Operating System not found

I am trying to use a "ghosted" backup hard drive. I get the message
"Operating System not found". This "ghosted" drive is from my main master C:
boot drive which worked just fine. Do I have to run Windows Setup again on
this drive? How can I run Windows Setup and keep all my settings and
software on the drive? I ran Windows Setup from the Windows 98 Startup disk
once before and lost access to much of my software and personal settings on a
drive. Can anyone help me?

How was the image 'ghosted'? How was the disk prepared before the image was
'ghosted'? What does the imaging software say about using a 'ghosted' image
with a boot disk?

Why are you trying to boot this image? If the machine is not the same one
where Windows was originally installed you will have a lot of difficulty
getting Widows to run. If you didn't create this disk on the machine where
you are trying to run it then you might not even get the machine to read the
disk at all.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)
"Greg Clift" wrote in message
news
I am trying to use a "ghosted" backup hard drive. I get the message
"Operating System not found". This "ghosted" drive is from my main master
C:
boot drive which worked just fine. Do I have to run Windows Setup again
on
this drive? How can I run Windows Setup and keep all my settings and
software on the drive? I ran Windows Setup from the Windows 98 Startup
disk
once before and lost access to much of my software and personal settings
on a
drive. Can anyone help me?

Greg Clift wrote:

I am trying to use a "ghosted" backup hard drive. I get the
message "Operating System not found".

You probably didn't use Ghost correctly to create an exact copy.

This might help:

Boot from a floppy that has FDISK.exe on it. To create a boot floppy,
go to another computer with win-98 and put in a blank floppy and open
a DOS window. In the window, type this: "sys a:". Then find
fdisk.exe and put a copy of it on the floppy.

Once you boot this floppy on the computer with the problem, run fdisk
at the dos prompt. If it asks you about large drive support, answer
yes.

You will then get a menu of 4 or 5 things you can do. One of them is
to set the bootable partition or active partition (sorry, I'm going by
memory here). Most likely your drive isin't set correctly to have an
active partition. Once it's set, you should be able to boot from it
(assuming Ghost did everything else correctly).

"ghosted" hard drive can mean one of two things. An image file(s) were
created when copying the entire hard drives partition, and restored to
another hard drive. OR, the hard drive is a copied version where imaging
was not utilized in the copy.

If you didn't move the hard drive to another PC, go to the last paragraph.

There may be problems moving a hard drive from one PC to another PC. This
usually manifests itself when first accessed. Files and folders may be not
in the anticipated location. This is especially important with operating
system boot files (symptom of your message).

When moving an image file from one PC to another PC, it should be in some
univeral format like on CD or DVD in iso 8660 format. This is commonly used
format used by commercial CDs for PCs. From that media, the image of the
hard drive should be restored to an onboard hard drive. That hard drive
should be in the PC you intend it to operate in.

A COPIED hard drive, using whether ghost or some other hard drive copying
application, will make the copied hard drive suitable to work in the PC its
located in at the time. But, sometimes puts the boot files in the wrong
location. But, the hard drives FAT is usually correct and the filesystem is
still accessible. Reinstalling windows on this hard drive in the same PC
should do no harm to personal files. Usually, all that is needed is to have
the system boot files in the proper location of the boot sector of the boot
partition. This is done with a boot floppy using a small program called
sys.com which is an ms-dos file. This is a common malady when copying a
hard drive. A restored image has much better success.
"Greg Clift" wrote in message
news
I am trying to use a "ghosted" backup hard drive. I get the message
"Operating System not found". This "ghosted" drive is from my main master
C:
boot drive which worked just fine. Do I have to run Windows Setup again
on
this drive? How can I run Windows Setup and keep all my settings and
software on the drive? I ran Windows Setup from the Windows 98 Startup
disk
once before and lost access to much of my software and personal settings
on a
drive. Can anyone help me?

"98 Guy" wrote in message ...
Greg Clift wrote:

Boot from a floppy that has FDISK.exe on it. . . .

Once you boot this floppy on the computer with the problem, run fdisk
at the dos prompt. If it asks you about large drive support, answer
yes.

