Guest promicro Posted December 17, 2007 Posted December 17, 2007 Hi I can no longer boot my Win2K sp4, the erd and repair mode doesn't fix it; I can only boot from my floppy boot disk. I've replaced my boot.ini and edited them to see all of the drives and partitions with no success. I would like to re-install the system over the existing system, so my question is: can I do this without having to re-install the service packs and additional installed software ?? thanks for all your help rob
Guest John John Posted December 17, 2007 Posted December 17, 2007 Re: can i reinstall my Win2K? promicro wrote: > Hi > > I can no longer boot my Win2K sp4, the erd and repair mode doesn't fix > it; I can only boot from my floppy boot disk. I've replaced my boot.ini > and edited them to see all of the drives and partitions with no success. > > I would like to re-install the system over the existing system, so my > question is: can I do this without having to re-install the service > packs and additional installed software ?? > > thanks for all your help > > rob You say that you can boot from your floppy boot diskette, can you elaborate some more? If yo can properly boot the Windows 2000 installation with the floppy boot diskette then you should be able to copy the files Boot.ini, NTDETECT.COM & ntldr from the floppy diskette to the root of the system partition and you with the files in their proper location you should be able to boot from the hard disk. What happens when you try to boot with the hard disk? If you can in fact boot properly with the floppy boot disk but not the hard disk then I think that one or more of the following may be the cause: 1- The active flag has been removed from the System partition. Use the Disk Management tool and verify that System Partition is "Active". You can also verify that with a Windows 98 startup diskette and fdisk. 2- The MBR is damaged, the code instructing it to read & execute ntldr is damaged. To fix this use the Recovery Console and run the FIXMBR command on the hard disk. 3- The boot sector of the active (System) partition is damaged and ntldr cannot be found by the boot record code. To fix this use the Recovery Console and run the FIXBOOT command on the System partition. John PS. If you reinstall Windows 2000 you will have to reinstall SP4 and post SP4 hotfixes, (unless it is slipstreamed to the intstallation media).
Guest Pegasus \(MVP\) Posted December 17, 2007 Posted December 17, 2007 Re: can i reinstall my Win2K? "promicro" <promicro@cox.net> wrote in message news:%23e5QA%23NQIHA.5016@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl... > Hi > > I can no longer boot my Win2K sp4, the erd and repair mode doesn't fix it; > I can only boot from my floppy boot disk. I've replaced my boot.ini and > edited them to see all of the drives and partitions with no success. > > I would like to re-install the system over the existing system, so my > question is: can I do this without having to re-install the service packs > and additional installed software ?? > > thanks for all your help > > rob If you can successfully boot into Windows with your floppy disk then you don't need to re-insall Windows. The problem can probably be fixed but you need to give full details about what happens when you boot with your hard disk and what you did before things went wrong.
Guest philo Posted December 17, 2007 Posted December 17, 2007 Re: can i reinstall my Win2K? "promicro" <promicro@cox.net> wrote in message news:%23e5QA%23NQIHA.5016@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl... > Hi > > I can no longer boot my Win2K sp4, the erd and repair mode doesn't fix > it; I can only boot from my floppy boot disk. I've replaced my boot.ini > and edited them to see all of the drives and partitions with no success. > > I would like to re-install the system over the existing system, so my > question is: can I do this without having to re-install the service > packs and additional installed software ?? > > thanks for all your help > > rob you would need to perform a repair install ... but before you do that... boot from your win2k cd and from the repair console try (either or both) fixmbr fixboot
Guest promicro Posted December 17, 2007 Posted December 17, 2007 thankx - here's what i did thankx - here's what i did Thanks to you all for your replies, here's what I've done: booted on Win cd and did fixmbr, fixboot (numerous times) booted on XP cd and did fixmbr, fixboot (numerous times) checked that the partition is 'active' checked and modified my boot.ini file for different logical drives my system setup is as follows: physical drive C: = 2 partitions S: (a small FAT partition) & F: (NTFS part for files) == 80GB ATA drive physical drive D: = 3 partitions C:(my Win2K part), D:(future use), & E:(file use) == 200GB SATA drive all NTFS this problem began when I installed Windows XP Pro on my D drive - I replaced my W2K ntdetect & ntldr with the XP version and modified my boot.ini I found that I could only run W2K with its ntdetect & ntldr and only run the XP with its ntdetect & ntldr, not both... so, I have been switching and swapping these parameters hoping to find the right combination, but now not even able to now get back to where I can boot from any hard drive. I don't know what else to try or even how to get back to square 1. thanks for all your help and suggestions.. rob
Guest Pegasus \(MVP\) Posted December 17, 2007 Posted December 17, 2007 Re: thankx - here's what i did Re: thankx - here's what i did "promicro" <promicro@cox.net> wrote in message news:%23ToMRFQQIHA.2268@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl... > > Thanks to you all for your replies, here's what I've done: > > booted on Win cd and did fixmbr, fixboot (numerous times) > > booted on XP cd and did fixmbr, fixboot (numerous times) > > checked that the partition is 'active' > > checked and modified my boot.ini file for different logical drives > > my system setup is as follows: > > physical drive C: = 2 partitions S: (a small FAT partition) & F: (NTFS > part for files) == 80GB ATA drive > physical drive D: = 3 partitions C:(my Win2K part), D:(future use), & > E:(file use) == 200GB SATA drive all NTFS > > this problem began when I installed Windows XP Pro on my D drive - I > replaced my W2K ntdetect & ntldr with the XP version and modified my > boot.ini > > I found that I could only run W2K with its ntdetect & ntldr and only run > the XP with its ntdetect & ntldr, not both... > > so, I have been switching and swapping these parameters hoping to find > the right combination, but now not even able to now get back to where I > can boot from any hard drive. > > I don't know what else to try or even how to get back to square 1. > > thanks for all your help and suggestions.. > > rob You really need to tell us what exactly happens when you attempt to boot into Win2000. Without this information you leave us guessing.
