Partimage and autocheck problem when restoring Windows XP from image

Question

I'm trying to create an image of Windows XP and clone it to several partitions on the same hard drive using Partimage. I seem to be running into a problem when I restore the image onto another partition - when I boot into the OS from the partition I just restored, it brings up this message during the boot sequence: autochk program not found - skipping autocheck, and then after this, the OS reboots the PC and the whole process repeats itself in an infinite loop.

After doing some Google search, it is suggested that this loop was caused by the partition being hidden or the mountmgr.sys file is missing. I checked my configuration and verified that this was not the case.

I'm just wondering:

• Has anyone else experienced this and is there a solution for it?
• Is this what happens when you try to restore the image to a different partition on the same hard disk or is Partimage itself the problem?
• Should I be trying out a different partition cloning software?

Answer 1

An NTFS partition has a Boot Parameter Block at its start where one field (a DWORD at offset 0x1C, the "Number of Hidden Sectors") says where on the disk it is located.

You must either (a) restore the partition at the exact same sector in the harddisk, or (b) patch this field, if you want to boot from it.

E.g. to state that a partition is loaded at sector 63 (default in XP), use:

echo 63 | gawk '{printf("%c%c%c%c",$1,rshift($1,8),rshift($1,16),rshift($1,24))}' |
  dd bs=4 count=1 seek=28 of=/dev/sda1

where /dev/sda1 is the partition in question.