You will then get a menu of 4 or 5 things you can do. One of them is
to set the bootable partition or active partition (sorry, I'm going by
memory here). Most likely your drive isin't set correctly to have an
active partition.

This is not a reliable description or prescription.
(It omits essential FORMAT and 0S installation
or SYS routines.) You will find good advice at
http://home.satx.rr.com/badour/html/partitions.html

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

Don Phillipson wrote:

set the bootable partition or active partition

This is not a reliable description or prescription.
(It omits essential FORMAT and 0S installation
or SYS routines.)

If the drive hasn't been formatted or partitioned then when he runs
FDISK there will be no partitions he can set active. That in and of
itself is a useful thing to know and will tell him what he should do
next. It doesn't take much time to do, and it won't break anything by
doing it.

If he can't find any startable partitions on the drive then telling
him to format and sys his drive is not what he's going to want to do,
given that it will wipe out what-ever ghost image may be on the drive.

Actually, if he boots from a floppy, then tries to access the drive
(by switching to C he'll find out right away if there is a useable
partition or not. If he gets the message "ivalid drive specification"
then he'll know there's something wrong with the drive's formatting.
In that case, I'd hook the drive up as a slave in another computer (a
computer with Norton) and run NDD. Norton will usually detect
"invisible" drives and make changes so that they become useable.

Yes, thanks alot for your help. The drive was ghosted by Norton Ghost. I
ghosted my main C: drive to my extra D: drive so that I would have a backup
should my C: drive fail. Well, it happened. My C: drive messed up somehow.
So I just figured that, OK, I would just change out drives and have
everything like it was originally. Well, the ghosted drive looks like it has
all the files on it from the original master drive. It is readable as a
slave drive, but it won't boot like the original drive booted every day. I
thought that a ghosted drive was supposed to work just like the original. I
am using the drive in the same computer as the original. Thanks for any help
you can offer.



"Lil' Dave" wrote:

"ghosted" hard drive can mean one of two things. An image file(s) were
created when copying the entire hard drives partition, and restored to
another hard drive. OR, the hard drive is a copied version where imaging
was not utilized in the copy.

If you didn't move the hard drive to another PC, go to the last paragraph.

There may be problems moving a hard drive from one PC to another PC. This
usually manifests itself when first accessed. Files and folders may be not
in the anticipated location. This is especially important with operating
system boot files (symptom of your message).

When moving an image file from one PC to another PC, it should be in some
univeral format like on CD or DVD in iso 8660 format. This is commonly used
format used by commercial CDs for PCs. From that media, the image of the
hard drive should be restored to an onboard hard drive. That hard drive
should be in the PC you intend it to operate in.

A COPIED hard drive, using whether ghost or some other hard drive copying
application, will make the copied hard drive suitable to work in the PC its
located in at the time. But, sometimes puts the boot files in the wrong
location. But, the hard drives FAT is usually correct and the filesystem is
still accessible. Reinstalling windows on this hard drive in the same PC
should do no harm to personal files. Usually, all that is needed is to have
the system boot files in the proper location of the boot sector of the boot
partition. This is done with a boot floppy using a small program called
sys.com which is an ms-dos file. This is a common malady when copying a
hard drive. A restored image has much better success.
"Greg Clift" wrote in message
news
I am trying to use a "ghosted" backup hard drive. I get the message
"Operating System not found". This "ghosted" drive is from my main master
C:
boot drive which worked just fine. Do I have to run Windows Setup again
on
this drive? How can I run Windows Setup and keep all my settings and
software on the drive? I ran Windows Setup from the Windows 98 Startup
disk
once before and lost access to much of my software and personal settings
on a
drive. Can anyone help me?

Make sure the boot partition is set to "active". FDISK (or PartitionMagic,
others) can check/do this.

"Greg Clift" wrote in message
...
Yes, thanks alot for your help. The drive was ghosted by Norton Ghost. I
ghosted my main C: drive to my extra D: drive so that I would have a
backup
should my C: drive fail. Well, it happened. My C: drive messed up
somehow.
So I just figured that, OK, I would just change out drives and have
everything like it was originally. Well, the ghosted drive looks like it
has
all the files on it from the original master drive. It is readable as a
slave drive, but it won't boot like the original drive booted every day.
I
thought that a ghosted drive was supposed to work just like the original.
I
am using the drive in the same computer as the original. Thanks for any
help
you can offer.



