 1.1 x16 (could be split as two x8 slots) 250MB/sec per lane times 4

Your machine BIOS has no support for NVMe, as a starting point.
You would have been better off with a SATA SSD. I have
an addin SATA card here for example, which has AHCI WinXP drivers.

*******

They *do* make a RAID controller board with NVMe sled, which
is bootable on a machine like yours. The card might cost on
the order of $500 or so. Such a board has a config ROM which
registers with the BIOS disk read routine. If it doesn't
have passthru SMART support, then you would not be able to
monitor your new NVMe. You would want to locate the owners
manual and review specs before purchase. There is no monkey-business
on the edge card -- it's a plain x8 which will plug into an x8
pr x16 slot.

https://www.highpoint-tech.com/bootable-hardware-raid-solutions

2 sled (install just one NVMe, run in JBOD mode)

SSD6202A (fan cools the RAID PCIe chip, not the NVMe devices) $321

https://www.newegg.com/highpoint-ssd6202a-pci-express/p/N82E16816115342

*******

This represents an unnecessary electrical reflection. 2.5" SATA SSD don't
need careful mounting. They're shock resistant "to 1000G", which is only
true in a very limited sense. Since there are no rotating or mechanical
parts, they're more rugged. Some people have fastened them in their PC
with nylon ties. The SATA SSD drives are quite cool to the touch.
They run cooler than an NVMe, most of the time. Electrically, they may have
small power transients, but they can frequently run in a 2.5 watt footprint.
Check the spec sheet for the SATA SSD for details.

https://www.newegg.com/orico-1125ss-bk-hard-drive-caddy/p/0VN-0003-001F4?Item=9SIA1DS9EZ7409

How it works, is you fit your new purchase, to the two cables (15 pin power,
7 pin signal), then look at where you can mount it or strap it to something.
The metal case is at ground potential, if it has any potential at all. Because
it has eight screw holes, there are any number of things you can attempt.

Mine right now, is just laying on a stick, loose :-) Not a biggie.

SATA data cables come up to three feet long. The average
cable is half that, or about 18" or so. The power cabling
is generally more limiting, more of a nuisance, but not for
any electrical reason.

ESATA cables can be six feet long (and that's an external
drive standard for the same SATA interface). ESATA was only
officially SATA II, which helps with the max six foot cable.

But the short PCB in your aluminum slab, may be the thing
preventing operation. Connecting the Crucial SATA drive
to the cables you've got directly, is much more likely
to work.

If Macrium clones the drive, it will change both the identifiers
used on the new SSD partitions, as well as change the BCD file
on the SSD, so that it too has those same identifiers. This
ensures that the new drive "boots independently" of the old hard drive.
I don't know what Acronis does in this case. The BCD is actually
a Registry file (in terms of format) and you can dump the contents
with the right invocation of the bcdedit command.

bcdedit # enumerate the boot drive BCD file

bcdedit /store C:\boot\BCD # When booting a Windows installer DVD, where the
# DVD boot letter is X: , you can enumerate the BCD
# on the partition temporarily known as C: . This assumes
# that is where the BCD file is located.

bcdedit /store C:\boot\BCD /set {bootmgr} displaybootmenu True # Change the boot menu, using
# a Windows installer DVD and the
# Command Prompt in Troubleshooting.

So where is the BCD file ? It's tricky. The syntax in this answer,
is not exactly right, but I still appreciate the answer for the
hint it provides.

"It is stored in a file in folder “\Boot”.
The full path to this file is “[active partition]\Boot\BCD”. <=== like in my example

For UEFI boot, the BCD file is located at /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/BCD <=== sorta Linux terminology being used
on the EFI System Partition.
"

OK, let's assign a temporary letter to the ESP, and see where it is.

[Picture]

Loading Image...

The sequence would go like this (Admin window):

diskpart
list disk
select disk 1
list partition # Tells me "Partition 1 System 100 MB"
select partition 1
assign letter=K
exit

K:
dir
cd EFI
cd Microsoft
cd Boot
dir # Looking good, I see it.

Now, a copy/paste of where I am now.

K:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot>dir BCD
Volume in drive K has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 0A4D-6710

Directory of K:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot

03/03/2024 06:24 PM 57,344 BCD

Now, when I do this, they should match, as the file referenced is the same.

bcdedit

bcdedit /store K:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD

And that looks like this:

[Picture]

Loading Image...

The letter K: will exist in my Terminal session, but tends not to
be available elsewhere. It is a transient letter and will be gone
after I reboot. But since it is available in Terminal, I can
fix a BCD using that K: letter concept, like if I boot a Windows DVD
and use the Command Prompt in Troubleshooting. Having a picture of
my Disk Management, with the window opened wide to get all the strings,
can help later on.

Paul

c***@nycap.rr.com

2024-03-04 23:10:31 UTC

Post by c***@nycap.rr.com
Or: how to throw a bunch of money at my hobby computer without much to
show for it.
I've always steered away from adding an SSD, mainly because I'm still
running XP. But recently I read that modern SSDs could withstand more
abuse, even XP. I don't if that's true but it got me started thinking
about one. I boot XP, Win7 and Win10, I didn't intend to install XP on
the SSD anyway.
My motherboard is an Abit IP35Pro XE, circa 2008. SSDs were not heard
of yet. It does have two PCI Express X16 slots and it seems you can
put an SSD into them with an adaptor.
https://www.newegg.com/p/17Z-0103-00002?Item=9SIAVF7EVS4360
but I couldn't figure out how I MIGHT be able to boot from it.
Then I discovered 2.5" SATA adaptor boxes to make it fit into a
desktop hard drive bay.
https://www.newegg.com/orico-1125ss-bk-hard-drive-caddy/p/0VN-0003-001F4?Item=9SIA1DS9EZ7409
The only company that seemed to offer an instructions in this venture,
that I could find anyway, was Crucial. I purchased a 1TB SATA 2.5"
SSD.
I thought I could make my SATA power cable JUST stretch far enough to
reach my hard drive bay, but turns out I needed an extension cable. I
had SATA5 open to connect to.
Crucial's online instruction said to download free their special
version of Acronis True Image and use a USB cable. I hated True Image
when I had it and have long been using Macrium for imaging, and they
wanted me to CLONE my drive to the SSD. I wanted to transplant Win7 to
a SSD partition of my choosing. So ignored that part of their how-to.
When all the stuff in hand I installed the SSD into the 2.5 adaptor
box. It didn't feel like the SSD plugged into their jack very far.
Also there was no way to screw it in securely like mounting a regular
hard drive is done. I wedged some popsicle sticks behind it and
wrapped electrical tape to keep them in place. Hitched it in and BIOS
showed me SATA5 was still unconnected. Booted Win7, no SSD showing in
DiskManagement. Same with Win10. Couldn't think of anything else, so
back to Crucial's instruction.
Crucial wants you to connect the SSD with a USB to SATA cable.
https://www.newegg.com/startech-usb3s2sat3cb-usb-to-sata/p/N82E16812400542?Item=N82E16812400542
Booted Win7, connected SSD via the USB cable and there it was in
DiskManagement. Don't need no True Image which wouldn't install on
Win7 anyway, not enough updates. Guess Crucial insists on Win10 if you
want to use their stuff.
I created a good-sized primary partition and imaged today's Win7
Macrium Backup into it. Took a LOOONG time. Said it was using Trim.
I rebooted and connected the SSD to SATA5 without using the adaptor
box, just let it hang. Tried adjusting BIOS to boot SATA5 (and
unplugging Boot drive to avoid unpleasantness) Nope Disc Boot Failure.
Not unexpected as this Win7 install expected to boot off a BCD menu.
Fixed BIOS boot back to normal and plugged boot drive back in. Booted
regular hard drive Win7. Brought up EasyBCD and made a new entry for
When I booted "Win7 on SSD" from my new boot menu entry the darn thing
booted!
Booting XP the new drive shows as G: and ominously has the wrong
VolumeID, the name of regular Win7 partition. I was very leery of
changing the name or letter, chose to leave it alone (and worry about
it, but never use G: while in XP).
I put the SSD into the adaptor box, without horsing it into the drive
bay slot. Does't show in BIOS. The SATA connection in the box
apparently is not meant for Crucial stuff? I wrote them a note asking
for fix. So I just left the SSD hanging on the SATA cables in the
bottom of the hard drive bay.
The new Win7 booted slightly more snappily, and behaves slightly more
snappily. Not almost $200 worth which is about my investment with all
experimenting I did. Nord VPN won't run, says "Nord background process
not running". Wrote Nord a note.
If you made it this far now you guys can tell me how I should have
done it.

