{Solved} Computer will not exit from Linux screen. (Clone & Grow HD)

To exit the GParted Live CD, you need to Double-Click on the EXIT icon on the desktop.  Perhaps that is the problem?

As for disk drive space, I have heard of some newer drives having the capability to "set the size of the drive".  Perhaps you have run into this type of problem?

Hello KrisMcNic2!,

You need a program for Windows. Look here for further information.

Best thing would be to have the actual situation as it is seen by "GParted", either by having a screenshot or the print-out of Terminal command "fdisk -l -u" ("l" is a lower-case L).
I assume, you did nothing wrong with copying XP Pro to the bigger disk (sector by sector), but of course it doesn't get resized to the new size automatically. This is a simple task for "GParted" !
To know the pitfalls of cloning Windows, have a look at my draft to that issue.

Regards
cmdr

Hello Kris,

IMPORTANT HINT :
It's clear, that I can't guarantee success nor exclude any damage to data or drive, if you follow my instructions.

How to store screenshots / fdisk print-out on a USB-Stick ?

To get read/write access to storage devices (HDD, USB stick or else), you have to "mount" them with Linux before. Note, that "GParted" can only work (clone, move, resize) on "unmounted" devices. Mounted devices get a lock icon within "GParted". But you can easily unmount them within "GParted" menu (except for the drive, "GParted" was launched, e.g. USB stick).

There are most often two steps necessary to mount a drive : 1. Create an empty folder, where the content can then be accessed (for each partition separately !). 2. Mount ONE storage device at ONE (sub)folder.

Hint : Linux "Terminal" commands in further text are "quoted"; type them and of course hit [ENTER] after each "active" line. Linux is case-sensitive ! Omit lines starting with # (=comments). Do not confuse this # with the console prompt, where it's just a separator.

Type

As a result, you see all detected storage devices and their geometry, but they are not yet accessible ! Write down their device names; e.g. /dev/sda; /dev/sda1; ...
 
Plug in your USB Stick now and wait until its LED stops flickering, then again type

A new device name is added, e.g. /dev/sdb; /dev/sdb1.
Write down the new name with number 1, e.g. /dev/sdb1, and use it from now on, whenever it's referred to.

Creates a new (sub)folder ("/mnt" always exists; there are also preconfigured empty subfolders, but you can't rely, that each Linux distro offers the same set.

Now the USB stick is accessible via folder "/mnt/myusb", which corresponds to the root folder "\" of your stick.

Start "GParted" by clicking on its (Linux) Desktop icon and take a screenshot, when finished.

Copy it to the stick and store the output of "fdisk"

To get it publicated, just upload it to a file sharing site (e.g. mediafire.com) and give us the link.

What should you know about Linux storage device names ?

"/dev/hd..." indicates an IDE/PATA-drive, "/dev/sd..." is a SATA-drive, USB stick, photo flash storage or other removable storage device. The following letter ("a") indicates the first detected physical device (e.g. "hda";IDE0 interface), "b" the second and so on. At last the number defines the partition number of the logical volume, if any ("hda1" = logical volume on first primary partition of drive "hda" / in DOS "C:", if bootable). Extended partition numbering starts with number 5, because the 4 possible primary partitions hold numbers 1 - 4. Note, that the maximum configuration is 3 primary partitions and 1 extended with a total maximum of 26 drives under DOS ("A:" - "Z:"; A: / B: Floppy; C: / D: / E: primary partitions on harddisks; F: CDROM ; G: - Z: up to 20 logical drives in extended partition).

Coming from Windows world, you should give your drives Volume names, which are foolproof, before you start; e.g. "SOURCE" and "TARGET" (see below) with cloning operations. "GParted" shows them !

--------------------------- Snip ! ---------------------------------------

The Registry Key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/MountedDevices

The above SINGLE key has to be deleted. You let the PC search it or do it yourself.
You listed keys under HKEY_USERS. This is a totally other Registry hive ! For Heaven's sake,
DO NOT DELETE ANYTHING THERE !

Search it this way : Open "regedit" - Close all [-], until you only see the five main keys (hives).
Click on "[+]HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE", click on "SYSTEM" and you see "MountedDevices". Right-click
on "MountedDevices" and "Delete" it. See below for the right timing !

