Bizarre SCSI XP boot problem!

[amby19]

XP boots fine from SCSI disk, but *ONLY* if there's another XP boot partition elsewhere!

Brief Description:
XP will boot perfectly from my SCSI disk *ONLY* if there's another XP boot partition on some other drive! If the SCSI boot partition is the only one in the system, it will not boot correctly.


Detailed Description:

I apologize in advance for the length of this, but you never know what piece of information might help, so here it all is!

I used Acronis Disk Director 10 to clone my working XP boot partition from one of my SATA disks to my SCSI disk. And it boots perfectly -- *UNLESS* there is no other XP installation on a different disk.

Here's the situation. If I have a second XP installation on another drive, XP boots perfectly from the SCSI disk. However, in that situation, the boot process awards the other (non-SCSI) XP partition the letter C, which is completely unacceptable in my situation. So, if I hide the other (non-SCSI) XP partition, the boot process thankfully awards the SCSI boot partition the magic letter C. However, in this case XP won't fully boot from the SCSI drive, even though it's the C drive.


Why on earth should XP require TWO boot partitions in order to boot from a SCSI drive with drive letter C?


This is what happens if I try to boot from the SCSI disk without the other XP partition visible:

1) I boot & select the SCSI boot partition in the XP boot loader window (the default)

2) Up comes the Windows XP welcome graphic with the blue Cylon eye on the black background

3) Then comes the Windows XP graphic that is sky blue with darker blue upper and lower borders. However, in a fully working system, you next see the phrases "Windows is starting up" followed by "Windows is loading your settings", etc. But these never show up. What happens instead is that the entire window turns sky blue (NOT the Blue Screen of Death color), and although the mouse responds, the system is completely hung and non-responsive. Ctrl-Alt-Del does nothing. I'm forced to do a hard reset.

If I boot into "safe mode" or "safe mode with command prompt" instead, everything also looks perfect at first. The exact same text messages saying loading this and loading that are there. It gets to the Safe Mode graphic ("Safe Mode" in the corners). But then the system gets into an infinite loop, repeatedly showing a sky blue sub-window graphic for about 1-2 seconds, then it blanks, then it repeats ad infinitum. Again, Ctrl-Alt-Del does nothing.

The KEY here for me is the boot time assignment of drive letter C. If I could get XP to assign C to my SCSI boot partition no matter what, then I wouldn't care if there had to be another copy of XP on the system. But no matter what I try, if there's another XP boot partition anywhere in the system other than the SCSI drive, it always gets to be drive C.

Thus in order to force my SCSI partition to be assigned C, I have to "hide" the other XP boot partition, whereupon XP will call the SCSI partition "C". But then it won't boot correctly!

Does anyone know any other way to force XP to assign C to a particular disk/partition? Is there some OS loader or something that does that? I'm not afraid of editing the registry or even the boot sectors of the disk, if that's what it takes. Or does anyone have a link to exactly how the XP boot process determines which partition is awarded the "C" drive letter? (It's changed since Windows 98, and perhaps other later OSs too).

To try to get at the bottom of this, I compared the boot logs between a good SCSI boot (with another XP elsewhere) against the failed SCSI boot (with no other XP visible). The following differences showed up: (note: these are all in the good boot log and missing in the failed one, even the "Did not load driver" messages):

Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\USBSTOR.SYS
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\Fastfat.SYS
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\rdbss.sys
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\mrxsmb.sys
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\drivers\wdmaud.sys
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\drivers\sysaudio.sys
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\drivers\splitter.sys
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\drivers\aec.sys
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\drivers\swmidi.sys
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\drivers\DMusic.sys
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\drivers\kmixer.sys
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\drivers\drmkaud.sys
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\mrxdav.sys
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\parport.sys
Loaded driver \??\C:\Program Files\ASTRA32\ASTRA32.sys
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\ElbyCDIO.sys
Loaded driver \??\C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\GDTdiIcpt.sys
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\srv.sys
Loaded driver \??\D:\Apps\AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic\avgntflt.sys
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\ipnat.sys
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\HTTP.sys
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\drivers\kmixer.sys



But these differences are pretty minor, it seems to (perhaps clueless) me, in the sense that their presence or absence shouldn't cause a boot failure. So would you agree with me that the differences in the boot logs are a symptom of the problem rather than the cause? I mean, what possible difference can these make in this situation?

