Mirroring Prevents Pre-Installing the Recovery Console

The Windows 2000 Recovery Console is used to facilitate repairing an unbootable computer. It requires the Windows 2000 installation media (the four Setup disks or the CD-ROM). The Recovery Console can be pre-installed by running the "WINNT32 /CMDCONS" command from the Windows 2000 installation CD-ROM to place the files on the local hard disk. This option requires approximately 7 megabytes (MB) of disk space on the system partition.

When your system partition (containing the Ntldr, Ntdetect.com, and Boot.ini files) is part of a Windows 2000 basic or dynamic disk software mirror, you cannot pre-install the Recovery Console. If you try to pre-install the Recovery Console with the "WINNT32 /CMDCONS" command, you receive the following error message:

No valid system partitions were found, Setup is unable to continue.

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The "WINNT32 /CMDCONS" command performs the same system checks as a "clean" installation. A clean installation of Windows 2000 is not allowed on a mirrored system partition.

If you want the Recovery Console pre-installed on a mirrored system partition to help facilitate a repair, you must break the mirror, install the Recovery Console, then re-establish the mirror.

NOTE: If you are using legacy basic disk mirroring, you should not break the mirror unless you plan to upgrade the disk from basic to dynamic. Legacy disk mirrors cannot be re-created in Windows 2000; only dynamic disk mirrors can be created.

Pre-installing the Recovery Console on a computer running Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 is allowed, but you must break the mirror, install the Recovery Console, re-establish the mirror, and then upgrade to Windows 2000. This process retains your legacy basic disk mirroring.