We just wouldn't do that.
That's an NVMe sled. On an old computer.
https://www.newegg.com/p/17Z-0103-00002?Item=9SIAVF7EVS4360
And a weird one at that. It has an x16 edge card, even though
it has no intention of using x16 wiring. The edge card only
ever needed to have x4 wiring, because the adapter is cheap and
has no PCie switch chip on it. If it had a switch chip, it might
have cost $100 more.
The aluminum heatsink isn't necessary.
*******
Given the vintage of your machine, the NVMe in the sled won't run
at full speed. the 1000MB/sec bandwidth will run at about half of
that, when PCIe buffer size in chipset is taken into account.
The NVMe storage will run at 500MB/sec to 1000MB/sec instead of
3500MB/sec native.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_P35
LGA775
PCI Express 1.1 x16 (could be split as two x8 slots) 250MB/sec per lane times 4
Your machine BIOS has no support for NVMe, as a starting point.
You would have been better off with a SATA SSD. I have
an addin SATA card here for example, which has AHCI WinXP drivers.
*******
They *do* make a RAID controller board with NVMe sled, which
is bootable on a machine like yours. The card might cost on
the order of $500 or so. Such a board has a config ROM which
registers with the BIOS disk read routine. If it doesn't
have passthru SMART support, then you would not be able to
monitor your new NVMe. You would want to locate the owners
manual and review specs before purchase. There is no monkey-business
on the edge card -- it's a plain x8 which will plug into an x8
pr x16 slot.
https://www.highpoint-tech.com/bootable-hardware-raid-solutions
2 sled (install just one NVMe, run in JBOD mode)
SSD6202A (fan cools the RAID PCIe chip, not the NVMe devices) $321
https://www.newegg.com/highpoint-ssd6202a-pci-express/p/N82E16816115342
*******
This represents an unnecessary electrical reflection. 2.5" SATA SSD don't
need careful mounting. They're shock resistant "to 1000G", which is only
true in a very limited sense. Since there are no rotating or mechanical
parts, they're more rugged. Some people have fastened them in their PC
with nylon ties. The SATA SSD drives are quite cool to the touch.
They run cooler than an NVMe, most of the time. Electrically, they may have
small power transients, but they can frequently run in a 2.5 watt footprint.
Check the spec sheet for the SATA SSD for details.
https://www.newegg.com/orico-1125ss-bk-hard-drive-caddy/p/0VN-0003-001F4?Item=9SIA1DS9EZ7409
How it works, is you fit your new purchase, to the two cables (15 pin power,
7 pin signal), then look at where you can mount it or strap it to something.
The metal case is at ground potential, if it has any potential at all. Because
it has eight screw holes, there are any number of things you can attempt.
Mine right now, is just laying on a stick, loose :-) Not a biggie.
SATA data cables come up to three feet long. The average
cable is half that, or about 18" or so. The power cabling
is generally more limiting, more of a nuisance, but not for
any electrical reason.
ESATA cables can be six feet long (and that's an external
drive standard for the same SATA interface). ESATA was only
officially SATA II, which helps with the max six foot cable.
But the short PCB in your aluminum slab, may be the thing
preventing operation. Connecting the Crucial SATA drive
to the cables you've got directly, is much more likely
to work.
If Macrium clones the drive, it will change both the identifiers
used on the new SSD partitions, as well as change the BCD file
on the SSD, so that it too has those same identifiers. This
ensures that the new drive "boots independently" of the old hard drive.
I don't know what Acronis does in this case. The BCD is actually
a Registry file (in terms of format) and you can dump the contents
with the right invocation of the bcdedit command.
bcdedit # enumerate the boot drive BCD file
bcdedit /store C:\boot\BCD # When booting a Windows installer DVD, where the
# DVD boot letter is X: , you can enumerate the BCD
# on the partition temporarily known as C: . This assumes
# that is where the BCD file is located.
bcdedit /store C:\boot\BCD /set {bootmgr} displaybootmenu True # Change the boot menu, using
# a Windows installer DVD and the
# Command Prompt in Troubleshooting.
So where is the BCD file ? It's tricky. The syntax in this answer,
is not exactly right, but I still appreciate the answer for the
hint it provides.
"It is stored in a file in folder \Boot.
The full path to this file is [active partition]\Boot\BCD. <=== like in my example
For UEFI boot, the BCD file is located at /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/BCD <=== sorta Linux terminology being used
on the EFI System Partition.
"
OK, let's assign a temporary letter to the ESP, and see where it is.
[Picture]
https://i.postimg.cc/V6p9339T/Disk-Management-My-SSD.gif
diskpart
list disk
select disk 1
list partition # Tells me "Partition 1 System 100 MB"
select partition 1
assign letter=K
exit
dir
cd EFI
cd Microsoft
cd Boot
dir # Looking good, I see it.
Now, a copy/paste of where I am now.
K:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot>dir BCD
Volume in drive K has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 0A4D-6710
Directory of K:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot
03/03/2024 06:24 PM 57,344 BCD
Now, when I do this, they should match, as the file referenced is the same.
bcdedit
bcdedit /store K:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD
[Picture]
https://i.postimg.cc/cHRYbrHK/fun-with-diskpart-and-bcdedit.gif
The letter K: will exist in my Terminal session, but tends not to
be available elsewhere. It is a transient letter and will be gone
after I reboot. But since it is available in Terminal, I can
fix a BCD using that K: letter concept, like if I boot a Windows DVD
and use the Command Prompt in Troubleshooting. Having a picture of
my Disk Management, with the window opened wide to get all the strings,
can help later on.
Paul

I've decided to leave the SSD lying on the floor of my harddrive bay.
Did get a reply from Orico re the adaptor box, said I needed to apply
more pressure to plug the SSD into the box.

I've been wondering how much my SATA Type ? On my motherboard slows
down my accessing the SSD? If it would account for what I consider
the SSD's lack-luster perceived speed? I've not observed other
people's computers to compare (and anyway my computer clock is 3ghz, 2
cores, modern pcs have multicore cpus, but usually slower clocks, hard
to compare.)

I've not been able to ascertain the level of the SATA on my
motherboard but I know it's not the latest. I expected more snappiness
that I am getting. Sometimes I'm still surprised: opening Macrium, for
example, is MUCH faster. Is all the time I'm saving due to eliminating
disk seeks? I kind of thought the transfer rate would be faster than
the hard disks. I downloaded HWINFO64 and CristalDiskInfo but they're
not helping me compare.

Paul

2024-03-05 03:51:24 UTC

Post by c***@nycap.rr.com
I've decided to leave the SSD lying on the floor of my harddrive bay.
Did get a reply from Orico re the adaptor box, said I needed to apply
more pressure to plug the SSD into the box.
I've been wondering how much my SATA Type ? On my motherboard slows
down my accessing the SSD? If it would account for what I consider
the SSD's lack-luster perceived speed? I've not observed other
people's computers to compare (and anyway my computer clock is 3ghz, 2
cores, modern pcs have multicore cpus, but usually slower clocks, hard
to compare.)
I've not been able to ascertain the level of the SATA on my
motherboard but I know it's not the latest. I expected more snappiness
that I am getting. Sometimes I'm still surprised: opening Macrium, for
example, is MUCH faster. Is all the time I'm saving due to eliminating
disk seeks? I kind of thought the transfer rate would be faster than
the hard disks. I downloaded HWINFO64 and CristalDiskInfo but they're
not helping me compare.

Regular x1 lane on x1 connector Rev1.1 ~250MB/sec
Wider x2 lane on x4 connector Rev1.1 ~500MB/sec
RAID x4 lane on x4 connector Rev1.1 ~1000MB/sec (now the 530MB/sec SATA is the limitation)

The only problem with the RAID card, is the nuisance of the
RAID driver and the RAID metadata on the drive.

This chip is an example of an x2 lane chip. ASM1062.

https://www.asmedia.com.tw/product/415Yq4aSx1hz4Iu5/58dYQ8bxZ4UR9wG5

"PCI Express Gen2 x2 to two ports of Serial ATA 6Gps"

This is to show such a card exists.

https://www.newegg.com/p/2S7-07JP-1MCB1

*******

With the various utilities on Windows, it's pretty
hard to get a correct SSD speed. It makes sense it's
not 530MB/sec, but when it really should be that speed,
it is pretty hard to get proof from a utility.

Paul

c***@nycap.rr.com

2024-03-07 02:11:56 UTC

Chipset is P35. IP35Pro XE = Intel P35 Express / ICH9R
It's possible it is SATA II at about 250MB/sec.
The main advantage of an SSD for Windows 10, is the zero seek speed
of the SSD drive. Sustained read speed is important under some
situations, but for things like booting, if a lot of tiny files
were involved, fast seeking helps.
The seek speed of an SSD is constant. It doesn't matter how many
LBAs are between two spots on the storage, the time to get from
one to the other is the same. It's because there is no arm and
no spinning motion, that it behaves that way.
A "normal" SATA III card would have a PCIe x1 connector.
To get 530MB/sec SATA read speed, would take PCIe x1 Rev3 1GB/sec
lane, to get even close. Only my latest computer has that.
The ten year old HEDT is still slow.
One solution to this, is to find a SATA III chip with PCIe x2 lanes.
In your PC, when it is installed, that gets you to
roughly 500MB/sec and still a little short of the (max) 530MB/sec
or so.
[Picture] Comparing what the connector area looks like on the first two types
https://i.postimg.cc/ryxvK3GJ/x1-vs-x2-PCIe.jpg
Regular x1 lane on x1 connector Rev1.1 ~250MB/sec
Wider x2 lane on x4 connector Rev1.1 ~500MB/sec
RAID x4 lane on x4 connector Rev1.1 ~1000MB/sec (now the 530MB/sec SATA is the limitation)
The only problem with the RAID card, is the nuisance of the
RAID driver and the RAID metadata on the drive.
This chip is an example of an x2 lane chip. ASM1062.
https://www.asmedia.com.tw/product/415Yq4aSx1hz4Iu5/58dYQ8bxZ4UR9wG5
"PCI Express Gen2 x2 to two ports of Serial ATA 6Gps"
This is to show such a card exists.
https://www.newegg.com/p/2S7-07JP-1MCB1
*******
With the various utilities on Windows, it's pretty
hard to get a correct SSD speed. It makes sense it's
not 530MB/sec, but when it really should be that speed,
it is pretty hard to get proof from a utility.
Paul

I find I have another headache re my SSD.
Somehow, perhaps when I imaged a back-up copy of hard-drive Win7, the
volume label got changed from SSD1 to WD2TB B, the latter being the
volume label of the harddrive Win7 partition.

Then I found out that when I boot my new SSD that any programs I
install or uninstall also magically get installed or uninstalled on my
hard-drive Win7 installation!

I gritted my teeth and changed the volume label of the SSD partition
from WD2TB B back to SSD1. I kind of expected trouble but it seemed to
go very smoothly. Checked all the OS's and changed all drive letters
and volume labels were as I intended them to be.

Then I went back to EasyBCD (while I had harddrive Win7 booted) and
made a new menu entry for the SSD, again pointing it to disc V:
Booted the new menu entry and got same problem, two partitions, SSD
Win7 and harddrive Win7 somehow communicate when they shouldn't.

Here's a screen shot of DiscManagement with the SSD booted.
Loading Image...

note that the C: drive sits in the harddriveWin7 partition, rather
than the SSD partition on V:
I would have liked to notate that picture with Photoshop but mine only
works in XP, which isn't where I'm at.

And here's a pic of last two items on my bcdedit which are the two SSD
menu entries.
Loading Image...

