Recovery console

[Menno Hershberger]

One of my customers who has dual boot 98 and XP crashed his 98. "Invalid
disk". 98 is on C and XP on D. So I booted with a 98 startup disk and
did a "sys c:". That fixed 98 alright but now there's no boot menu to
choose XP or 98. It just boots right into 98.
Can I use the XP CD and the recovery console to get the menu back? I
notice boot.ini is still intact, and ntldr is still there. Do I use
fixboot or fixmbr (I think I remember that command being there) or
neither? From previous experience I know I can do a repair install, but
I'd rather not go thru all that if I can get out of it.
Thanks in advance.

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi Mark,

Use the Recovery Console, run bootcfg /rebuild

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Win9x
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone

 

[Menno Hershberger]

Hi Mark,

Use the Recovery Console, run bootcfg /rebuild

Thanks. I'll try that tomorrow!

 

[Alex Nichol]

One of my customers who has dual boot 98 and XP crashed his 98. "Invalid
disk". 98 is on C and XP on D. So I booted with a 98 startup disk and
did a "sys c:". That fixed 98 alright but now there's no boot menu to
choose XP or 98. It just boots right into 98.
Can I use the XP CD and the recovery console to get the menu back?

Yes. Sys C: should not have been used - that puts back code that
launches the IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS of win98 rather than the ntldr for XP.

Use the recovery console and give
Fixboot

Note that to get the 98 to boot you will also need a bootsec.dos file in
the root of the C: partition - if that is not there the 98 boot will
fail. There is a method of setting that up again at Doug Knox's page
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/tips/xp_repair_9x.htm

 

[Menno Hershberger]

Yes. Sys C: should not have been used - that puts back code that
launches the IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS of win98 rather than the ntldr for XP.

Use the recovery console and give
Fixboot

OK. I haven't gone out to do this yet.
Rick is telling me bootcfg /rebuild and you're telling me bootfix.
I notice you're both MVP's....
Does this mean either will work?

 

[Alex Nichol]

OK. I haven't gone out to do this yet.
Rick is telling me bootcfg /rebuild and you're telling me bootfix.
I notice you're both MVP's....
Does this mean either will work?

There are three stages in a boot.

One the MBR code right at the front of the disk is run,, to select the
Active partition, and pass the buck to

The Partition's own boot sector, which loads more extensive boot files,
which then run. In the case of a 98 boot those are MSDOS.SYS and
IO.SYS; in the case of XP it is ntldr, which then looks in boot.ini for
where to find the system folder.

Doing a SYS C: rewrites the partition boot sector - so it is then doing
a straight boot to 98; and never looks at boot.ini.

Fixboot repairs that: BootCFG /rebuild rebuilds the boot.ini should that
be damaged; but in this case it is not getting to look at that, and the
boot.ini is probably OK.

FixMBR BTW does the basic MBR code - but that is the same either wit XP
or 98, and appears to be OK.

 

[Menno Hershberger]

There are three stages in a boot.

One the MBR code right at the front of the disk is run,, to select the
Active partition, and pass the buck to

The Partition's own boot sector, which loads more extensive boot
files, which then run. In the case of a 98 boot those are MSDOS.SYS
and IO.SYS; in the case of XP it is ntldr, which then looks in
boot.ini for where to find the system folder.

Doing a SYS C: rewrites the partition boot sector - so it is then
doing a straight boot to 98; and never looks at boot.ini.

Fixboot repairs that: BootCFG /rebuild rebuilds the boot.ini should
that be damaged; but in this case it is not getting to look at that,
and the boot.ini is probably OK.

FixMBR BTW does the basic MBR code - but that is the same either wit
XP or 98, and appears to be OK.

Thank you very much! Fixboot worked just fine.