editing boot.ini from repair console

[Guest]

I have Windows 2000 Pro installed, and somehow the boot.ini file has no entries. When I try to boot, I'm given two lines: "FAT32 boot" and "bad FS". I know what to put in boot.ini, I just can't figure out how to edit it from the repair console after booting the setup disk.

 

[Dave Patrick]

You can start the recovery console and from a command prompt issue the
command;
fixboot
to repair the bootsector.

To start the Recovery Console, start the computer from the Windows 2000
Setup CD or the Windows 2000 Setup floppy disks. If you do not have Setup
floppy disks and your computer cannot start from the Windows 2000 Setup CD,
use another Windows 2000-based computer to create the Setup floppy disks.
Press ENTER at the "Setup Notification" screen. Press R to repair a Windows
2000 installation, and then press C to use the Recovery Console. The
Recovery Console then prompts you for the administrator password. If you do
not have the correct password, Recovery Console does not allow access to the
computer. If an incorrect password is entered three times, the Recovery
Console quits and restarts the computer. Note If the registry is corrupted
or missing or no valid installations are found, the Recovery Console starts
in the root of the startup volume without requiring a password. You cannot
access any folders, but you can carry out commands such as chkdsk,
fixboot,and fixmbr for limited disk repairs. Once the password has been
validated, you have full access to the Recovery Console, but limited access
to the hard disk. You can only access the following folders on your
computer: %systemroot% and %windir%

Also 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 an NT
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; and possibly
ntbootdd.sys. Edit the boot.ini to give it a correct ARC path for the
machine you wish to boot and fix it after the OS starts.


--
Regards,

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


:
|I have Windows 2000 Pro installed, and somehow the boot.ini file has no
entries. When I try to boot, I'm given two lines: "FAT32 boot" and "bad FS".
I know what to put in boot.ini, I just can't figure out how to edit it from
the repair console after booting the setup disk.

 

[Guest]

I meant to type in my initial post that fixboot wasn't working. I have no idea why. One odd thing of note with my hard drive, there is a 0 MB unpartitioned space before the first partition that I can't get rid of. I had created a hibernation partition using the manufacturers utilities (for linux, I dual boot), and part of the process meant changing the active partition, and that's when things got messed up. I gave up on it (BIOS hibernation function is super slow, 4x slower than just shutting down or booting up) and got rid of that partition with partition magic. I then resized the windows partition to use up the now free space. I booted the win 2k cd and ran fixboot and fixmbr, and got to where I am now. The diskpart utility on the setup CD can't 'delete' the anomolous empty space, and partition magic doesn't even list it.

Anyway, I broke down and made some setup floppies, but the forth one managed to get a corrupt file! So I just formatted a floppy from another 2k machine and copied the three boot files and that has my machine booting. What a pain this has been, I'm really irritated that fixboot/fixmbr didn't fix it like they usually do.

You can start the recovery console and from a command prompt issue the
command;
fixboot
to repair the bootsector.

To start the Recovery Console, start the computer from the Windows 2000
Setup CD or the Windows 2000 Setup floppy disks. If you do not have Setup
floppy disks and your computer cannot start from the Windows 2000 Setup CD,
use another Windows 2000-based computer to create the Setup floppy disks.
Press ENTER at the "Setup Notification" screen. Press R to repair a Windows
2000 installation, and then press C to use the Recovery Console. The
Recovery Console then prompts you for the administrator password. If you do
not have the correct password, Recovery Console does not allow access to the
computer. If an incorrect password is entered three times, the Recovery
Console quits and restarts the computer. Note If the registry is corrupted
or missing or no valid installations are found, the Recovery Console starts
in the root of the startup volume without requiring a password. You cannot
access any folders, but you can carry out commands such as chkdsk,
fixboot,and fixmbr for limited disk repairs. Once the password has been
validated, you have full access to the Recovery Console, but limited access
to the hard disk. You can only access the following folders on your
computer: %systemroot% and %windir%

Also 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 an NT
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; and possibly
ntbootdd.sys. Edit the boot.ini to give it a correct ARC path for the
machine you wish to boot and fix it after the OS starts.


--
Regards,

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


:
|I have Windows 2000 Pro installed, and somehow the boot.ini file has no
entries. When I try to boot, I'm given two lines: "FAT32 boot" and "bad FS".
I know what to put in boot.ini, I just can't figure out how to edit it from
the repair console after booting the setup disk.