System Won't Boot

[Matthew White]

Hi Everyone,

I used Paragon Partition Manager to redistribute free space from my D: to my
C: system partition. The drives were a dynamic set of 2 disks. Everything
appeared to go along fine, but now the system won't boot. I am getting a
stop error (stop 0x0000007b), which I believe to be that the system can't
find the boot partition. When I boot into the recovery console, I can see
all the data, so there is nothing wrong with the disks. How do I set the
system straight so that it knows how to boot up? I am running a chkdsk now.
The support group from Paragon does not open for another 8 hours, so I was
hoping someone could help out.

Regards,

Matthew White

 

[Dave Patrick]

I wouldn't have done that or anything destructive until you know the reason
why. (but of course you have the backup you can restore) Usually means a
drive controller issue or possibly a boot.ini issue.

Try creating a boot disk. For the floppy to successfully boot Windows 2003
the disk must contain the "NT" boot sector. Format a diskette (on a Windows
2003 machine, not a DOS/Win9x, so the NT boot sector gets written to the
floppy), and copy Windows 2003 versions of ntldr, ntdetect.com, and boot.ini
to it. Edit the boot.ini to give it a correct ARC path for the machine you
wish to boot. Below is an example of boot.ini. The default is to start the
operating system located on the first partition of the primary or first
drive (drive0). Then drive0 partition 2 and so on.

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Windows
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Windows="Windows 2003 0,1"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\Windows="Windows 2003 0,2"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\Windows="Windows 2003 1,1"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\Windows="Windows 2003 1,2"


Another possibility is to try loading the controller driver also from
floppy. For the floppy to successfully boot Windows 2003 the disk must
contain the "NT" boot sector. Format a diskette (on a Windows 2003 machine,
not a DOS/Win9x, so the "NT" boot sector gets written to the floppy), then
copy ntldr, ntdetect.com, and boot.ini to it. Edit the boot.ini to give it a
correct ARC path for the machine you wish to boot.

In order for this to work you'll want to change the arc path in boot.ini
from multi syntax to scsi syntax to indicate that Windows 2003 will load a
boot device driver and use that driver to access the boot partition. Then
also copy the correct manufacturer scsi driver to the floppy but renamed to
ntbootdd.sys

Something like this below

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Windows
[operating systems]
scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Windows="Windows 2003 0,1"
scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\Windows="Windows 2003 0,2"
scsi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Windows="Windows 2003 1,1"
scsi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(2)\Windows="Windows 2003 1,2"


--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

"Matthew White" wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
>
> I used Paragon Partition Manager to redistribute free space from my D: to
> my
> C: system partition. The drives were a dynamic set of 2 disks.
> Everything
> appeared to go along fine, but now the system won't boot. I am getting a
> stop error (stop 0x0000007b), which I believe to be that the system can't
> find the boot partition. When I boot into the recovery console, I can see
> all the data, so there is nothing wrong with the disks. How do I set the
> system straight so that it knows how to boot up? I am running a chkdsk
> now.
> The support group from Paragon does not open for another 8 hours, so I was
> hoping someone could help out.
>
> Regards,
>
> Matthew White

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

"Matthew White" <MatthewWhite@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:35D2B698-1A0A-4019-946F-8D7645F315DE@microsoft.com...
> Hi Everyone,
>
> I used Paragon Partition Manager to redistribute free space from my D: to
> my
> C: system partition. The drives were a dynamic set of 2 disks.
> Everything
> appeared to go along fine, but now the system won't boot. I am getting a
> stop error (stop 0x0000007b), which I believe to be that the system can't
> find the boot partition. When I boot into the recovery console, I can see
> all the data, so there is nothing wrong with the disks. How do I set the
> system straight so that it knows how to boot up? I am running a chkdsk
> now.
> The support group from Paragon does not open for another 8 hours, so I was
> hoping someone could help out.
>
> Regards,
>
> Matthew White

If this was my server and if staff depended on its availability
on Monday then I would rebuild it from backup right now.
Somehow I do not think that Paragon will be able to give you
a quick and easy solution. If you rebuild it on a set of spare
disks then you can still use the original disks in case Paragon
can resolve the problem at the last minute.

