C
Chris F Clark
I have an "old" (Sony RX550) system with 2 (IDE) disks in it. I had
bootable partitions on both drives. Both drives were also setup with
boot.ini files, so that I could boot from either partition (using
system commander) and use either patitition as the "system" partition.
Both partiitons were NTFS with XP pro installed. On the first drive,
there is also a FAT32 partition with Win98 installed, but only enough
of Win98 to run "DOS" prompts. And, system commander is in the MBR of
that drive. (Both drives have other extended partitions containing
data and stuff.) Neither of the NTFS partitions were ever FAT
partitions, as the system can with XP install in NTFS and when I
installed the 2nd copy of XP, I installed it also in an NTFS
partition.
Recently, the partition on the second drive had problems, and so I
restored it from backups. However, after doing do, I can no longer
"boot" using that partition (drive). That is, if I select the boot
partition from the system commander menu, it attempts to boot it and
displays the "NTLDR is missing" message. I can still boot from the
first drive, either the NTFS XP partition, or the win98 partition.
Moreover, if I boot the NTFS XP partition on the first drive, I can
still select the NTFS partition on the second drive as my "system"
partition (using the menu in the boot.ini on the first drive's boot
partition) and it boots that partition.
Now, I tried to fix the NTLDR problem by copying NTLDR and
NTDETECT.COM and BOOT.INI from good locations, e.g. using an XP
installation diskette and also copying from the working partition to
the broken one. However, none of that seems to have any affect, well
other than trashing an unrelated partition on the first drive when I
attempted to do a FIXBOOT on the 2nd drive.
Besides those 3 files, what else could cause the "NTLDR is missing"
message on an NTFS partition that was never a FAT partition and has
never had anything but XP (or possibly W2K) installed in it? Perhaps
someting in one of the drives' partition table? The partition has
been moved and resized by partition magic. In fact, that's how I
restored it, I copied the partition with PM to a USB disk to back it
up, and then copied it back to restore it.
This used to work. I would like to get it working again, because I
actually also need to repair (restore) the partition I'm booting from
and I don't want to do that until I'm sure I can boot without that
partition, as I don't want to have no running XP installations on this
box. It's the only desktop box I have with XP on it--these days most
of my boxes are laptops.
Any help, suggestions, pointers to web pages etc. will be much
appreciated!!! I'm looking for ideas. Would it be possible to make a
boot CD to start this system at least temporarily?
Note, I don't want to reinstall and start over if I can avoid it,
since this particular copy of XP is highly customized (i.e. has
programs installed and configured on it that I would hate to have to
install and configure over again). I really want to get this version
that I backed up bootable again, particularly because when that is
done, it becomes the C: drive for the programs already installed that
expect to be on the C: drive.
bootable partitions on both drives. Both drives were also setup with
boot.ini files, so that I could boot from either partition (using
system commander) and use either patitition as the "system" partition.
Both partiitons were NTFS with XP pro installed. On the first drive,
there is also a FAT32 partition with Win98 installed, but only enough
of Win98 to run "DOS" prompts. And, system commander is in the MBR of
that drive. (Both drives have other extended partitions containing
data and stuff.) Neither of the NTFS partitions were ever FAT
partitions, as the system can with XP install in NTFS and when I
installed the 2nd copy of XP, I installed it also in an NTFS
partition.
Recently, the partition on the second drive had problems, and so I
restored it from backups. However, after doing do, I can no longer
"boot" using that partition (drive). That is, if I select the boot
partition from the system commander menu, it attempts to boot it and
displays the "NTLDR is missing" message. I can still boot from the
first drive, either the NTFS XP partition, or the win98 partition.
Moreover, if I boot the NTFS XP partition on the first drive, I can
still select the NTFS partition on the second drive as my "system"
partition (using the menu in the boot.ini on the first drive's boot
partition) and it boots that partition.
Now, I tried to fix the NTLDR problem by copying NTLDR and
NTDETECT.COM and BOOT.INI from good locations, e.g. using an XP
installation diskette and also copying from the working partition to
the broken one. However, none of that seems to have any affect, well
other than trashing an unrelated partition on the first drive when I
attempted to do a FIXBOOT on the 2nd drive.
Besides those 3 files, what else could cause the "NTLDR is missing"
message on an NTFS partition that was never a FAT partition and has
never had anything but XP (or possibly W2K) installed in it? Perhaps
someting in one of the drives' partition table? The partition has
been moved and resized by partition magic. In fact, that's how I
restored it, I copied the partition with PM to a USB disk to back it
up, and then copied it back to restore it.
This used to work. I would like to get it working again, because I
actually also need to repair (restore) the partition I'm booting from
and I don't want to do that until I'm sure I can boot without that
partition, as I don't want to have no running XP installations on this
box. It's the only desktop box I have with XP on it--these days most
of my boxes are laptops.
Any help, suggestions, pointers to web pages etc. will be much
appreciated!!! I'm looking for ideas. Would it be possible to make a
boot CD to start this system at least temporarily?
Note, I don't want to reinstall and start over if I can avoid it,
since this particular copy of XP is highly customized (i.e. has
programs installed and configured on it that I would hate to have to
install and configure over again). I really want to get this version
that I backed up bootable again, particularly because when that is
done, it becomes the C: drive for the programs already installed that
expect to be on the C: drive.