"Lil' Dave" wrote:

"ghosted" hard drive can mean one of two things. An image file(s) were
created when copying the entire hard drives partition, and restored to
another hard drive. OR, the hard drive is a copied version where imaging
was not utilized in the copy.

If you didn't move the hard drive to another PC, go to the last
paragraph.

There may be problems moving a hard drive from one PC to another PC.
This
usually manifests itself when first accessed. Files and folders may be
not
in the anticipated location. This is especially important with
operating
system boot files (symptom of your message).

When moving an image file from one PC to another PC, it should be in some
univeral format like on CD or DVD in iso 8660 format. This is commonly
used
format used by commercial CDs for PCs. From that media, the image of the
hard drive should be restored to an onboard hard drive. That hard drive
should be in the PC you intend it to operate in.

A COPIED hard drive, using whether ghost or some other hard drive copying
application, will make the copied hard drive suitable to work in the PC
its
located in at the time. But, sometimes puts the boot files in the wrong
location. But, the hard drives FAT is usually correct and the filesystem
is
still accessible. Reinstalling windows on this hard drive in the same PC
should do no harm to personal files. Usually, all that is needed is to
have
the system boot files in the proper location of the boot sector of the
boot
partition. This is done with a boot floppy using a small program called
sys.com which is an ms-dos file. This is a common malady when copying a
hard drive. A restored image has much better success.
"Greg Clift" wrote in message
news
I am trying to use a "ghosted" backup hard drive. I get the message
"Operating System not found". This "ghosted" drive is from my main
master
C:
boot drive which worked just fine. Do I have to run Windows Setup
again
on
this drive? How can I run Windows Setup and keep all my settings and
software on the drive? I ran Windows Setup from the Windows 98 Startup
disk
once before and lost access to much of my software and personal
settings
on a
drive. Can anyone help me?

mdp wrote:

Make sure the boot partition is set to "active". FDISK
(or PartitionMagic, others) can check/do this.

That's what I told him in the third post in this thread.

Then others jumped all over my plan.

Turns out I was right.

Ghost must have done a partition copy - not a drive-to-drive copy.

The partition is not set to active.

If the OP wants to boot from the second parition on a 2-partition
drive - that's something I've never tried to do. Theoretically you'd
have to remove the "active partition" setting on the first partition
(drive C) and give it to the second partition (drive d). Does FDISK
give you the ability to remove the "active partition" setting? I know
it won't let you set more than 1 partition as active on a system.

I recommend that the user buy a second hard drive and slave it into
the system and do a ghost copy from D to the new drive, then remove
the first drive (and set the new drive as primary master) and boot
from a floppy with FDISK and use FDISK to set the new drive's
partition as active. Then it should be bootable.

That's the thing about newsgroups, sometimes you're the pigeon, sometimes
you're the statue.

Partition Magic can do just about anything (I want to do) with partitions
such as booting from a partition that's not the first partition. I'm not
sure if FDISK can but I think so. I use Ghost to copy partitions, not
drives, all the time. If I need to set a partition active, I do so as
another step. That way I don't need to back up an entire drive which today
can be quite large.


"98 Guy" wrote in message ...
mdp wrote:

Make sure the boot partition is set to "active". FDISK
(or PartitionMagic, others) can check/do this.

That's what I told him in the third post in this thread.

Then others jumped all over my plan.

Turns out I was right.

Ghost must have done a partition copy - not a drive-to-drive copy.

The partition is not set to active.

If the OP wants to boot from the second parition on a 2-partition
drive - that's something I've never tried to do. Theoretically you'd
have to remove the "active partition" setting on the first partition
(drive C) and give it to the second partition (drive d). Does FDISK
give you the ability to remove the "active partition" setting? I know
it won't let you set more than 1 partition as active on a system.

I recommend that the user buy a second hard drive and slave it into
the system and do a ghost copy from D to the new drive, then remove
the first drive (and set the new drive as primary master) and boot
from a floppy with FDISK and use FDISK to set the new drive's
partition as active. Then it should be bootable.