Paul

2024-03-07 10:50:49 UTC

Post by c***@nycap.rr.com
I find I have another headache re my SSD.
Somehow, perhaps when I imaged a back-up copy of hard-drive Win7, the
volume label got changed from SSD1 to WD2TB B, the latter being the
volume label of the harddrive Win7 partition.
Then I found out that when I boot my new SSD that any programs I
install or uninstall also magically get installed or uninstalled on my
hard-drive Win7 installation!
I gritted my teeth and changed the volume label of the SSD partition
from WD2TB B back to SSD1. I kind of expected trouble but it seemed to
go very smoothly. Checked all the OS's and changed all drive letters
and volume labels were as I intended them to be.
Then I went back to EasyBCD (while I had harddrive Win7 booted) and
Booted the new menu entry and got same problem, two partitions, SSD
Win7 and harddrive Win7 somehow communicate when they shouldn't.
Here's a screen shot of DiscManagement with the SSD booted.
https://i.postimg.cc/BvW8Pj0y/Win7-Disk-Manage-while-booted-to-V.png
note that the C: drive sits in the harddriveWin7 partition, rather
I would have liked to notate that picture with Photoshop but mine only
works in XP, which isn't where I'm at.
And here's a pic of last two items on my bcdedit which are the two SSD
menu entries.
https://i.postimg.cc/rpSN2qf6/bcdedit-last-two-of-menu.png

When you clone mechanically, without adjusting identifiers, the OS
starting for the first time, "casts about for a pagefile.sys" and
if it finds it on another volume, fine, it uses it. In sysdm.cpl ,
you may be able to edit pagefiles, have multiple pagefiles, and
perhaps you can edit your way out of that. But generally speaking,
this is not easy to fix.

Let's make up a strawman for a moment. If you copy a hard drive
by using a dumb tool (it cares not about identifiers), then
the *first time* you boot the drive on the right, the drive
on the left should be unplugged. This allows the drive on the
right, to find the pagefile on the right (and it will keep
finding it on the right, forever after). However, for other
identifier purposes, there may still be confusion when both
drives are installed -- you could set the BIOS boot order to
the right-hand drive, and the volume identifier could cause
the boot session to end up on the C: on the left. Only by
looking in Disk Management each morning, could you see
which C: was being used (left, or right).

+-----+-------------+ +-----+--------------------+
| MBR | Original C: | ===> | MBR | dd.exe copied disk |
+-----+-------------+ +-----+--------------------+

If you use Macrium for cloning (or any number of other well
designed utilities), it should change the identifier of a clone
so the one on the left could be 1234 and the one on the
right could be 5678, and the boot menus only get confused
if you purposely try to confuse/break things. Carelessly
waving around "bootbcd" commands could still confuse things.

I see a couple "custom" entries in the BCD already, and you're
way out of my capability to fix whatever you've done :-)

But anyway, you have to develop some different habits.

1) When fresh-installing an OS, only the target drive should be present.
This is so, mentally, you can assure yourself that the installation
materials only got to see the target drive. Any further "confusion"
could only be caused by really careless BCD commands (or EasyBCD usage).

2) Use a professional cloning tool. Stop doing stuff with dd.exe or
tools which use dd.exe behind your back. For example, clonezilla
might use "ntfsclone" or "partclone" for duplicating a partition,
but clonezilla is delightfully missing of identifier handling and
the user is expected to manually "blkid" stuff and fix it.

A professional cloning tool helps, as it at least changes the identifier,
so boot menus cannot "mysteriously wander about on two identical things".
If everything has a unique identifier, there are fewer "adventures"
happening at boot time.

They may have removed this from the site, but this would be a version
of Macrium suited to home usage. Currently, the site is on Version 8
and the versions offered would be "trial" or "purchase". Whereas this
one would run forever as a "free". You don't have to register it,
and if it asks if you're home or commercial, you would tick the
home user box. That will at least give you a cloning tool.

https://download.macrium.com/reflect/v7/v7.3.6391/reflect_setup_free_x64.exe

As for the rest of your setup, it almost looks like you spanned two volumes
and used extended/logical across the two of them. Or something.

If I was sitting there, I would estimate it would take me a
"24 hour work day" to clean that up :-)

Paul

John B. Smith

2024-03-08 14:27:51 UTC

When you install with multiple disks present during the installation,
bad things happen. That's why one of the rules of installation is
only the *target piece of hardware* should be present. Then, any materials
used for boot, can only be on that device and not somewhere else.
You've been using some sort of unhealthy cloning process, as it
appears two things may be using the same identifier.
[Picture]
https://i.postimg.cc/Y0n0twzK/Win7-Disk-Manage-while-booted-PATH.gif
When you clone mechanically, without adjusting identifiers, the OS
starting for the first time, "casts about for a pagefile.sys" and
if it finds it on another volume, fine, it uses it. In sysdm.cpl ,
you may be able to edit pagefiles, have multiple pagefiles, and
perhaps you can edit your way out of that. But generally speaking,
this is not easy to fix.
Let's make up a strawman for a moment. If you copy a hard drive
by using a dumb tool (it cares not about identifiers), then
the *first time* you boot the drive on the right, the drive
on the left should be unplugged. This allows the drive on the
right, to find the pagefile on the right (and it will keep
finding it on the right, forever after). However, for other
identifier purposes, there may still be confusion when both
drives are installed -- you could set the BIOS boot order to
the right-hand drive, and the volume identifier could cause
the boot session to end up on the C: on the left. Only by
looking in Disk Management each morning, could you see
which C: was being used (left, or right).
+-----+-------------+ +-----+--------------------+
| MBR | Original C: | ===> | MBR | dd.exe copied disk |
+-----+-------------+ +-----+--------------------+
If you use Macrium for cloning (or any number of other well
designed utilities), it should change the identifier of a clone
so the one on the left could be 1234 and the one on the
right could be 5678, and the boot menus only get confused
if you purposely try to confuse/break things. Carelessly
waving around "bootbcd" commands could still confuse things.
I see a couple "custom" entries in the BCD already, and you're
way out of my capability to fix whatever you've done :-)
But anyway, you have to develop some different habits.
1) When fresh-installing an OS, only the target drive should be present.
This is so, mentally, you can assure yourself that the installation
materials only got to see the target drive. Any further "confusion"
could only be caused by really careless BCD commands (or EasyBCD usage).
2) Use a professional cloning tool. Stop doing stuff with dd.exe or
tools which use dd.exe behind your back. For example, clonezilla
might use "ntfsclone" or "partclone" for duplicating a partition,
but clonezilla is delightfully missing of identifier handling and
the user is expected to manually "blkid" stuff and fix it.
A professional cloning tool helps, as it at least changes the identifier,
so boot menus cannot "mysteriously wander about on two identical things".
If everything has a unique identifier, there are fewer "adventures"
happening at boot time.
They may have removed this from the site, but this would be a version
of Macrium suited to home usage. Currently, the site is on Version 8
and the versions offered would be "trial" or "purchase". Whereas this
one would run forever as a "free". You don't have to register it,
and if it asks if you're home or commercial, you would tick the
home user box. That will at least give you a cloning tool.
https://download.macrium.com/reflect/v7/v7.3.6391/reflect_setup_free_x64.exe
As for the rest of your setup, it almost looks like you spanned two volumes
and used extended/logical across the two of them. Or something.
If I was sitting there, I would estimate it would take me a
"24 hour work day" to clean that up :-)
Paul

Thanks, Paul, for the time and effort you've expended on this. I'm
still scheming and plotting to get this to work. I can't understand
everything you say, but I do have one advantage: I might be able to
"think outside your box" and squirm my way into some solution due to
desperation and persistence. My system log (legal pads) has me
starting SSD project back on Feb 23rd.

I got an answer from EasyBCD Support that more or less agrees with
your assessment, as far as I can understand. Gonna quote him,
hopefully not pissing anyone off too much:
(He's looking at my pic of DiscManagement while in Win7 harddrive)
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
"That confirms that you are indeed running from the SSD (boot flag)
but that the system is still booting from the HDD (system flag).

Disk Management flags have the following meanings on MBR/BIOS PCs

"boot" = "this is the system you're running"
"system" = "this is where I found the boot files for the currently
running system"
"active" (on the first HDD in the BIOS boot sequence) = "this is where
I started the search for the boot files"
"active" (on subsequent HDDs in the BIOS boot sequence) ="this is
where I will look if I don't find something in the MBR on the first
HDD"

If your PC is UEFI, then the "active" flag no longer exists on any GPT
devices and "system" will mark which of the EFI System Partitions is
booting the PC.

I suspect that Macrium is the source of your problem. Different
partition managers have a variety of ways of "copying" or "cloning"
partitions some of which are not what they claim (a clone should be
bit for bit identical with the source e.g.) and some are suitable only
for data partitions not OSs.
Of those which are genuinely for copying OSs, some will
"intelligently" modify the copy to make it bootable alongside the
source. That appears to be what Macrium is doing here.
Not being a user of that software, I can only suggest that you examine
the manual's small print with a sharp eye and try to find which of its
command options will copy an OS without altering its identity in the
registry.
Failing that, try another partition manager. There are some freely
available online which might do what you want."
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

This discussion has got me doubing my definition of 'cloning' versus
'imaging'. I always thought that 'cloning' meant copying an entire
physical hard drive with all its partitions. And 'imaging' described
just doing one partition.

I almost blew myself out of the water yesterday, experimenting with
Macrium (free) "Fix booting problems" in the Rescue Disk boot. I've
used that before with wonderful success(another magic shortcut I don't
understand), but this time I messed up good somehow and wound up
Restoring all 3 partitions to get up and running again. The HUGE-EST
part of problem was a gremlin altered hard drive booting order in the
BIOS and I was slow finding it.

J. P. Gilliver

2024-03-08 15:16:23 UTC

In message <***@4ax.com> at Fri, 8 Mar
2024 09:27:51, John B. Smith <***@verizon.net> writes
[]

Post by John B. Smith
This discussion has got me doubing my definition of 'cloning' versus
'imaging'. I always thought that 'cloning' meant copying an entire
physical hard drive with all its partitions. And 'imaging' described
just doing one partition.

[]
Leaving the rest of your post for others (probably Paul!) to answer:

unfortunately, all these terms get used for different (and conflicting!)
things, and which is currently in use can change (and two - or more! -
different meanings can be at use at any one time, by two or more
different people).

*My* understanding of _current_ use of those two terms is:

cloning - same as your understanding: copying an entire hard drive, such
that you end up with an identical drive you can substitute for the
existing one (such as if it fails), just by unplugging and replugging.

imaging - making an image _file_, which is stored on a drive - you can
have several image files on one drive, such as several from one system
taken at different dates, or images of several different computers. I
think of an image file as sort of a giant ZIP file, but containing
information from partitions, not just files. It can contain the
information from several partitions; the image files I make with Macrium
(on an external drive) contain the information from the hidden boot
partition plus my C: partition, so I could restore my system if the
drive fails. (I copy my D: partition by just copying, albeit with
something that makes that process faster.)