--------------------------- Snip ! ---------------------------------------

My "Order of Battle"

A. First Cloning

1. Install source and target harddisk in one PC
- (Re-)Name Ronny's old harddisk : SOURCE0
- (Re-)Name Kris' harddisk : TARGET1
2. TARGET1 (running OS) : Clean up harddisk SOURCE0 (CC, Defrag; do not yet delete Registry Key !)
3. Launch "GParted"(running OS)
- Right-click on Desktop / "Fluxbox" opens / Choose "File/System utils" / Launch "MC_HxEd"
- Click on all [+] to unfold treeview, write down hexadecimal value of SOURCE0 Drive ID (e.g.(Set)_Drive_Id_0x4d6f2234)
- TARGET1: Shrink Partition and gain approx.10 GB unallocated space (always + 500 MB than the source's size)
- Reboot system twice (TARGET1 running OS)
- Reboot (TARGET1 running OS), delete Registry Key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/MountedDevices"

Note: If you are cloning, there is no need either to partition or to format the target area. It must
simply be big enough for the source.

4. Launch "GParted"(running OS)
- SOURCE0 : Copy ...
- TARGET1 : ... Paste (to the "unallocated space" of 10GB)
- Apply
5. Have some cups of coffee until finished

Note: Normally Volume ID in Master Boot Record is not cloned; Bootflag gets deleted on TARGET1, if a valid MBR gets overwritten, which is NOT the case here ! Keep in mind, that you have a critical state of your (TARGET1) harddisk at the moment. You have two MBR structures on the drive. Do not start Windows !!!

6. "GParted"(running OS) : Rename "TARGET1" to "SOURCE1"
7. Shutdown "GParted"(running OS), install Ronny's new, big harddisk to your PC
8. Launch "GParted"(running OS)
- (Re)name Ronny's new, big harddisk "TARGET2"

B. Second Cloning

SOURCE1 : Partition on Kris' harddisk
TARGET2 : Ronny's new, big harddisk

1. "GParted"(running OS) still waiting.
- SOURCE1 : Copy ...
- TARGET2 : ... Paste (to the leftmost beginning of the harddisk)
- Apply

Note : Do NOT resize it to fit the whole drive here !!!

2. Second coffee break until finished !
3. Set the "boot" mark to TARGET2 primary partition, if missing.
4. Inspect Drive ID, see A 3. Former and actual value have to differ !
5. If not : Use "MC_HxEd", double click on "(Set)_Drive_ID..." (Editor opens),press [F2] to edit, change at least one hexadecimal pair, store it with [F6], control it and quit "MC_HxEd".
6. Shutdown "GParted"(running OS), remove TARGET2 (Ronny's new disk) from your PC and put it back into his machine
7. Do not boot Ronny's PC at the moment; it's my screenplay !

C. Clean Up Kris' harddisk

1. Launch "GParted" (running OS)
- Delete volume SOURCE1
- Apply  -> unallocated space
- Grow OS partition to its former size
- Apply
2. Cross your fingers and start Windows
- Reboot twice
- chkdsk /f twice

... and here is the CLIMAX

D. Settle Ronny's new harddisk

1. @Ronny : Cross your fingers on both hands. @Kris : Start Ronny's PC
- Note any fault message appearing !
- Let Windows do "chkdsk", if it claims for !
- Reboot twice
- chkdsk /f twice
2. Launch "GParted" (running OS)
- Grow the partition to fill the whole drive
- Apply
3. Start Windows again
- Reboot twice
- chkdsk /f twice
4. Champagne !!!

Good luck, Guys
cmdr

Hello Chris,
nice to hear, that you recovered from your sickness ! I just took a closer look to your posted information about the involved harddisks.

fdisk partition printout of D : looks totally weird, it makes no sense at all. The physical data seems to be correct. The whole drive has 15,007,104 sectors (= 16 heads * 63 sectors/per cylinder * 14,888 cylinders) and each sector 512 Bytes  resulting in a total size of 15,007,104 * 512 = 7,683,637,248 Bytes (=7.15 GiB). I can't believe, that this "object" boots flawlessly !  The starting sector of the first primary partition is far beyond the last physical sector ( 218,129,509 >> 15,007,104) of the HDD !  I assume, that the original Master Boot Record (MBR) was replaced by a third party Bootmanager and that we look upon source code instead of the expected partition table format.

However,  Drive C : as clone of D : looks boringly normal. I would urgently suggest, not to clone drive D : a second time, but to proceed with C :. You might clone C : to your HDD, to have a roll-back, if growing of the file system crashes.

While in XP give Ronny's and your harddisks Volume names ( don't mix it up with "Computer names", which are important for network issues) according to my suggestion to have a captive identification in "both worlds" (Windows and Linux). Nothing is worse than to revert accidentally a cloning direction ! -

The bootflag plays a role on ONE physical HDD. Don't forget, that you can have more than one bootable HDD in your PC, since you can choose Boot Sequence in BIOS. If a HDD is not "asked" by the BIOS to boot, what should the bootflag do against it ? -

The problem in ONE PC are - as you stated correctly - the "cloned twins", because XP can not cope with that situation.

