boot.ini file disappears each time I reboot

[Guest]

I have a SBS 2000. Each time I reboot or shut down the server the boot.ini
file disappears. I have to boot to the recovery console, copy the boot.ini
file from a floppy to the root of C:\ and reboot. This gets the server back
up and running but if I reboot I have to go through the entire process again.
I have a current virus scan software, NAI, running on the server and it does
not report any viruses. Also no other files appear to be disappearing. Any
ideas?

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I have a SBS 2000. Each time I reboot or shut down the server the boot.ini
file disappears. I have to boot to the recovery console, copy the boot.ini
file from a floppy to the root of C:\ and reboot. This gets the server back
up and running but if I reboot I have to go through the entire process again.
I have a current virus scan software, NAI, running on the server and it does
not report any viruses. Also no other files appear to be disappearing. Any
ideas?

Here are a few thoughts:

- Are you sure that the file disappears during the shutdown process?
- Have you considered the possibility that it might disappear either
during boot-up, or any time in between?
- Have you scanned your machine with a spyware tool such as AdAware?
- Have you tried protecting the file with suitable NTFS restrictions?
- Have you examined your startup processes, using msconfig.exe?

 

[Guest]

I have not tried the last two. Thanks for your suggestions.

 

[wanderer]

It could be the boot.ini is landing on some bad sectors on the disk that
are not able to hold the charge. Run chkdsk /f on c:, answer yes to the
question and shutdown/reboot so it will run.

An old dos trick to overcome this is copy the boot.ini like you have
before. Rename it to boot.old. Copy the boot.ini again but leave it
be. The idea behind this is the first file occupies the bad sectors.
The boot.ini doesn't.