Like you used to have to with ZIP files, you need special software to
both create, and restore from, image files: Macrium makes .mrimg ones.
Obviously, to restore from an image (e. g. to a new drive) when the
existing one has failed, you need something bootable: I have Macrium on
a bootable mini-CD (the making of which is an option within Macrium -
whatever you use, you should find that option and make the bootable CD -
or USB stick - _before_ you need it!).

Macrium - and probably some of the others - _can_ restore from an image
to a drive of a different size to that which was imaged; I _think_ it
can even resize partitions on the fly when doing so, though (e. g. when
restoring to a bigger drive, as usually happens) I've always just
restored the existing partitions (so not using all the new drive), then
changed partition sizes afterwards.

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)***@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

The average age of a single mum in this country is 37
- Jane Rackham, RT 2016/5/28-6/3

c***@nycap.rr.com

2024-03-09 01:30:34 UTC

[]
unfortunately, all these terms get used for different (and conflicting!)
things, and which is currently in use can change (and two - or more! -
different meanings can be at use at any one time, by two or more
different people).
cloning - same as your understanding: copying an entire hard drive, such
that you end up with an identical drive you can substitute for the
existing one (such as if it fails), just by unplugging and replugging.
imaging - making an image _file_, which is stored on a drive - you can
have several image files on one drive, such as several from one system
taken at different dates, or images of several different computers. I
think of an image file as sort of a giant ZIP file, but containing
information from partitions, not just files. It can contain the
information from several partitions; the image files I make with Macrium
(on an external drive) contain the information from the hidden boot
partition plus my C: partition, so I could restore my system if the
drive fails. (I copy my D: partition by just copying, albeit with
something that makes that process faster.)
Like you used to have to with ZIP files, you need special software to
both create, and restore from, image files: Macrium makes .mrimg ones.
Obviously, to restore from an image (e. g. to a new drive) when the
existing one has failed, you need something bootable: I have Macrium on
a bootable mini-CD (the making of which is an option within Macrium -
whatever you use, you should find that option and make the bootable CD -
or USB stick - _before_ you need it!).
Macrium - and probably some of the others - _can_ restore from an image
to a drive of a different size to that which was imaged; I _think_ it
can even resize partitions on the fly when doing so, though (e. g. when
restoring to a bigger drive, as usually happens) I've always just
restored the existing partitions (so not using all the new drive), then
changed partition sizes afterwards.

Thanks for the input. It kind of confirms what I suspected, that
'cloning' and 'imaging' are used by different people to mean different
things. Mostly, who cares, until I get into the situation I'm in now
and suddenly it matters to me.

On a new front, I made a new Win7 image today with the Macrium7 link
Paul sent me. The user interface seems the same as the previous free
version, I think it was 6. Made it from the Rescue disk, though I
think it's all the user interface is the same stuff as when booted in
Win7 itself.

This time I unchecked the 'Intelligent Copy' box, which it says will
leave the page files in there. Then I Restored it to the SSD partition
V: Paying lip service to Paul's advice to boot it first time alone,
without any other OS boot partitions for it to steal info from, I
unplugged the boot drive and pushed the SSD to top of booting order.

This time, instead of just giving me the finger, it says "NTLDRL is
missing". I unplugged the SSD and here I am looking for advice. I
recall (though not well enough to use it) there was a DOS command to
rewrite the mbr? Does the mbr have anything to do with the NTLDR?

Paul

2024-03-09 02:18:54 UTC

Thanks for the input. It kind of confirms what I suspected, that
'cloning' and 'imaging' are used by different people to mean different
things. Mostly, who cares, until I get into the situation I'm in now
and suddenly it matters to me.
On a new front, I made a new Win7 image today with the Macrium7 link
Paul sent me. The user interface seems the same as the previous free
version, I think it was 6. Made it from the Rescue disk, though I
think it's all the user interface is the same stuff as when booted in
Win7 itself.
This time I unchecked the 'Intelligent Copy' box, which it says will
leave the page files in there. Then I Restored it to the SSD partition
V: Paying lip service to Paul's advice to boot it first time alone,
without any other OS boot partitions for it to steal info from, I
unplugged the boot drive and pushed the SSD to top of booting order.
This time, instead of just giving me the finger, it says "NTLDRL is
missing". I unplugged the SSD and here I am looking for advice. I
recall (though not well enough to use it) there was a DOS command to
rewrite the mbr? Does the mbr have anything to do with the NTLDR?

OK, this sounds like WinXP.

boot.ini has a path in it ("arc path")..

If you change the partition number while cloning and
rearranging partitions, you have to edit the boot.ini
and correct it. The boot.ini entry has to point to the OS
partition.

If a disk has WinXP and Win2K on it, then the boot.ini can be
in the WinXP partition and it can have two lines. One line points
at Partition 1 (if booting to WinXP), and the second line points
to Partition 2 (if booting to Win2K). When there is more than one
OS present in the boot menu, that's when the ability to "jump" to
another partition is used.

The MBR used by a WinXP hard drive, is looking for the boot flag 0x80
on a partition. Of the four primaries, you only want the boot flag
on one of the partitions. So that's part of the boot process.

But the locating of the OS itself, the boot.ini does that.
Presumably the boot.ini is similar to the BCD file on later OSes.
It has a similar function.

[Picture]

Loading Image...

Paul

c***@nycap.rr.com

2024-03-13 20:40:19 UTC

Thanks for the input. It kind of confirms what I suspected, that
'cloning' and 'imaging' are used by different people to mean different
things. Mostly, who cares, until I get into the situation I'm in now
and suddenly it matters to me.
On a new front, I made a new Win7 image today with the Macrium7 link
Paul sent me. The user interface seems the same as the previous free
version, I think it was 6. Made it from the Rescue disk, though I
think it's all the user interface is the same stuff as when booted in
Win7 itself.
This time I unchecked the 'Intelligent Copy' box, which it says will
leave the page files in there. Then I Restored it to the SSD partition
V: Paying lip service to Paul's advice to boot it first time alone,
without any other OS boot partitions for it to steal info from, I
unplugged the boot drive and pushed the SSD to top of booting order.
This time, instead of just giving me the finger, it says "NTLDRL is
missing". I unplugged the SSD and here I am looking for advice. I
recall (though not well enough to use it) there was a DOS command to
rewrite the mbr? Does the mbr have anything to do with the NTLDR?

OK, this sounds like WinXP.
boot.ini has a path in it ("arc path")..
If you change the partition number while cloning and
rearranging partitions, you have to edit the boot.ini
and correct it. The boot.ini entry has to point to the OS
partition.
If a disk has WinXP and Win2K on it, then the boot.ini can be
in the WinXP partition and it can have two lines. One line points
at Partition 1 (if booting to WinXP), and the second line points
to Partition 2 (if booting to Win2K). When there is more than one
OS present in the boot menu, that's when the ability to "jump" to
another partition is used.
The MBR used by a WinXP hard drive, is looking for the boot flag 0x80
on a partition. Of the four primaries, you only want the boot flag
on one of the partitions. So that's part of the boot process.
But the locating of the OS itself, the boot.ini does that.
Presumably the boot.ini is similar to the BCD file on later OSes.
It has a similar function.
[Picture]
https://i.postimg.cc/CMfrw2K8/winxp-booting-details.gif
Paul

Well using Macrium un-Intellegent image, to get page files was
unsuccessful.
I found this while googling for Windows boot repairs:
https://www.diskpart.com/articles/fix-mbr-command-prompt-7201.html

I booted the Win7 install dvd and attempted their directions. When I
executed

bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /rebuildbcd

the ssd (all by itself with other drives disconnected) allowed Win7 on
the ssd to boot. Sorta. It got thru a couple screens and hung on
"Preparing your desktop". CtlAltDel brought up Taskmaster and I could
see processes running, but I was dead in the water.

However, the repair screen on the Win7 Install dvd lists "System Image
Recovery" (recover your computer using a system image you created
earlier).

So another image of Win7 like I'd been making with Macrium. Why not?
Booted Win7harddrive and figured out how to make Win7 do it. I didn't
notice at the time, but when saving an image of Win7 it checks off two
drives to be backed up, C: and E:. And there's no way to un-check
anything, those boxes are greyed out. E: drive (at that moment in
time) represents WinXP). You were saying that NTLDR error was XP,
Paul? Well there you are, it wants XP too.

So I try import this Win7 image onto my ssd partition. It says "the
disk that is set active in BIOS is too small to recover the original
system disk. Replace disk with a larger one". Making the ssd partition
the whole 1 Terrabyte doesn't help, same error.

Back to Macrium. I make two partitions on the ssd, one for XP the
other for Win7. Make another two backups of both OS's with Macrium7,
taking the defaultsl, and restore them into their respective ssd
partitions.

Unplug all drives except the ssd and boot. The bcd menu come up: xp,
harddriveWin7 on D:, Win7ssd on V: and Win10.
Win7 on harddriveD: fails. Win7ssd on V: starts Win7 booting off the
ssd. But it again stalls on "Preparing your desktop". I boot XP
(never wanted it on this ssd cause of no Trim but now it seems I must
have it). The ssd is not even lettered V: but it found it anyway. I
changed the partitions to U: SSD1 and V: SSD2. No help with booting it
beyond "Preparing your desktop".

Back to the well-worn drawing board.

Paul

2024-03-14 02:33:58 UTC

Thanks for the input. It kind of confirms what I suspected, that
'cloning' and 'imaging' are used by different people to mean different
things. Mostly, who cares, until I get into the situation I'm in now
and suddenly it matters to me.
On a new front, I made a new Win7 image today with the Macrium7 link
Paul sent me. The user interface seems the same as the previous free
version, I think it was 6. Made it from the Rescue disk, though I
think it's all the user interface is the same stuff as when booted in
Win7 itself.
This time I unchecked the 'Intelligent Copy' box, which it says will
leave the page files in there. Then I Restored it to the SSD partition
V: Paying lip service to Paul's advice to boot it first time alone,
without any other OS boot partitions for it to steal info from, I
unplugged the boot drive and pushed the SSD to top of booting order.
This time, instead of just giving me the finger, it says "NTLDRL is
missing". I unplugged the SSD and here I am looking for advice. I
recall (though not well enough to use it) there was a DOS command to
rewrite the mbr? Does the mbr have anything to do with the NTLDR?