You didn't mention it expressively : Ronnys big C : drive boots already, even with the unallocated space above ?

Regards
cmdr

Hi cmdr;

Just want to let you know that the operation was a success & both patients are doing well.  Maybe somebody should change the Title of this Post as we ended up going way off topic & anybody looking for a similar fix would never know it was hiding here, also somebody shold also flag this as PROBLEM SOLVED, pls.

We got slowed down by some physical damage to Ronny's computer, he tried to remove the Monitor Cable without unscrewing it (never should have let him try to do it himself), so that had to get repaired.  I spent Friday saving files on my computer, so I could make lots of room for the Clone (only needed 7 GiB, but went & got 14 GiB to give us lots of Buffer room), then went through the 8 STEPS (Techspot), which is Avista (Anti-Virus), CC, MBAM, SAS to make sure that I was Clean & Lean.  Then did my old DOS cure all of CHKDSK/f & DEFRAG.  Not being happy with what Windows DEFRAG did (it did not look very compact), I ran DEFRAGGLER 3 or 4 times until everything was clean & tight.

Saturday morning Ronny arrived with his computer (now physically repaired) & I started the operation.  Removed his HD, changed it's jumper to make it a Slave & installed it into my PC. Then we hit the only snag in your instructions:

Discovered that CC will not clean up a Slave HD, it would only removed a couple of items, so I ended up pulling his HD, putting it back into his PC, downloading & installing CC, then let CC clean up almost a GiB of garbage on his PC, then it was back out of his PC & back into mine.  So for future reference in a Cloning operation always do a CC in the Source computer while the HD is still a C: HD, after that everything went well.

I don't know why there seem to be so many mentions of how long it takes for GParted to do it's thing, because for me I didn't even have time to make a cup of coffee let alone drink it after I hit the APPLY button on any of the operations, maybe it is due to some of the prep work I did which did take up a lot of time, maybe it was overkill or is my Pent IV @ 2666 MHz so much speedier than everybody else or is it because we were only working with a 7 GiB Cloning operation? 

I took a lot of notes, so this might help somebody else & here is a short version of what I did over & above your "Order of Battle"
- Installed the Cleaned (CC) Source0 HD in my PC.
- Booted PC & let it discover the new HD & let it do it's own CHKDSK.
- Rebooted system 2X.
- Run CC.
- CHKDSK/f Target0 2X.
- CHKDSK/f Source0 2X
- DEFRAGGLER Target0 until clean & tight (in my case 2X as I had already had prepared it the night before, so maybe it was overkill.
- DEFRAGGLER Source0 until clean & tight (gave up on 4th X as 2 Files with 34 Fragments with total size of 635 Meg would not Defrag but better than 447 Files, 11,924 Fragments @ 2.5 GiB).
- Then onward with cmdr's "Order of Battle"

It took me a slow careful 20 minutes to prepare to SHRINK Target0 HD.  I hit "APPLY" & in only a surprising 2 minutes the SHRINK had been completed.  Did the Reboot 2X, then Reboot again & Deleted the required Registry Key.

Prepared to do the CLONE & hit the "APPLY" button & again another pleasant surprise it only took 5:00 minutes to Clone the 7GiB Sourc0 HD.

Put Ronny's HD back in his PC.  Rebooting 2X took 15 minutes (his Computer is a lot slower than mine) & CHKDSK/f 2X took another 40 minutes then spent 11 minutes getting GParted ready to Grow.  Hit the "APPLY" button & GParted was off & running but even before I could get out of my chair in under 1 minute the deed was done & Ronny had a healthy 19.1 GiB HD.

I then went to my PC, deleted the clone & did the same sequence with a lot less time (Reboot 2X in 6 & CHKDSK/f 2X in 50, but then I had 27 Gib to do compared with 7 Gib) & GParted did the Grow in under 1 minute.  I waited until I was sure Ronny's HD was OK before doing mine as I wanted a Fallback for a 2nd try if required & if I had cleaned up my HD first then that opportunity would have been lost, otherwise your instructions were perfect.

We started the whole opperation at 11:00 in the morning & I finally had both computers back together & running @ 3:00 the next morning, so the total operation took 17:00 hours but in actual fact it took GParted only a total of 9:00 minutes to Shrink, Clone & then Grow the 2 HD, so why is it taking 6 hours, for other people.  What takes the time is the Reboots, CHKDSK/f's & DEFRAG's.  I can only think that giving GParted a nice clean, neat workspace to work on makes it go a lot faster & would be much less prone to failures.  In my case I think it was well worth the extra Prepartion time.

Once again many thanks cmdr for all the help & patience, yesterday was ST. PATRICK'S DAY, so I hope a Leprechaun left his Pot of Gold under your bed, because you deserve it.

Regards;

Chris