Can't boot up my 2nd W2K installation

[Jon]

Hi.

I had a system crash with my main W2K installation on Drive C. All
drives except C were accessible. I had a second installation on Drive
G. This has Norton Ghost installed on it, and I did a mirror copy of C
onto an external hard drive a few months back.

I was able to boot up the Drive G installation but everything was
slowed down. I assumed it was because there was a problem reading
Drive C which now appeared to be completely unsalvageable.

So I installed a new version of W2K on Drive C, only to find that, on
booting up, it doesn't give me the choice of installations. So I now
want to boot up the Drive G nstallation, in order to run Norton Ghost,
in order to try to restore my original W2K instalation on Drive C.

Can anyone help?

Jon

 

[Pegasus]

Hi.

I had a system crash with my main W2K installation on Drive C. All
drives except C were accessible. I had a second installation on Drive
G. This has Norton Ghost installed on it, and I did a mirror copy of C
onto an external hard drive a few months back.

I was able to boot up the Drive G installation but everything was
slowed down. I assumed it was because there was a problem reading
Drive C which now appeared to be completely unsalvageable.

So I installed a new version of W2K on Drive C, only to find that, on
booting up, it doesn't give me the choice of installations. So I now
want to boot up the Drive G nstallation, in order to run Norton Ghost,
in order to try to restore my original W2K instalation on Drive C.

Can anyone help?

Jon

I use products other than Norton Ghost for imaging and they
all let me boot a machine with a Recovery CD or disk so
that I can restore an image onto a blank partition, thus
making it unnecessary to have a working version of Windows.
Surely Norton Ghost has a similar option, doesn't it?

 

[Dave Patrick]

Try creating a boot disk. For the floppy to successfully boot Windows 2000
the disk must contain the "NT" boot sector. Format a diskette (on a Windows
2000 machine, not a DOS/Win9x, so the NT boot sector gets written to the
floppy), and copy Windows 2000 versions of ntldr, ntdetect.com, and boot.ini
to it. Edit the boot.ini to give it a correct ARC path for the machine you
wish to boot. Below is an example of boot.ini. The default is to start the
operating system located on the first partition of the primary or first
drive (drive0). Then drive0 partition 2 and so on.

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows 2000 0,1"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows 2000 0,2"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows 2000 1,1"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows 2000 1,2"


Another possibility is to try loading the controller driver also from
floppy. For the floppy to successfully boot Windows 2000 the disk must
contain the "NT" boot sector. Format a diskette (on a Windows 2000 machine,
not a DOS/Win9x, so the "NT" boot sector gets written to the floppy), then
copy ntldr, ntdetect.com, and boot.ini to it. Edit the boot.ini to give it a
correct ARC path for the machine you wish to boot.


In order for this to work you'll want to change the arc path in boot.ini
from multi syntax to scsi syntax to indicate that Windows 2000 will load a
boot device driver and use that driver to access the boot partition. Then
also copy the correct manufacturer scsi driver to the floppy but renamed to
ntbootdd.sys


Something like this below;


[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows 2000 0,1"
scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows 2000 0,2"
scsi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows 2000 1,1"
scsi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows 2000 1,2"



--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

 

[Jon]

Try creating a boot disk. For the floppy to successfully boot Windows 2000
the disk must contain the "NT" boot sector. Format a diskette (on a Windows
2000 machine, not a DOS/Win9x, so the NT boot sector gets written to the
floppy), and copy Windows 2000 versions of ntldr, ntdetect.com, and boot.ini
to it. Edit the boot.ini to give it a correct ARC path for the machine you
wish to boot. Below is an example of boot.ini. The default is to start the
operating system located on the first partition of the primary or first
drive (drive0). Then drive0 partition 2 and so on.

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows 2000 0,1"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows 2000 0,2"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows 2000 1,1"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows 2000 1,2"

Another possibility is to try loading the controller driver also from
floppy. For the floppy to successfully boot Windows 2000 the disk must
contain the "NT" boot sector. Format a diskette (on a Windows 2000 machine,
not a DOS/Win9x, so the "NT" boot sector gets written to the floppy), then
copy ntldr, ntdetect.com, and boot.ini to it. Edit the boot.ini to give it a
correct ARC path for the machine you wish to boot.

In order for this to work you'll want to change the arc path in boot.ini
from multi syntax to scsi syntax to indicate that Windows 2000 will load a
boot device driver and use that driver to access the boot partition. Then
also copy the correct manufacturer scsi driver to the floppy but renamed to
ntbootdd.sys

Something like this below;

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows 2000 0,1"
scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows 2000 0,2"
scsi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows 2000 1,1"
scsi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows 2000 1,2"

--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]http://www.microsoft.com/protect

Hi.

I had a system crash with my main W2K installation on Drive C. All
drives except C were accessible. I had a second installation on Drive
G. This has Norton Ghost installed on it, and I did a mirror copy of C
onto an external hard drive a few months back.

I was able to boot up the Drive G installation but everything was
slowed down. I assumed it was because there was a problem reading
Drive C which now appeared to be completely unsalvageable.

So I installed a new version of W2K on Drive C, only to find that, on
booting up, it doesn't give me the choice of installations. So I now
want to boot up the Drive G nstallation, in order to run Norton Ghost,
in order to try to restore my original W2K instalation on Drive C.

Can anyone help?

Jon- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

None of the files you mention could be found on Drive C. On Drive G,
there's an ntdetect.com and an ntldr. There's no boot.ini anywhere.
There is a win.ini on G, however, but it doesn't have anything like
the syntax you give here.

By the way, I do have an emergency repair disk with the three files
you mention (formatted under W2K). But when I try to boot from it, I
get the message: invalid file, booting from Drive C.

Jon

 

[Dave Patrick]

Stands to reason since the system partition was lost. The ERD is not a
bootable disk. win.ini is a carry-over from the days of 16 bit windows.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];99743


--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

 

[Jon]

Stands to reason since the system partition was lost. The ERD is not a
bootable disk. win.ini is a carry-over from the days of 16 bit windows.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];99743

--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]http://www.microsoft.com/protect

None of the files you mention could be found on Drive C. On Drive G,
there's an ntdetect.com and an ntldr. There's no boot.ini anywhere.
There is a win.ini on G, however, but it doesn't have anything like
the syntax you give here.

By the way, I do have an emergency repair disk with the three files
you mention (formatted under W2K). But when I try to boot from it, I
get the message: invalid file, booting from Drive C.

Jon- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

So how can I do as you suggest?

Jon

 

[Dave Patrick]

Use another machine to create the boot floppy and boot from it.

--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

 

[Andy]

Start -> Run -> Open c:boot.ini
Add an entry for drive G.
If drive G is on a second disk, it's on rdisk(1)partition(1).

 

[Jon]

Use another machine to create the boot floppy and boot from it.

--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]http://www.microsoft.com/protect

So how can I do as you suggest?

Jon- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

My ERD was created on another machine.

Something seems to have happened to the HD, otherwise why did it
install a 16-bit version of W2K?

 

[Jon]

Start -> Run -> Open c:boot.ini
Add an entry for drive G.
If drive G is on a second disk, it's on rdisk(1)partition(1).








- Show quoted text -

That did the trick. Thanks.

Jon

 

[Dave Patrick]

ERD's are machine specific and non-interchangeable but moot since they're
also non-bootable.

I don't know what the second comment means.


--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect