[pchelpers] Re: FW: Information

I've come across this before too.   Our "experts" in Dearborn INSIST all 
Windows PC's/NT Worksation hard drives be formatted as one contiguous drive 
C:\.   Only servers are restricted to a 4Gb C:\ drive.  I have to say, 
though, this only occurs when the system is powered up from cold.  Doing a 
warm reboot makes the system load OK.

Neil.

At 01:52 29/05/2002 -0500, you wrote:

>-----Original Message-----
>
>Technology tips
>
>Unbootable Systems
>
>by John L. Joseph, Diskeeper Development Section, Executive Software
>International
>
>Occasionally, we'll get a call in Tech Support where the user says "my
>system won't boot." When further information is requested, the user
>tells us that he's got a message on the screen that looks like this:
>Windows NT could not start because the following file is missing or
>corrupt: <Winnt_root>\System32\Ntoskrnl.exe. Please re-install a copy of
>the above file.
>
>  <http://www.diskalert.com/diskalert/diskalert.asp?ad=esil10> The
>manager of Tech Support asked me about this situation, so I asked our
>Tech Support guys to find an example of a disk experiencing this problem
>so I could "look at it under the microscope."
>
>As you could expect, it was not easy to get our hands on such a disk.
>Usually, when a user sees this, it's Saturday at midnight, so he just
>reinstalls Windows and then tells us about it on Monday. Or the disk is
>in a production system or laptop and can't be pulled. Finally, however,
>someone sent a disk in exhibiting this problem. (He got it back 48 hours
>later.)
>
>When I put it "under the microscope," I was amazed. The stated file was
>NOT missing. The file was right there on the disk and could be examined
>easily with any number of tools, including Explorer, Command Prompt type
>command, hex editor, etc. The stated file was NOT corrupt. The file
>correctly compared, byte-for-byte, with the same file from another
>system running the same operating system.
>
>Yet, the system would not boot!
>
>So I did what the error message told me ... (the obvious thing): I
>deleted the file and copied in a replacement file of the same name into
>the same directory.
>
>Upon reboot, the following message appeared:
>
>Windows NT could not start because the following file is missing or
>corrupt:
>\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM\
>Please re-install a copy of the above file.
>
>Again, when I looked on the disk, the directory specified was neither
>missing, nor corrupt. All the expected files in that directory were
>visible, so the directory wasn't "corrupt."
>
>So I decided to dive into the Microsoft Knowledge Base and see what was
>up.
>Sure enough, there are dozens of articles about files being "missing or
>corrupt" during bootup.
>
>So what was the problem?
>
>The problem was that some key files needed for booting the operating
>system were beyond cylinder 1023 on this volume. The C: drive was 25 GB
>big! But, given the CHS (cylinder/head/sector) setup on his machine, the
>boot sequence could only see the first 7.68 GB of the volume during the
>initial boot phase.
>
>So the file was neither missing nor corrupt. It was simply beyond where
>the INT 13 BIOS interface could find it. And when I deleted the first
>file and replaced it, it fell within the first 7.68 GB.
>
>This is very important! The stated file was NEITHER MISSING, NOR
>CORRUPT. It was still there! It was just unreachable! Booting from CD,
>the system came right up. I was able to run the system just fine.
>
>When I returned the disk to the user, I gave him a write-up of what I'd
>discovered. His immediate response was, "Then why did <vendor> send me
>an operating system installed this way?!?!?" To which I of course
>responded, "Don't ask me, ask <vendor>." (It could be any vendor who
>sends out boot partitions larger than 1023 cylinders.)
>
>The bottom line is that it continues to be hazardous to install even
>Windows XP on a system partition that extends past the 1023 cylinder
>boundary on a disk.
>
>The applicable Knowledge Base article continues to be:
>
>Q224526 Windows NT 4.0 Supports Maximum of 7.8-GB System Partition
>
>even though you may be running Windows XP. Because the limitation is in
>the BIOS, there's very little can be done about it.
>
>The difficulty I have run into recently is that another article:
>
>http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/tech/storage/ntfs-preinstall.asp, which
>steers system managers into making the C: drive arbitrarily large under
>Windows XP. I'm afraid that my experience continues to indicate that
>keeping any bootable Windows partition wholly contained within the
>1023-cylinder limit on the boot drive is the smartest thing to do.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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