OK, this sounds like WinXP.
boot.ini has a path in it ("arc path")..
If you change the partition number while cloning and
rearranging partitions, you have to edit the boot.ini
and correct it. The boot.ini entry has to point to the OS
partition.
If a disk has WinXP and Win2K on it, then the boot.ini can be
in the WinXP partition and it can have two lines. One line points
at Partition 1 (if booting to WinXP), and the second line points
to Partition 2 (if booting to Win2K). When there is more than one
OS present in the boot menu, that's when the ability to "jump" to
another partition is used.
The MBR used by a WinXP hard drive, is looking for the boot flag 0x80
on a partition. Of the four primaries, you only want the boot flag
on one of the partitions. So that's part of the boot process.
But the locating of the OS itself, the boot.ini does that.
Presumably the boot.ini is similar to the BCD file on later OSes.
It has a similar function.
[Picture]
https://i.postimg.cc/CMfrw2K8/winxp-booting-details.gif
Paul

Well using Macrium un-Intellegent image, to get page files was
unsuccessful.
https://www.diskpart.com/articles/fix-mbr-command-prompt-7201.html
I booted the Win7 install dvd and attempted their directions. When I
executed
bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /rebuildbcd
the ssd (all by itself with other drives disconnected) allowed Win7 on
the ssd to boot. Sorta. It got thru a couple screens and hung on
"Preparing your desktop". CtlAltDel brought up Taskmaster and I could
see processes running, but I was dead in the water.
However, the repair screen on the Win7 Install dvd lists "System Image
Recovery" (recover your computer using a system image you created
earlier).
So another image of Win7 like I'd been making with Macrium. Why not?
Booted Win7harddrive and figured out how to make Win7 do it. I didn't
notice at the time, but when saving an image of Win7 it checks off two
drives to be backed up, C: and E:. And there's no way to un-check
anything, those boxes are greyed out. E: drive (at that moment in
time) represents WinXP). You were saying that NTLDR error was XP,
Paul? Well there you are, it wants XP too.
So I try import this Win7 image onto my ssd partition. It says "the
disk that is set active in BIOS is too small to recover the original
system disk. Replace disk with a larger one". Making the ssd partition
the whole 1 Terrabyte doesn't help, same error.
Back to Macrium. I make two partitions on the ssd, one for XP the
other for Win7. Make another two backups of both OS's with Macrium7,
taking the defaultsl, and restore them into their respective ssd
partitions.
Unplug all drives except the ssd and boot. The bcd menu come up: xp,
harddriveWin7 on D:, Win7ssd on V: and Win10.
Win7 on harddriveD: fails. Win7ssd on V: starts Win7 booting off the
ssd. But it again stalls on "Preparing your desktop". I boot XP
(never wanted it on this ssd cause of no Trim but now it seems I must
have it). The ssd is not even lettered V: but it found it anyway. I
changed the partitions to U: SSD1 and V: SSD2. No help with booting it
beyond "Preparing your desktop".
Back to the well-worn drawing board.

But it is not particularly a pro, at MBR and boot track backup. I suspect
it may be manufacturing the BCD file during the restoration, using
Windows utilities. It is not quite as careful with materials, as
a Macrium would be.

I tried to back up a dual boot using the Win10 version of Win7 backup
and that worked. Eventually. It took me a while to root cause what
I'd done wrong (no error message thrown, but things had not gone normally
the first time, and eventually I figured out it didn't finish one
of the partitions).

Macrium on the other hand, tends to back up more disk areas. It is
probably putting back boot materials as it found them. The "logic"
in the BCD should be unaffected, but the UUID of the partition
could be edited, as part of Macrium disambiguation (making the partitions,
so no other boot disk will reach in and try booting shit). Macrium
is closer to being an appliance. It's not perfect. Sometimes, after
all that, a restoration won't boot, but Macrium has a boot repair
on the CD, to try and repair what it just restored.

The Windows one, since it is harder to observe (has less feedback),
you need your Level 39 Wizard pants on, to be prepared for what it
throws at you.

I would not mind *attempting* a triple-boot WinXP/Win7/Win10, *if*
I ended up with a known good BCD file to study as a template for
when the BCD on the setup gets fouled up.

I seem to remember, I did some multiboot a while back, where
there were two levels of boot menu. There was a Win10/Win7 level
with tiles. And maybe a black screen with a couple lines for
a couple boot.ini OSes. That's likely one of the more complicated
setups. But you still work on it, part by part, so it's not an
N**2 kind of complexity, it's N+M complex.

Paul

c***@nycap.rr.com

2024-03-17 20:00:14 UTC

Thanks for the input. It kind of confirms what I suspected, that
'cloning' and 'imaging' are used by different people to mean different
things. Mostly, who cares, until I get into the situation I'm in now
and suddenly it matters to me.
On a new front, I made a new Win7 image today with the Macrium7 link
Paul sent me. The user interface seems the same as the previous free
version, I think it was 6. Made it from the Rescue disk, though I
think it's all the user interface is the same stuff as when booted in
Win7 itself.
This time I unchecked the 'Intelligent Copy' box, which it says will
leave the page files in there. Then I Restored it to the SSD partition
V: Paying lip service to Paul's advice to boot it first time alone,
without any other OS boot partitions for it to steal info from, I
unplugged the boot drive and pushed the SSD to top of booting order.
This time, instead of just giving me the finger, it says "NTLDRL is
missing". I unplugged the SSD and here I am looking for advice. I
recall (though not well enough to use it) there was a DOS command to
rewrite the mbr? Does the mbr have anything to do with the NTLDR?

OK, this sounds like WinXP.
boot.ini has a path in it ("arc path")..
If you change the partition number while cloning and
rearranging partitions, you have to edit the boot.ini
and correct it. The boot.ini entry has to point to the OS
partition.
If a disk has WinXP and Win2K on it, then the boot.ini can be
in the WinXP partition and it can have two lines. One line points
at Partition 1 (if booting to WinXP), and the second line points
to Partition 2 (if booting to Win2K). When there is more than one
OS present in the boot menu, that's when the ability to "jump" to
another partition is used.
The MBR used by a WinXP hard drive, is looking for the boot flag 0x80
on a partition. Of the four primaries, you only want the boot flag
on one of the partitions. So that's part of the boot process.
But the locating of the OS itself, the boot.ini does that.
Presumably the boot.ini is similar to the BCD file on later OSes.
It has a similar function.
[Picture]
https://i.postimg.cc/CMfrw2K8/winxp-booting-details.gif
Paul

I don't have much to add to your situation.
Windows Backup in the Windows 7 control panels, does do the
basics of capturing partitions. One of its "Must have" parts, is it
must back up the System and the Boot partitions. In other words,
its primary purpose is ensuring, on restoration, that one OS boots.
You can click additional partitions to back up, like a D: data partition
if you want. I did one very recently. The Win7 version makes .vhd
files, while the Win10 version makes .vhdx files, but the logic
is mostly the same.
[Picture]
https://i.postimg.cc/kGWnsyxG/W10-system-image-and-restore-new-drive.gif
But it is not particularly a pro, at MBR and boot track backup. I suspect
it may be manufacturing the BCD file during the restoration, using
Windows utilities. It is not quite as careful with materials, as
a Macrium would be.
I tried to back up a dual boot using the Win10 version of Win7 backup
and that worked. Eventually. It took me a while to root cause what
I'd done wrong (no error message thrown, but things had not gone normally
the first time, and eventually I figured out it didn't finish one
of the partitions).
Macrium on the other hand, tends to back up more disk areas. It is
probably putting back boot materials as it found them. The "logic"
in the BCD should be unaffected, but the UUID of the partition
could be edited, as part of Macrium disambiguation (making the partitions,
so no other boot disk will reach in and try booting shit). Macrium
is closer to being an appliance. It's not perfect. Sometimes, after
all that, a restoration won't boot, but Macrium has a boot repair
on the CD, to try and repair what it just restored.
The Windows one, since it is harder to observe (has less feedback),
you need your Level 39 Wizard pants on, to be prepared for what it
throws at you.
I would not mind *attempting* a triple-boot WinXP/Win7/Win10, *if*
I ended up with a known good BCD file to study as a template for
when the BCD on the setup gets fouled up.
I seem to remember, I did some multiboot a while back, where
there were two levels of boot menu. There was a Win10/Win7 level
with tiles. And maybe a black screen with a couple lines for
a couple boot.ini OSes. That's likely one of the more complicated
setups. But you still work on it, part by part, so it's not an
N**2 kind of complexity, it's N+M complex.
Paul

Well, I had a little luck. I was thinking, now that I've been resigned
to having xp on my ssd, maybe I should try cloning the whole drive
onto the ssd. Except the boot harddrive is 2TB and the ssd is only
1TB. I backed everything on the boot drive up good and ran Macrium7
while booted to Win7. It turns out that, when cloning (I'd never done
it before), you can drag what ever partitions you want onto the target
ssd and leave out the overflow. So, per usual, once the clone was done
I unplugged all the drives except the ssd and one data drive, moved
the ssd drive SATA5 to the top of the BIOS booting order and booted.
Up came Win7 without complaint! In DiskManagement C: was on the ssd
drive, the problem of C: being in the harddrive partition was gone.
Windows had scrambled the drive letters (I mean N: and O: were
lettered wrong on the boot drive) so I changed them to what they
should be. Everything seemed to work far as a quick look could see.

Loading Image...

Booted into Win10. Again C: was in the ssd's win10 partition where it
should be. Got the N; and O: drive re-lettered properly.

Shut down, reconnected all the hard drives, Again booted with ssd
SATA5 still on top of BIOS boot order. Everything seemed to still
work, Can't remember if I had to reletter drives on that boot?

Shut down, moved the bootdrive SATA6 to the top of the BIOS boot order
and booted non-ssd. I was surprised that again the drive letters were
all screwed up. In Win10 I tried to re-letter N; and O: again but it
involved changing the letter windows had assigned to one of the
bootdrive's Win10 partition which windows had assigned O:. It said it
WOULD do it but blah-blah, and I chickened out.

