operating system boot error

[Zattack]

I started a previous thread called "no operating system upon boot" that is
still unresolved. I believe the meat of the story is that during work in
the drive management utility for XP Home, I reformatted the drive D
partition and potentially may have marked it as the primary or boot drive or
somehow confused the system as to which drive to boot to. The C drive
should still be intact with an operating system and files but the d drive is
totally blank and upon a reboot, the system simply displays a "no operating
system availabel" message on my laptop screen. I need to know what the next
step is to try and inform the system upon boot to check the c drive for the
operating system. Any help is appreciated. Thanks,

Z

 

[Guest]

Fixboot may help-use your CD to statup the recovery console.
From the XP Help file:
"Fixboot
Writes a new partition boot sector to the system partition. The fixboot
command is only available when you are using the Recovery Console.

fixboot [drive]

Parameter

drive

The drive to which a boot sector will be written. This replaces the default
drive, which is the system partition you are logged on to. An example of a
drive is:

D:

Example

The following example writes a new partition boot sector to the system
partition in drive D:

fixboot d:

Note

Using the fixboot command without any parameters will write a new partition
boot sector to the system partition you are logged on to".

You want to switch to the C: drive, of course.
This should work if the situation is as you think. If not, you may need to
reinstall XP.

 

[Test User]

I started a previous thread called "no operating system upon boot" that is
still unresolved. I believe the meat of the story is that during work in
the drive management utility for XP Home, I reformatted the drive D
partition and potentially may have marked it as the primary or boot drive or
somehow confused the system as to which drive to boot to. The C drive
should still be intact with an operating system and files but the d drive is
totally blank and upon a reboot, the system simply displays a "no operating
system availabel" message on my laptop screen. I need to know what the next
step is to try and inform the system upon boot to check the c drive for the
operating system. Any help is appreciated. Thanks,

Z

It may be a simple as using the XP CD to boot to the recovery console,
running Diskpart and setting the C partition to Active.

HTH
-pk

 

[gls858]

I started a previous thread called "no operating system upon boot" that is
still unresolved. I believe the meat of the story is that during work in
the drive management utility for XP Home, I reformatted the drive D
partition and potentially may have marked it as the primary or boot drive or
somehow confused the system as to which drive to boot to. The C drive
should still be intact with an operating system and files but the d drive is
totally blank and upon a reboot, the system simply displays a "no operating
system availabel" message on my laptop screen. I need to know what the next
step is to try and inform the system upon boot to check the c drive for the
operating system. Any help is appreciated. Thanks,

Z

Complete shot in the dark here. Have you tried just taking the second
drive out? With it gone your machine may try and boot from the only
disk available. Not sure about this maybe someone else knows for sure.

gls858

 

[Joe]

drive drive


It may be a simple as using the XP CD to boot to the recovery console,
running Diskpart and setting the C partition to Active.

HTH
-pk

I think this one is the way to go.

Joe

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

He has two partitions on the same hard drive.

Complete shot in the dark here. Have you tried just taking the second
drive out? With it gone your machine may try and boot from the only
disk available. Not sure about this maybe someone else knows for sure.

gls858

 

[Zattack]

Ah yes that would seem to be a good option however the laptop does not
contain a valid copy of Windows XP Home, it is a Sony Vaio and the only
software that came with the PC is called system recovery and it only offers
one solution upon boot up- reformat the drive.

So I guess I need to research trying to find a Fixboot type utility since it
is not avail on my included cds.

 

[Test User]

Ah yes that would seem to be a good option however the laptop does not
contain a valid copy of Windows XP Home, it is a Sony Vaio and the only
software that came with the PC is called system recovery and it only offers
one solution upon boot up- reformat the drive.

Actually, that *is* a valid copy of XP Home. It's a legal license.

So I guess I need to research trying to find a Fixboot type utility since it
is not avail on my included cds.

Not really, since Fixboot runs from the recovery console too. What you
need is a bootable XP Home CD, which you may be able to borrow from someone
you know. You already have a legal license- you need install media.

You're going to have to get the bootable CD anyway since IIRC, the VIAO
machines come formatted NTFS, and Windows 9x or ME boot diskettes won't be
able to handle the NTFS drives.

Borrow an XP Home CD, boot from the CD, run the recovery console and log on
as Administrator. The default password is blank, that is, when prompted
for the password just press Enter.

HTH

-pk

 

[gls858]

He has two partitions on the same hard drive.

Sorry missed that in the post. As Emily Latilla would say "Never mind"

gls858

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

It's easy to do.

Sorry missed that in the post. As Emily Latilla would say "Never mind"

gls858