Oh My Boot.ini's Gone NTFS

G

Guest

I have a two drive RAID 0 computer with two partitions and an NTFS file
system, running Windows XP Pro. I mistakenly removed the last line of my
boot.ini file (multi(0)disk ..and so on.). I was trying to remove a partially
installed Win XP OS that resulted in my having a dual-boot setup with my
original Win XP Pro and a Win XP Pro Setup listed as options.

Booting now fails as a result of the loused up boot.ini file. It is not the
results of:

A loose hard disk drive cable
A corrupt version of Windows XP
A corrupt boot sector/master boot record
A corrupt NTLDR and/or NTDETECT.COM file
A computer hard disk drive is not properly setup in BIOS.

If I boot from Win XP CD, installing the Silicon Image Raid SATA controller
drivers enroute, I can get the Microsoft Win XP Recovery Console to start. I
get a C:\ prompt and a set of commands I can use, but they can't see any
drives. So fixes, such as the one below, can't be executed:

Attrib -H -R -S C:\boot.ini
DEL C:boot.ini
BootCfg /Rebuild
Fixboot

I also can't use a MS-DOS boot floppy to access the NTFS partition to edit
or replace the boot.ini file

I imagine that I can't access a NTFS partition using an ordinary bootable
diskette. I've used various NTFS utilities on floppies and the best result
was with Active Date Recovery Software which shows me a listing of the files
in my two NTFS logical drive partitions,including the boot.ini files. I can
see the files, but I can't access them to edit or replace the boot.ini file.

Anyone have an idea for where to go now (hopefully, an idea short of
removing the two drives and hooking them up to another computer to work on
them - I don't have another computer that will accept the SATA hard drives.)

Thanks.

David Glassman
 
G

Guest

Which hard drive do you boot from?

Copy contents of boot.ini file and post here!!

What is on each hard drive/partition?

what is goal?
 
D

Dick Kistler

Dixonian69 said:
Which hard drive do you boot from?

Copy contents of boot.ini file and post here!!

What is on each hard drive/partition?

what is goal?

possibly: http://www.ubcd4win.com/

Don't know if it supports SATA drives. However, if you can build and boot
the cd, you could repair your boot.ini. In any case, when all this is over,
consider building one of these for system recovery. This cd and BartPE have
saved my bacon twice.

Dick Kistler
 

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