 

[Matthew White]

I looks like the redistribution of free space by the Paragon software went
bad somehow. When I boot into recovery mode, I see a C: drive (same as
before), a D: drive (same as before), and an F: drive (this is exactly the
same as the D: drive, but also has a boot.ini file). It looks like this was
some sort of staging area for Paragon. Perhaps that boot.ini is causing a
problem? I don't have a floppy drive, or another W2K3 server, so right now I
am in a bit of trouble.

"Dave Patrick" wrote:

> I wouldn't have done that or anything destructive until you know the reason
> why. (but of course you have the backup you can restore) Usually means a
> drive controller issue or possibly a boot.ini issue.
>
> Try creating a boot disk. For the floppy to successfully boot Windows 2003
> the disk must contain the "NT" boot sector. Format a diskette (on a Windows
> 2003 machine, not a DOS/Win9x, so the NT boot sector gets written to the
> floppy), and copy Windows 2003 versions of ntldr, ntdetect.com, and boot.ini
> to it. Edit the boot.ini to give it a correct ARC path for the machine you
> wish to boot. Below is an example of boot.ini. The default is to start the
> operating system located on the first partition of the primary or first
> drive (drive0). Then drive0 partition 2 and so on.
>
> [boot loader]
> timeout=10
> default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Windows
> [operating systems]
> multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Windows="Windows 2003 0,1"
> multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\Windows="Windows 2003 0,2"
> multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\Windows="Windows 2003 1,1"
> multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\Windows="Windows 2003 1,2"
>
>
> Another possibility is to try loading the controller driver also from
> floppy. For the floppy to successfully boot Windows 2003 the disk must
> contain the "NT" boot sector. Format a diskette (on a Windows 2003 machine,
> not a DOS/Win9x, so the "NT" boot sector gets written to the floppy), then
> copy ntldr, ntdetect.com, and boot.ini to it. Edit the boot.ini to give it a
> correct ARC path for the machine you wish to boot.
>
> In order for this to work you'll want to change the arc path in boot.ini
> from multi syntax to scsi syntax to indicate that Windows 2003 will load a
> boot device driver and use that driver to access the boot partition. Then
> also copy the correct manufacturer scsi driver to the floppy but renamed to
> ntbootdd.sys
>
> Something like this below
>
> [boot loader]
> timeout=10
> default=scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Windows
> [operating systems]
> scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Windows="Windows 2003 0,1"
> scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\Windows="Windows 2003 0,2"
> scsi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Windows="Windows 2003 1,1"
> scsi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(2)\Windows="Windows 2003 1,2"
>
>
> --
>
> Regards,
>
> Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
> Microsoft Certified Professional
> Microsoft MVP [Windows]
> http://www.microsoft.com/protect
>
> "Matthew White" wrote:
> > Hi Everyone,
> >
> > I used Paragon Partition Manager to redistribute free space from my D: to
> > my
> > C: system partition. The drives were a dynamic set of 2 disks.
> > Everything
> > appeared to go along fine, but now the system won't boot. I am getting a
> > stop error (stop 0x0000007b), which I believe to be that the system can't
> > find the boot partition. When I boot into the recovery console, I can see
> > all the data, so there is nothing wrong with the disks. How do I set the
> > system straight so that it knows how to boot up? I am running a chkdsk
> > now.
> > The support group from Paragon does not open for another 8 hours, so I was
> > hoping someone could help out.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Matthew White
>

 

[Dave Patrick]

All you need is the server install CD-Rom and another NTish computer. Format
the floppy on any NTish machine, copy (expand) the files ntdetect.com and
ntldr from the install CD-Rom, create the boot.ini with any text editor such
as notepad.exe

--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

"Matthew White" wrote:
>I looks like the redistribution of free space by the Paragon software went
> bad somehow. When I boot into recovery mode, I see a C: drive (same as
> before), a D: drive (same as before), and an F: drive (this is exactly the
> same as the D: drive, but also has a boot.ini file). It looks like this
> was
> some sort of staging area for Paragon. Perhaps that boot.ini is causing a
> problem? I don't have a floppy drive, or another W2K3 server, so right
> now I
> am in a bit of trouble.