Guest promicro Posted December 18, 2007 Posted December 18, 2007 Re: thankx - here's what i did Re: thankx - here's what i did Pegasus (MVP) wrote: > "promicro" <promicro@cox.net> wrote in message > news:%23ToMRFQQIHA.2268@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl... >> Thanks to you all for your replies, here's what I've done: >> >> booted on Win cd and did fixmbr, fixboot (numerous times) >> >> booted on XP cd and did fixmbr, fixboot (numerous times) >> >> checked that the partition is 'active' >> >> checked and modified my boot.ini file for different logical drives >> >> my system setup is as follows: >> >> physical drive C: = 2 partitions S: (a small FAT partition) & F: (NTFS >> part for files) == 80GB ATA drive >> physical drive D: = 3 partitions C:(my Win2K part), D:(future use), & >> E:(file use) == 200GB SATA drive all NTFS >> >> this problem began when I installed Windows XP Pro on my D drive - I >> replaced my W2K ntdetect & ntldr with the XP version and modified my >> boot.ini >> >> I found that I could only run W2K with its ntdetect & ntldr and only run >> the XP with its ntdetect & ntldr, not both... >> >> so, I have been switching and swapping these parameters hoping to find >> the right combination, but now not even able to now get back to where I >> can boot from any hard drive. >> >> I don't know what else to try or even how to get back to square 1. >> >> thanks for all your help and suggestions.. >> >> rob > > You really need to tell us what exactly happens when you > attempt to boot into Win2000. Without this information you > leave us guessing. > > hi - the message I get trying to boot is 'Windows 2000 could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt <windows 2000 root>system32\ntoskrnl.exe - please re-install a copy of the above file' this file does exist but I have also replaced it from the system disk... rob
Guest Dave Patrick Posted December 18, 2007 Posted December 18, 2007 Re: thankx - here's what i did Re: thankx - here's what i did Are you swapping disks? Are you swapping boot.ini? Sounds like an incorrect pointer to the Windows 2000 boot partition or invalid boot.ini If you can post someone can help. -- Regards, Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup. Microsoft Certified Professional Microsoft MVP [Windows] http://www.microsoft.com/protect "promicro" wrote: > hi - the message I get trying to boot is 'Windows 2000 could not start > because the following file is missing or corrupt <windows 2000 > root>system32\ntoskrnl.exe - please re-install a copy of the above file' > > this file does exist but I have also replaced it from the system disk... > > rob
Guest promicro Posted December 18, 2007 Posted December 18, 2007 Re: thankx - here's what i did Re: thankx - here's what i did Dave Patrick wrote: > Are you swapping disks? Are you swapping boot.ini? Sounds like an > incorrect pointer to the Windows 2000 boot partition or invalid boot.ini > > If you can post someone can help. > > > I did swap my primary boot disk in the cmos setup - my ata 80gig drive seems to have to be the primary and my 200gig sata drive designated as C: d: e: must be the secondary drive in my cmos, which is the reverse of what I would like, but I can once again boot from my 80gb hard drive and run Win2K on my C: 200gb drive... I'm disappointed I can't boot on my secondary 200gig but at least I don't need the boot floppy. thanks to all, rob
Guest Dave Patrick Posted December 19, 2007 Posted December 19, 2007 Re: thankx - here's what i did Re: thankx - here's what i did You can't swap the disk and expect to be able to dual boot (not natively anyway) The boot sector for both operating systems will always reside on the system partition. Also note the possible limitations here with regard to a system partition greater than ~137 gB in size. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305098 -- Regards, Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup. Microsoft Certified Professional Microsoft MVP [Windows] http://www.microsoft.com/protect "promicro" wrote: > I did swap my primary boot disk in the cmos setup - my ata 80gig drive > seems to have to be the primary and my 200gig sata drive designated as C: > d: e: must be the secondary drive in my cmos, which is the reverse of what > I would like, but I can once again boot from my 80gb hard drive and run > Win2K on my C: 200gb drive... > > I'm disappointed I can't boot on my secondary 200gig but at least I don't > need the boot floppy. > > thanks to all, rob
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