How to fix being unable to login to Windows XP after you image it

You just copied your Windows XP partition from one drive to another. When you reboot into the new partition, you reach the login screen, but when you try to login, it logs you straight out again with no error.

PartitionMagic Error 4444, NTFS and Windows Vista

If you’ve tried to use PartitionMagic 7 or 8 from Windows 2000/XP to image or alter a Vista partition, or to write something onto a drive that had a Vista partition on it, you might’ve been in for a shock.

Accessing the properties of the Vista partition from PartitionMagic will give you “Error #4444”. If you schedule a partition copy operation to run at reboot, you’ll get this error every time you reboot into Windows XP and won’t be able to reach the login screen.

In true Symantec-style, Symantec’s knowledge base only lists error codes upto 2999 (what, you don’t actually still use Norton Internet Security do you?!). Fortunately, Grintor (see forum link below) has the solution, and an explanation.

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NTFS Bad Sectors Resolution: The $BadClus metafile

UPDATE (20-May-2012): This post is now out of date as there are numerous better and automated solutions available. The article is presented here for historical and academic interest.

UPDATE (16-Apr-2007): If you are using Windows Vista, there is a new option in chkdsk – chkdsk x: /b – which will re-evaluate all the bad sectors on your drive and remove non-faulty sectors from the list. Please use this instead of the methods below if you have access to Vista!

UPDATE (14-Apr-2007): An anonymous contributor has pointed out a simpler way to fix the $BadClus cloning issue using a tool called ntfsprogs, which also takes into account a wider variety of scenarios than the exercise below. Check out the steps at Linux NTFS Project’s ntfsclone Wiki page and try this method before spending time on the solution below. After you’ve followed the steps on the Wiki page, boot into Windows and type chkdsk x: /f at the command prompt (where x: is the drive to repair). If you’re interested in learning about NTFS for educational purposes, read on! 🙂

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I’d like to talk a little about the internals of NTFS (the filesystem used by all NT-based versions of Windows), particular regarding the management of bad sectors.