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Topic: Windows lacks login

I am using the latest LiveCD (downloaded yesterday from sourceforge) on a 100GB drive that had a ~4.5 FAT(32?) Gateway recovery partition (D:) at the beginning, and XP home on (C:) taking up the rest. So I ran the CD and shrunk C: down to 26GB, deleted the first partition (Gateway Recovery), then scooted the xp partition to the beginning, then made a second partition at the end of the HD the same size as the XP partition (26GB).

I though everything was going well and got no errors anytime, but Windows can't login. I see all the appropriate screens when I start my computer but it just hangs at the tiny windows xp logo before it logs into my only user. There are no options to click on for my username, but it normally logs in automatically. I assume I have a similar problem as this thread:
http://gparted-forum.surf4.info/viewtopic.php?id=240

But I didn't change the registry beforehand, which seemed to fix his problem. The thing is I don't know how to regedit now that I've made the changes. I can't recall the exact size of the Gateway partition and what flag it had so I can't recreate the original configuration. I'm not sure if my Gateway Restore CD has an option to boot into windows without reformatting. I'm pretty sure the regedit would fix the problem, but I'm stuck on what to do.

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Re: Windows lacks login

So if i well understand you have two XP partitions on the same hard drive and no one of them is hidden from the other one, right ?
This will make a very big/nice mess, since windows cant bear windows wink
You have better have a look at this : http://gparted.sourceforge.net/larry/move/move.htm and specialy the very last sentence of the page !

So, editing regedt will alloaw the mess to begin ! Be ***very*** carefull if you really want to do that...

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

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Re: Windows lacks login

Well originally it WAS 1 xp, and one Gateway Recovery Console (that reformats the HD like a Recovery CD would). There were never 2 instances of XP, unless you count Gateway's Restore that could yield another instance of XP, but I have deleted that.

Now I am left with a shrunken XP partition and an empty partition (both 26GB), and now I just deleted the empty partition and still no luck getting into windows all the way. So now all I have is one partition with XP that wont boot. It is using about 24GB and has about 2GB unused space, which shouldn't be a problem. I can't find a way to repair XP with my Gateway CD, which only gives an option to wipe and lose all data, or wipe and save overwritten files in C:/backup

Am I correct that I can only use regedit via windows? Is there any way to get in there to change it. I have a laptop so I can't take out my HD and work with the drive on a different computer either. If there is any solution I would be very thankful.

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Re: Windows lacks login

I am trying on this.
If you know a bit linux, just try to boot off a livecd taht contains "wine" and then, mount your windows to some place with rw right, and then cd to WINDOWS/system32/
then type "wine regedit32" and it should allow you to modify your xp registry.

And ... tell me about that, please !

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

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Re: Windows lacks login

I downloaded a knoppix iso and burned it to a disc. I've only used ubuntu before, but I'll see what I can do. Can you explain the cd and r/w? I'm not so good with command line sort of things.

6 (edited by ffolke 2007-01-19 23:20:26)

Re: Windows lacks login

I right clicked to mount the HD, then right clicked read/write mode, but i got an error "remount command failed. maybe another process accessing filesystem currently."

So I went into properties>permissions and made it so all could read and write. When I returned there, the options stayed, so I believe it was successful? Then in Konsole terminal, I typed "wine regedit32" but I got "wine: could not load c:\\\windows\\system32\\regedit32.exe. Module not found"

c: is the right location of my xp partition. Am I supposed to change the directory so it doesn't say knoppix@knoppix? I appreciate your support.

EDIT: I ended up locating the regedit32.exe manually and I couldn't open it, until I found a right click option to open it with winetools. Then I was able to select registry editor. Then I found no such option under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices (from http://www.dominok.net/en/it/en.it.clon … ettingupxp ). I found System, but no MountedDevices. I guess that is not my issue, unless it's located somewhere differently in XPHome. I wish I was warned that changing a windows and associated partitions requires preconfiguration, unless this was just an unlucky situation.

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Re: Windows lacks login

I wonder if it is still possbile to make any change after the move  :-/ !

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

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Re: Windows lacks login

Just so I know for future resizing, is there anything specific that I should edit (maybe boot.ini) before changing a functioning xp partition or any other partitions?

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Re: Windows lacks login

Sure thing : you may try modifying your boot.ini.
Personnaly, i always modify it, so if partitons number changes, it is not a problem.
Here is an example :

BEFORE :
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP  dition familiale" /fastdetect


AFTER :

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="1:Microsoft Windows XP Edition familiale" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="2:Microsoft Windows XP Edition familiale" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="3:Microsoft Windows XP Edition familiale" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINDOWS="4:Microsoft Windows XP Edition familiale" /fastdetect

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

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Re: Windows lacks login

Ok, things didn't work out until I reformatted everything. Now I just have 1 partition with XPhome. Unfortunately my recovery CD doesn't ask to partition and takes up the whole drive. Is it safe to make the partition smaller (with no added partitions) without XP freaking out or hanging before login?

Here is my boot.ini

[boot loader]
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

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Re: Windows lacks login

*IF* you use the last livecd (not yet on SF, since it is a beta version) you should have a good result, like i always have when making my tests !
Last live cd can be found there : http://gparted-forum.surf4.info/viewtopic.php?id=313

thx for reporting

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

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Re: Windows lacks login

It worked great. Thanks a whole lot.

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Re: Windows lacks login

nice smile
Happy with you !
thx for reporting.

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

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Re: Windows lacks login

One final question: should I change boot.ini to your example if I later add new partitions?

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Re: Windows lacks login

making the change wont hurt your system, since you let the first line as it is. It will just show a menu during 1 secnod (or 30 if you let the default count) at prompt.
So do want you think/want

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)