Inaccessible boot device

[Brett]

My 5 year old Dell computer, running Win 2K, froze and
when I rebooted I get a blue screen with inaccessible
boot device error. I can't boot in any safe modes. When I
use bootable disk I can't find the hard drive. A friend
said it might a virus affecting the MBR, but I don't know
how to fix if I can't get to the hard drive. Any
suggestions?

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

My 5 year old Dell computer, running Win 2K, froze and
when I rebooted I get a blue screen with inaccessible
boot device error. I can't boot in any safe modes. When I
use bootable disk I can't find the hard drive. A friend
said it might a virus affecting the MBR, but I don't know
how to fix if I can't get to the hard drive. Any
suggestions?

You are a little vague on the details of the boot disk you
used. What type of boot disk is it? How did you make it?
What command did you run? What was the exact error
message it gave you?

Try making a proper Win2000 boot disk like so:
- Format a floppy disk on some other Win2000 PC.
Don't do it on a Win9x PC - it won't work.
- Copy these files from the \i386 folder of your Win2000 CD
to A:\
ntldr
ntdetect.com
- Create a file a:\boot.ini with these lines
[Boot Loader]
Timeout=3
Default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[Operating Systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000
Professional" /fastdetect
- Boot the machine with this floppy

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