shifty

Okay, so I had a situation on my Dell D600 laptop where ... before I had to format and reinstall I could initialize my USB hard drive case with a converted dynamic disk inside. Format and reinstall, now I can't do it.* I'm posting this in case it helps anyone else.

(PS:* Dynamic drives won't work in XP Home either, just for reference!)

When trying to use DISKPART, I also received the error "dynamic disks are not supported on this system". I knew they were supported previously, so I started exploring usenet and other places.

I found this page, then thumped Google a few more times with different terms. I found this MS KB article:

Option to Upgrade Basic Disk to Dynamic on Laptop Not Available: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/232463/EN-US


Then I found this one:

Dynamic Disk Hardware Limitations: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q254105

Which states:




So, I think to myself, "Windows XP knows I have a laptop .... but HOW?!"

I start dorking around. I know this works on my laptop, so I compared the Disk Management Service on my laptop with a desktop I have (both use Windows XP Professional SP2). Both files diff out to be the same size and everything.

So I go into the registry and look at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Dmio to see what parameters the service starts up with, thinking it might be a parameter or flag causing the issue when the disk mgmt service starts.

(NOTE: DO NOT HACK THE REGISTRY UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING, YOU CAN RUIN YOUR COMPUTER)

So, I compare the registry values between the laptop and workstation and notice the "Start" DWORD value is different between the laptop and the workstation for the dmio key. Strange. I wanted to know more, so I searched the Microsoft Knowledge Base at support.microsot.com for "dmio start". I found this article:

System or Boot Disk Listed as Dynamic Unreadable in Disk Management: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=236086&sd=RMVP

This KB article gives a list of related dmio keys. When plugging deeper into the registry, I notice there is a list of keys with start values, all are related to Logical Disk Management:

dmadmin
dmboot
dmio
dmload
dmserver

All of these keys have "Start" DWORD values.

So, I went into the Dekstop registry and jotted down the start values for each dm* service. They were:

dmadmin: 3
dmboot: 4
dmio: 0
dmload: 0
dmserver: 2

I applied those same values to the same keys on my laptop's dm* entries, then rebooted.

Well, when I opened disk management the next time, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the "activate disk" option was present again for the external USB hard drive. I converted the disk and now I'm up and running again happily.

I still do not know the purpose of the Start DWORD values and how they get the disk management to recognize if you're on a laptop or desktop, but ... changing these values worked for me, so I'm sharing with the world.

Hope this helps someone.

__________________

Wes

good find!

Wes

I knew this info would come in handle somedays. I'm trying to make a desktop behave like a notebook so that I can make it sleep or hibernate. This registry hack maybe just what I need.