The very last line in the failed boot log is:

"Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\ndisuio.sys"

(the 3 lines following that in the good boot log are:
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\rdbss.sys
Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\mrxsmb.sys
Loaded driver \SystemRoot\system32\drivers\wdmaud.sys)


There is nothing after the "ndisuio.sys" line in the log. That could be an important clue, but I don't know what to make of it. "ndisuio.sys" is described on the web as "a process belonging to the NDIS User Mode I/O (NDISUIO) NDIS protocol driver which offers support for wireless devices such as Bluetooth and the like." (But I'm not using wireless or Bluetooth). However, another web site (Big Brother and Ndisuio.sys, A new Internet phenomenon?) suggests it might be suspicious and may be related to the Windows screen saver(??). Again, none of my up-to-date anti-virus and anti-malware tools says there's anything wrong with any of those files (and if there were, you'd think they'd cause the same problem both ways).

I've read a hell of a lot of web pages about booting XP from a SCSI disk, but I haven't found anything particularly relevant and certainly nothing that helped me with this problem. I saw a related web page (how to clone Windows XP installation on a SCSI disk?) that mentioned (among other things) "SID information", but that's related to user/logon id and user access security, so even if it's relevant, it's exactly the same in all situations, right?


So, folks, any help? Please??



Further, Random Details:

-- I have the latest driver and BIOS for my SCSI adapter. I copied it (symmpi.sys) to the root of the SCSI boot partition and renamed it to Ntbootdd.sys just in case (but Microsoft assures me it should not be necessary in this situation).

-- My system BIOS is set to give boot priority to the SCSI disk first among the hard disks. Total boot priority is set to Floppy, CD-ROM, Hard Disks (SCSI first, then SATA HD0, then SATA HD1).

-- When I boot from the XP install CD (with the SCSI adapter driver loaded along the way), when I go to the Recovery Console and type "MAP arc", it shows the SCSI boot partition as "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)", while the the other boot partition (the non-SCSI one) displays as "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)". This is confirmed when I boot the Acronis Disk Director CD, which shows the disks in the arc order, so that the SCSI boot partition is always shown as the first disk and always given the (temporary) drive letter C.

-- The boot.ini file reads:
[boot loader]
timeout=60
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="SCSI Windows XP Pro rd(0)" /FASTDETECT /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="SATA Windows XP Pro rd(1)" /FASTDETECT /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN


-- I've performed the recovery console's BOOTCFG /REBUILD, which produces the same results. I've also tried FIXMBR on both the SCSI and the other partition.

-- I made sure that Windows didn't use the login window and that it would automatically start without the user having to select a username or password.

-- The XP boot partition on the SCSI disk is the first partition on the drive. The partition attributes are: primary, active, and bootable.


System Configuration:

Motherboard: Abit IS7 -- Socket 478
Bus(es) : ISA AGP PCI IMB USB FireWire/1394 i2c/SMBus
MP Support : 1 Processor(s) -- MP APIC : Yes
Processor: Intel Pentium 4(c) CPU 3.2GHz (Northwood), hyper-threaded
Chipset: Intel i865-ICH5 chipset (Intel 865/848 Springdale)
Storage Controllers: Intel(R) 82801EB/ER Ultra ATA (x2)
SCSI Storage Controller: LSI Logic 203320-R Ultra320 SCSI HDA
Total Memory: 1GB Micron/Crucial DDR-SDRAM
Video Adapter : RADEON 9200 Series
Audio: Auzentech X-Meridian 7.1

Hard Disk : WDC WD5000KS-00MNB0 SATA (466GB)
Hard Disk : WDC WD3200JD-22KLB0 SATA (298GB)
Hard Disk : CSC150GB 15K REFURBISHED SCSI Disk Device (137GB)
Hard Disk : WD External HDD Device IEEE 1394 SBP2 Device
CD/DVD : LITE-ON DVDRW LH-20A1H FW: LL06
CD/DVD : _NEC DVD_RW ND-2510A FW: 2.19

Operating System(s)
Windows System : Microsoft Windows XP/2002 Professional 5.01.2600 (Service Pack 2)