So my final problem is: I can't keep moving the BIOS boot order to
either boot harddrive or ssd. Everytime I do my drive letters go
wonky, especially that N: and O:. I can't reach the bcd menu in xp on
the ssd from the bcd menu on the harddrive bcd. Using EasyBcd, if I
select the option to call xp for a new menu entry, it won't allow me
to point to a particular hard drive, it tells me it's gonna find xp by
itself. I expect it will find it on the drive it's already on, calling
itself.

Paul

2024-03-17 22:45:33 UTC

Post by c***@nycap.rr.com
Well, I had a little luck. I was thinking, now that I've been resigned
to having xp on my ssd, maybe I should try cloning the whole drive
onto the ssd. Except the boot harddrive is 2TB and the ssd is only
1TB. I backed everything on the boot drive up good and ran Macrium7
while booted to Win7. It turns out that, when cloning (I'd never done
it before), you can drag what ever partitions you want onto the target
ssd and leave out the overflow. So, per usual, once the clone was done
I unplugged all the drives except the ssd and one data drive, moved
the ssd drive SATA5 to the top of the BIOS booting order and booted.
Up came Win7 without complaint! In DiskManagement C: was on the ssd
drive, the problem of C: being in the harddrive partition was gone.
Windows had scrambled the drive letters (I mean N: and O: were
lettered wrong on the boot drive) so I changed them to what they
should be. Everything seemed to work far as a quick look could see.
https://i.postimg.cc/nzjsyF7G/3-16-24-notated-Disk-Management-from-Win7-booted-from-SSD.jpg
Booted into Win10. Again C: was in the ssd's win10 partition where it
should be. Got the N; and O: drive re-lettered properly.
Shut down, reconnected all the hard drives, Again booted with ssd
SATA5 still on top of BIOS boot order. Everything seemed to still
work, Can't remember if I had to reletter drives on that boot?
Shut down, moved the bootdrive SATA6 to the top of the BIOS boot order
and booted non-ssd. I was surprised that again the drive letters were
all screwed up. In Win10 I tried to re-letter N; and O: again but it
involved changing the letter windows had assigned to one of the
bootdrive's Win10 partition which windows had assigned O:. It said it
WOULD do it but blah-blah, and I chickened out.
So my final problem is: I can't keep moving the BIOS boot order to
either boot harddrive or ssd. Everytime I do my drive letters go
wonky, especially that N: and O:. I can't reach the bcd menu in xp on
the ssd from the bcd menu on the harddrive bcd. Using EasyBcd, if I
select the option to call xp for a new menu entry, it won't allow me
to point to a particular hard drive, it tells me it's gonna find xp by
itself. I expect it will find it on the drive it's already on, calling
itself.

Rather than make permanent changes to the boot order (by editing
the BIOS boot order), you can use the Pop Boot Menu instead and select
a disk to boot from.

On my Asus board, it's F8.

On the MSI board, it's F11.

If you're running in compatibility mode, there
are legacy boot or UEFI boot options, and so a
disk drive will be listed twice in the popup boot menu.
But normally, the drive only boots properly in one
of the modes.

On some drives here, I can steer between a Linux on
the drive, and a Windows on the drive, using the Popup Boot.
As both entries can register as boot options.

On OEM machines, the options available could be quite different.
A Dell for example, is unlikely to behave like any other brand.
For example, on my Optiplex refurb, if you have two USB boot sticks
plugged in, there is no selector in Popup Boot, to select one of
them. You can plug in just the USB you want to boot from, select
"USB" and it boots from the one device. That's the flexibility they
give you there.

In the manual for your machine, it may list two keys. A key to enter
the BIOS screen and make changes (like <Del> or F2). But the other
key is the Popup Boot selector, and that could be a higher F key
like F8 or F11. And again on the Dell, you can have trouble
figuring out how to make an F key work, at BIOS level, as a selector.
You might need a second (generic/unbranded) keyboard for that purpose.

When you have a Data drive, there's no particular reason for it
to be listed in the Popup Boot menu.

Paul

c***@nycap.rr.com

2024-03-18 00:28:19 UTC

Rather than make permanent changes to the boot order (by editing
the BIOS boot order), you can use the Pop Boot Menu instead and select
a disk to boot from.
On my Asus board, it's F8.
On the MSI board, it's F11.
If you're running in compatibility mode, there
are legacy boot or UEFI boot options, and so a
disk drive will be listed twice in the popup boot menu.
But normally, the drive only boots properly in one
of the modes.
On some drives here, I can steer between a Linux on
the drive, and a Windows on the drive, using the Popup Boot.
As both entries can register as boot options.
On OEM machines, the options available could be quite different.
A Dell for example, is unlikely to behave like any other brand.
For example, on my Optiplex refurb, if you have two USB boot sticks
plugged in, there is no selector in Popup Boot, to select one of
them. You can plug in just the USB you want to boot from, select
"USB" and it boots from the one device. That's the flexibility they
give you there.
In the manual for your machine, it may list two keys. A key to enter
the BIOS screen and make changes (like <Del> or F2). But the other
key is the Popup Boot selector, and that could be a higher F key
like F8 or F11. And again on the Dell, you can have trouble
figuring out how to make an F key work, at BIOS level, as a selector.
You might need a second (generic/unbranded) keyboard for that purpose.

That's an elegant solution, if only my Abit IP35 Pro XE board had it.
The manual just lists the Delete to get into the BIOS. I've been
wishing for that Popup boot option for about 15 years. Just to make
double sure I'll try F8 and F11 anyway.

Post by Paul
When you have a Data drive, there's no particular reason for it
to be listed in the Popup Boot menu.
Paul

Paul

2024-03-18 01:13:03 UTC

Post by c***@nycap.rr.com
That's an elegant solution, if only my Abit IP35 Pro XE board had it.
The manual just lists the Delete to get into the BIOS. I've been
wishing for that Popup boot option for about 15 years. Just to make
double sure I'll try F8 and F11 anyway.

The popup boot was an industry-wide solution, in the sense
that the blue border around the items, was at one time a
kind of "standard". And that's what impressed me about the
implementation. Not what was printed inside the box, but,
that the various software people involved, all managed to
make a blue box roughly the same as one another :-)

That doesn't absolutely require a UEFI BIOS. I think the
year-of-introduction of the feature was back in legacy BIOS days.

*******

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/abit-ip35e-quick-boot-menu-key.2117743/

Nov 17, 2010

IP35E does not have Boot quick keys.

You have to press Del., and choose the boot in the BIOS.

In its time, it was a combination of a great Mobo with few stupid quirks.

I don't know if they had the automation down, back in 2010, but
a lot of these features in the BIOS, are switch select-able by
the people "designing" the BIOS. Some major companies made
the BIOS bring-up kits, and a lot of code is already written
and ready to go (some of the code does not have source given
to the motherboard people either). This is why, when Asus had
an audio problem during BIOS POST, they had to implement the
fix by turning off *all* case-speaker activity. And that told
me they didn't have access to source for the POST beeps, and in
order to stop an annoying behavior, the only control they had
was to switch it off.

Other parts of the BIOS, like the equivalent of drivers,
or the equivalent of "built-in flasher code", they may have
that at source level. For example, if you solder a RealTek NIC
to the motherboard, there's a code module you dump into the
firmware vat, and stew that with the rest of the bits.
Since some of the BIOS tools escaped the factory, some
people were patching BIOS modules at home (changing the
SIL3112 module, so it would work with 1TB hard drives).

Part of the fun of modding a BIOS, is there are a
bunch of checksums you have to get right, or the board
won't use the BIOS code. When I tried my hand at patching,
I wasn't happy with my checksums, so I didn't flash it in.

Paul

John B. Smith

2024-03-18 19:27:43 UTC

The popup boot was an industry-wide solution, in the sense
that the blue border around the items, was at one time a
kind of "standard". And that's what impressed me about the
implementation. Not what was printed inside the box, but,
that the various software people involved, all managed to
make a blue box roughly the same as one another :-)
That doesn't absolutely require a UEFI BIOS. I think the
year-of-introduction of the feature was back in legacy BIOS days.
*******
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/abit-ip35e-quick-boot-menu-key.2117743/
Nov 17, 2010
IP35E does not have Boot quick keys.
You have to press Del., and choose the boot in the BIOS.
In its time, it was a combination of a great Mobo with few stupid quirks.
I don't know if they had the automation down, back in 2010, but
a lot of these features in the BIOS, are switch select-able by
the people "designing" the BIOS. Some major companies made
the BIOS bring-up kits, and a lot of code is already written
and ready to go (some of the code does not have source given
to the motherboard people either). This is why, when Asus had
an audio problem during BIOS POST, they had to implement the
fix by turning off *all* case-speaker activity. And that told
me they didn't have access to source for the POST beeps, and in
order to stop an annoying behavior, the only control they had
was to switch it off.
Other parts of the BIOS, like the equivalent of drivers,
or the equivalent of "built-in flasher code", they may have
that at source level. For example, if you solder a RealTek NIC
to the motherboard, there's a code module you dump into the
firmware vat, and stew that with the rest of the bits.
Since some of the BIOS tools escaped the factory, some
people were patching BIOS modules at home (changing the
SIL3112 module, so it would work with 1TB hard drives).
Part of the fun of modding a BIOS, is there are a
bunch of checksums you have to get right, or the board
won't use the BIOS code. When I tried my hand at patching,
I wasn't happy with my checksums, so I didn't flash it in.
Paul

I made an EasyBCD menu entry for a 2nd WinXP, taking their 'we'll find
XP for ourselves' default. When I chose this entry on the boot it gave
me a choice: xp on U: (the ssd) or xp on C:. Choosing U: got me into
xp on the ssd, sorta C: was located on the harddrive instead of the
ssd. And, besides, what I was trying for was the 2nd BCD menu on the
ssd's xp. So no help.

Then I made an EasyBCD menu entry pointing it at V: where Win7 is
located on the ssd. This is how I started this business, and C: always
located itself in the harddrive instead of where I wanted it, on the
ssd. But lo and behold, after the xp partition had been cloned up next
to it, the dang thing worked perfectly! Likewise pointing it at W: got
me Win10 with no problems.

You see? Give a monkey a typewriter and in 100 years he'll write a
novel!

