no paging file - boot process cycles forever

[Harald]

My Win2k is installed on 2 disks with the boot files on C: (FAT32) and the
Windows files on a 2nd HD. This worked fine until recently when I moved this
NTFS partition (no other changes) on the 2nd HD to make space for another
partition. Now Win2k does not load anymore ;(

During the boot process I get the "Limited Virtual Memory" error message,
claiming that I have no paging file or that the paging file is too small.
When I click ok to close that message window the boot process seems to
continue normally for a few seconds displaying "Loading personal
settings...". But then I get the Limited Virtual Memory error message again
and the whole cycle continues, forever it seems.

The problem is, I cannot break out of this cycle and do what the error
message wants me to do: increase virtual memory space as Win2k never loads
completely to allow me to do that.

I tried to use safe mode, but it seems to do the same thing only the cycle
is much, much slower.

Any suggestions on how to fix that, e.g. with the help of the Recovery
Console?

 

[derng]

The problem may be that the drive letter changed. You should have added the
extra partitions after the D or not created a primary partition on the new
drive in which case it would not take the D letter. If there is no data on
the 2nd hd remove all the partitions and then boot to win2k and then create
only an extended partition on the new drive.

 

[Harald]

I did not add any partitions, I only moved the partition where Win2k is on
to a different part of the same HD. The disk lay-out stayed the same so the
drive letters shouldn't have changed at all, and from all I can tell they
didn't.

As I said, I cannot boot into Win2k. Any solution needs to fix that "no
page file" problem via Recovery Console.