John B. Smith

2024-04-09 23:48:24 UTC

On Mon, 18 Mar 2024 15:27:43 -0400, John B. Smith <***@verizon.net>
wrote:

When I updated my Win10 that exists on a hard disk for KB5028997 it
went fine. On the Win10 version that's on the ssd it would not update:
error ox80070643 which maybe points to the RE partition. Usoft wants
you to do a lot of fiddling in the cmd prompt to increase the size of
the RE partition, which MIGHT fix things. I thought an easier way was
to clone the harddiskWin10 (which had already passed KB5028997) onto
the Win10ssd partition. (cloning was how I got the ssd to run
successful Win10 and Win7 partitions).

I ran Macrium7 in Win7, as I did in the original clone. It went
successfully. I didn't try testing all the OS's, but went immediately
to the Win10ssd to see if my clone worked. Win10 seemed to start up
ok, then the screen went blank and it went into la-la land. I waited
20 minutes and then, unfortunately pressed the Reset button.

I booted xp. It wanted to run chkdsk one EVERY HD IN MY SYSTEM. I did
a lot of restoring of OS's,, learned a bit about what chkntfs (in cmd
prompt) can and can't do and eventually let chkdsk run on all disks,
it really takes under and hour, the other stuff I did was unnecessary.

The Win10 ssd was mess and chkdsk could't fix it. I wiped it out and
created a new partition. I cloned Win10hard -> Win10ssd again, this
time from Macrium7 Rescue Disk. I got the same result when I booted
Win10ssd, it went into la-la land for an hour. Tried Ctl-Alt-Del and
all the other keys I could think of. I had a cursor, it almost looked
like Win10 was running in the backgroud but showing me no window.
Finally shut down by holding power button. Again the 'dirty bit' was
set on every drive and I had to let chkdsk run thru them all, Less
that an hour.

Then I used Macrium7 to RESTORE the IMAGE of a Win10ssd backup from
3-22-24 and finally the Win10ssd came up. Guess I got to struggle with
usoft's WinRE partition in cmd like everybody else.

Paul

2024-04-10 07:06:28 UTC

Post by John B. Smith
When I updated my Win10 that exists on a hard disk for KB5028997 it
error ox80070643 which maybe points to the RE partition. Usoft wants
you to do a lot of fiddling in the cmd prompt to increase the size of
the RE partition, which MIGHT fix things. I thought an easier way was
to clone the harddiskWin10 (which had already passed KB5028997) onto
the Win10ssd partition. (cloning was how I got the ssd to run
successful Win10 and Win7 partitions).
I ran Macrium7 in Win7, as I did in the original clone. It went
successfully. I didn't try testing all the OS's, but went immediately
to the Win10ssd to see if my clone worked. Win10 seemed to start up
ok, then the screen went blank and it went into la-la land. I waited
20 minutes and then, unfortunately pressed the Reset button.
I booted xp. It wanted to run chkdsk one EVERY HD IN MY SYSTEM. I did
a lot of restoring of OS's,, learned a bit about what chkntfs (in cmd
prompt) can and can't do and eventually let chkdsk run on all disks,
it really takes under and hour, the other stuff I did was unnecessary.
The Win10 ssd was mess and chkdsk could't fix it. I wiped it out and
created a new partition. I cloned Win10hard -> Win10ssd again, this
time from Macrium7 Rescue Disk. I got the same result when I booted
Win10ssd, it went into la-la land for an hour. Tried Ctl-Alt-Del and
all the other keys I could think of. I had a cursor, it almost looked
like Win10 was running in the backgroud but showing me no window.
Finally shut down by holding power button. Again the 'dirty bit' was
set on every drive and I had to let chkdsk run thru them all, Less
that an hour.
Then I used Macrium7 to RESTORE the IMAGE of a Win10ssd backup from
3-22-24 and finally the Win10ssd came up. Guess I got to struggle with
usoft's WinRE partition in cmd like everybody else.

I was kinda curious whether the incoming Patch Tuesday (yesterday),
made any changes with respect to fixing '4441.

I expect most of the people in the Win10 group, their eyes have glazed
over, expecting that to get fixed. I couldn't guess how many "specimens"
I have left to test with. The Win10 on the Test Machine right now is "fixed".
And the seldom-booted Win10 on this machine is fixed too, as far
as I can remember.

These recipes have their limits of course, because they don't take
every possibility into account. That's why we want Patch Tuesday to
fix this, rather than risk trashing stuff while thrashing around.

At some point, I guess I rely on you to test it, since you have
a specimen at hand.

The only advice I can offer, is to simplify your setup
while testing, so there is "less CHKDSKing to do" :-)
I try not to do partition-challenging tests on the 20+ partition
setup. The CHKDSK would take a hell of a long time. It would also
take almost all day, to regenerate the Search Index (the large setup
is used to test that federated search works, and it does, but it's
not exactly "stable" "stable"). I don't use the Federated Search
on some of the smaller setups, and then I don't have to worry
about invalidating something by accident. I just use Agent Ransack
for finding stuff, and that's "good enough".

Your Win10 images should not be falling over due to licensing issues,
as the machine you're on has a Win10 license and evidence of that
is stored on the Microsoft Server end. If you fresh installed Win10,
the OS would still end up licensed. And if you moved a Win10 to
the machine, the fact the machine is licensed, should still be factored in.
It's not like the old days, where functionally, something bad regarding
"grace period" was happening on first boot. Win10 should not need an
hour, to come up on a "foreign machine". It just takes a couple minutes
to mess up ENUM in the registry, and discover the new hardware.

Paul

c***@nycap.rr.com

2024-04-15 16:53:30 UTC

I was kinda curious whether the incoming Patch Tuesday (yesterday),
made any changes with respect to fixing '4441.
I expect most of the people in the Win10 group, their eyes have glazed
over, expecting that to get fixed. I couldn't guess how many "specimens"
I have left to test with. The Win10 on the Test Machine right now is "fixed".
And the seldom-booted Win10 on this machine is fixed too, as far
as I can remember.
These recipes have their limits of course, because they don't take
every possibility into account. That's why we want Patch Tuesday to
fix this, rather than risk trashing stuff while thrashing around.
At some point, I guess I rely on you to test it, since you have
a specimen at hand.
The only advice I can offer, is to simplify your setup
while testing, so there is "less CHKDSKing to do" :-)
I try not to do partition-challenging tests on the 20+ partition
setup. The CHKDSK would take a hell of a long time. It would also
take almost all day, to regenerate the Search Index (the large setup
is used to test that federated search works, and it does, but it's
not exactly "stable" "stable"). I don't use the Federated Search
on some of the smaller setups, and then I don't have to worry
about invalidating something by accident. I just use Agent Ransack
for finding stuff, and that's "good enough".
Your Win10 images should not be falling over due to licensing issues,
as the machine you're on has a Win10 license and evidence of that
is stored on the Microsoft Server end. If you fresh installed Win10,
the OS would still end up licensed. And if you moved a Win10 to
the machine, the fact the machine is licensed, should still be factored in.
It's not like the old days, where functionally, something bad regarding
"grace period" was happening on first boot. Win10 should not need an
hour, to come up on a "foreign machine". It just takes a couple minutes
to mess up ENUM in the registry, and discover the new hardware.
Paul

In fighting to get KB5034441 to install I downloaded:
How to Create a Recovery Partition in MicroSoft Windows 10/11
IT Army

I had to find a way to d/l without the crippling water mark that
obscures a vital corner for me to work with it, maybe you can read
faster. I used iMyFone, a nice little program I was tempted to break
my rule and purchase, alas they wanted to lease it to me at high
price, probably ex-usoft guys. I used the free version.

This is a view of my disk partitions in Win10 DiskManagement
https://postimg.cc/V0BHHK22

My Win10ssd partition had acres of space to its right in
DiskManagement, so there was no need to shrink it. But I'd done it
before anyway in my struggles. In DM, created a new Volume with a 1024
size per his video, disallowed it to be lettered, named it
SystemReserved.

In the AdminCommandPrompt went
reagentc /info
reagentc /disable
diskpart
list disk
sel disk 2 (2's the number I see in DM for the ssd disk)
list part, (spotted the 1024 partition I'd just made.)
sel par 4 (the 1024 I just created)
det par (shows me its type 7)
set id=27
det par (shows me its now type 27, designation for system files in mbr
disks)
exit
reagentc /enable says:"Reagentc.exe unable to update Boot Config".

So now we go back to C:\Windows\System32\Recovery and rename
Reagent.xml to Reagent.old.

He shows you a quick peek at this, but it doesn't show him actually
changing it!!!

Back to admin cmd prompt and
reagentc /disable
reagentc /enable
This time it says Success!

Go to Updates, make it search for updates and this time it starts
downloading KB5034441 and it installs! Finally.

It occurs to me to wonder if I'd renamed that Reagent.xml to
Reagent.old in the first place, then disabled and re-enabled reagentc
if it would have re-created the WinRE partition within the Win10
partition and saved me a lot of trouble.

Paul

2024-04-16 02:24:03 UTC

I was kinda curious whether the incoming Patch Tuesday (yesterday),
made any changes with respect to fixing '4441.
I expect most of the people in the Win10 group, their eyes have glazed
over, expecting that to get fixed. I couldn't guess how many "specimens"
I have left to test with. The Win10 on the Test Machine right now is "fixed".
And the seldom-booted Win10 on this machine is fixed too, as far
as I can remember.
These recipes have their limits of course, because they don't take
every possibility into account. That's why we want Patch Tuesday to
fix this, rather than risk trashing stuff while thrashing around.
At some point, I guess I rely on you to test it, since you have
a specimen at hand.
The only advice I can offer, is to simplify your setup
while testing, so there is "less CHKDSKing to do" :-)
I try not to do partition-challenging tests on the 20+ partition
setup. The CHKDSK would take a hell of a long time. It would also
take almost all day, to regenerate the Search Index (the large setup
is used to test that federated search works, and it does, but it's
not exactly "stable" "stable"). I don't use the Federated Search
on some of the smaller setups, and then I don't have to worry
about invalidating something by accident. I just use Agent Ransack
for finding stuff, and that's "good enough".
Your Win10 images should not be falling over due to licensing issues,
as the machine you're on has a Win10 license and evidence of that
is stored on the Microsoft Server end. If you fresh installed Win10,
the OS would still end up licensed. And if you moved a Win10 to
the machine, the fact the machine is licensed, should still be factored in.
It's not like the old days, where functionally, something bad regarding
"grace period" was happening on first boot. Win10 should not need an
hour, to come up on a "foreign machine". It just takes a couple minutes
to mess up ENUM in the registry, and discover the new hardware.
Paul

How to Create a Recovery Partition in MicroSoft Windows 10/11
IT Army
http://youtu.be/XkOPY4o90sw
I had to find a way to d/l without the crippling water mark that
obscures a vital corner for me to work with it, maybe you can read
faster. I used iMyFone, a nice little program I was tempted to break
my rule and purchase, alas they wanted to lease it to me at high
price, probably ex-usoft guys. I used the free version.
This is a view of my disk partitions in Win10 DiskManagement
https://postimg.cc/V0BHHK22
My Win10ssd partition had acres of space to its right in
DiskManagement, so there was no need to shrink it. But I'd done it
before anyway in my struggles. In DM, created a new Volume with a 1024
size per his video, disallowed it to be lettered, named it
SystemReserved.
In the AdminCommandPrompt went
reagentc /info
reagentc /disable
diskpart
list disk
sel disk 2 (2's the number I see in DM for the ssd disk)
list part, (spotted the 1024 partition I'd just made.)
sel par 4 (the 1024 I just created)
det par (shows me its type 7)
set id=27
det par (shows me its now type 27, designation for system files in mbr
disks)
exit
reagentc /enable says:"Reagentc.exe unable to update Boot Config".
So now we go back to C:\Windows\System32\Recovery and rename
Reagent.xml to Reagent.old.
He shows you a quick peek at this, but it doesn't show him actually
changing it!!!
Back to admin cmd prompt and
reagentc /disable
reagentc /enable
This time it says Success!
Go to Updates, make it search for updates and this time it starts
downloading KB5034441 and it installs! Finally.
It occurs to me to wonder if I'd renamed that Reagent.xml to
Reagent.old in the first place, then disabled and re-enabled reagentc
if it would have re-created the WinRE partition within the Win10
partition and saved me a lot of trouble.

When it goes from disabled to enabled, there should be some sort
of validation going on, to prove the pointer in the configuration
information, is pointing to a valid item.

You could have checked

reagentc /info

while it was disabled, and as far as I know, the link identifying
the partition, would still have to be correct.

When in the "disabled" state, it's suppose to "retract" the partition-package,
to the C: partition for safe keeping. Then, when you "enable" it again, it
might be using info stored in the C: partition for that purpose. I think it
also copies WinRE.wim from partition 6 to C: and later from C: to partition 6.
This is supposed to be how/why, a freshly erased partition 6, ends up with
a file. Then when you do '4441, it will overwrite partition 6 with the
fresh new WinRE.wim (which is stored in a $ folder in the root of C: .

It's a lot more busy, than it lets on.

Paul

c***@nycap.rr.com

2024-05-01 19:45:36 UTC

I was kinda curious whether the incoming Patch Tuesday (yesterday),
made any changes with respect to fixing '4441.
I expect most of the people in the Win10 group, their eyes have glazed
over, expecting that to get fixed. I couldn't guess how many "specimens"
I have left to test with. The Win10 on the Test Machine right now is "fixed".
And the seldom-booted Win10 on this machine is fixed too, as far
as I can remember.
These recipes have their limits of course, because they don't take
every possibility into account. That's why we want Patch Tuesday to
fix this, rather than risk trashing stuff while thrashing around.
At some point, I guess I rely on you to test it, since you have
a specimen at hand.
The only advice I can offer, is to simplify your setup
while testing, so there is "less CHKDSKing to do" :-)
I try not to do partition-challenging tests on the 20+ partition
setup. The CHKDSK would take a hell of a long time. It would also
take almost all day, to regenerate the Search Index (the large setup
is used to test that federated search works, and it does, but it's
not exactly "stable" "stable"). I don't use the Federated Search
on some of the smaller setups, and then I don't have to worry
about invalidating something by accident. I just use Agent Ransack
for finding stuff, and that's "good enough".
Your Win10 images should not be falling over due to licensing issues,
as the machine you're on has a Win10 license and evidence of that
is stored on the Microsoft Server end. If you fresh installed Win10,
the OS would still end up licensed. And if you moved a Win10 to
the machine, the fact the machine is licensed, should still be factored in.
It's not like the old days, where functionally, something bad regarding
"grace period" was happening on first boot. Win10 should not need an
hour, to come up on a "foreign machine". It just takes a couple minutes
to mess up ENUM in the registry, and discover the new hardware.
Paul

When it goes from disabled to enabled, there should be some sort
of validation going on, to prove the pointer in the configuration
information, is pointing to a valid item.
You could have checked
reagentc /info
while it was disabled, and as far as I know, the link identifying
the partition, would still have to be correct.
When in the "disabled" state, it's suppose to "retract" the partition-package,
to the C: partition for safe keeping. Then, when you "enable" it again, it
might be using info stored in the C: partition for that purpose. I think it
also copies WinRE.wim from partition 6 to C: and later from C: to partition 6.
This is supposed to be how/why, a freshly erased partition 6, ends up with
a file. Then when you do '4441, it will overwrite partition 6 with the
fresh new WinRE.wim (which is stored in a $ folder in the root of C: .
It's a lot more busy, than it lets on.
Paul

As I mentioned above I finally got a WinRE partition created for
Win10ssd and KB5034441 installed.

Win10ssd is calling this partition Recovery in FileExplorer.

Win7ssd is calling it SystemReserved in WindowsExplorer.

I read somewhere (think maybe in NeoSmart Forum?) That when you update
Win7 you should disconnect all other disks because you never know
where Win7 might write it's recovery stuff. Sounded a bit paranoid,
but stuck in my mind. I do still update Win7 for the virus and malware
protections.

In backing up Win7ssd with Macrium, I started noticing it pre-checked
two partitions for me: Win7 and that WinRE partiton I created for
Win10.

The above makes me suspect that Win7 might be using my Win10 RE
partition for its playpen when it does updates? Or maybe Macrium is
just spotting a SystemReserved partition on the same ssd as Win7 and
thinks it oughta be backed-up?

Paul

2024-05-01 22:06:42 UTC

Post by c***@nycap.rr.com
As I mentioned above I finally got a WinRE partition created for
Win10ssd and KB5034441 installed.
Win10ssd is calling this partition Recovery in FileExplorer.
Win7ssd is calling it SystemReserved in WindowsExplorer.
I read somewhere (think maybe in NeoSmart Forum?) That when you update
Win7 you should disconnect all other disks because you never know
where Win7 might write it's recovery stuff. Sounded a bit paranoid,
but stuck in my mind. I do still update Win7 for the virus and malware
protections.
In backing up Win7ssd with Macrium, I started noticing it pre-checked
two partitions for me: Win7 and that WinRE partiton I created for
Win10.
The above makes me suspect that Win7 might be using my Win10 RE
partition for its playpen when it does updates? Or maybe Macrium is
just spotting a SystemReserved partition on the same ssd as Win7 and
thinks it oughta be backed-up?

The BCD file may contain some information about "what an OS thinks".
You can also use reagentc /info to see what the OS is using
for a WinRE.wim at the moment.

I don't think the OS goes on a "mission" to find obscure places
to create or update a System Reserved. The OS installer tends
to create such an animal near the end of the C: partition. Now,
it could get into a bind, on a MSDOS partitioned disk. And in
such a case, it may not create a System Reserved at all, and it
could store the WinRE.wim on the C: drive.

As for Macrium, it is a combination of "automation" when naive
users are involved and "manual operation" when a power user is involved.
If you start dragging and dropping partitions in Macrium, Macrium
goes "uh,oh power user" and it is not making any attempts to glue
anything together for you.

On the other hand, if you restore a more or less complete hard
drive to a new drive, then it's going to modify the identifiers
sufficiently that the new disk does not "entangle" with the old
disk, if the old disk is plugged in at a later date. It is
examining disk geometry on the restored disk, plus looking at
the BCD file (if it can figure out which one).

Most of the time, Macrium does a decent job at this game,
but it does screw up occasionally, and that's what the Boot Repair
on the rescue CD is for.

Windows 7 Backup, has the notion of "critical partitions", and it
won't do a backup, unless all critical partitions are included.
Macrium does not do that. If you use the tick boxes in Macrium,
you control what is backed up or cloned. If you miss something
critical, that is "tough beanz". Macrium expects you to do the
job again, if you screw it up. If you wish to save time, by
dragging and dropping the missing partition, Macrium will say
"great", but it won't react and it won't repair anything.
It would then take the Boot Repair on the Rescue CD, to finish
the botched job.

To some extent, what Macrium does is "predictable". Like a
railroad train, if your usage "stays on the tracks", then the
automation will work to your advantage. If you're constantly
slapping Macrium around (I do that), then expect to need the
Boot Repair operation more than the average user.

Macrium cannot Boot Repair, if materials are missing. It does not
have a "complete repair kit", as near as I can determine by
observation. For example, say I go into the ESP partition,
enter the Microsoft folder, and just delete everything.
Then, for either Windows boot repair, or for Macrium boot repair,
that is "heavy damage". And the odds of you escaping from
your mess are poor. The ESP partition also has some "weirdness".
There are red items in there. I interpret them to be deleted,
but something still remembers them. It is not just a plain
FAT32, something else is going on in there. It's possible if
you work in there from Linux, the treatment would be "normal" in
there.

As you can tell from my adventures, I haven't been able to fix
"everything" in these places. Sometimes I get lucky and
manage to tip something upright. but I've also had stuff
that remained trashed. Macrium is not clever custom code,
it's the usage of system routines to carry out steps
in boot repair, and this means it inherits whatever
limits Windows has when Windows tries to do the same thing.
The clever code, is when it slightly modifies a BCD so that
the BCD is independent of the original drive. This
can be done with bcdedit /set calls.

The

bcdedit

command, as administrator, dumps some information of interest when
you have theories about "what an OS thinks". Reagentc /info
can also be used as an indicator (when you're booted into the
correct OS for the evaluation you're trying to do).

At this late date, it is unlikely that any Windows 7 Update
has a particular interest in WinRE.wim. Even if there was an
exploit for Windows 7 using that, it's unlikely Microsoft
would patch it. I mean, look at the job they did for '4441,
as evidence of competence.

Paul

J. P. Gilliver

2024-05-02 06:37:26 UTC