There are a few ways to go about trying to clean up this
sort of mess -- here are two that I often use that are easy to try.
1) You can try a Windows enhanced-mode repair. (This is not the basic
repair option you get at the beginning of CD setup.)
Rather, boot from the CD (with any disk/RAID drivers you need), and
skip the first repair that is offered -- you can try it but it probably won't
help in this situation. After you tell the CD to go ahead and install Win2K Server,
it should tell you that it already found one out there and ask whether you want to
repair that. This is the repair you want to try. If it offers this choice there's
a pretty good chance it will fix you up.
2) If setup doesn't offer you that choice then you probably have damage
to the registry or possibly the drive folder structure. What you want to do is
load a new Win2K Server (from the CD) into a >different< folder than
your existing one. You will end up with a dual boot Windows Server. One for
the non-working one, and another for a "clean" one you just installed.
This will give you a bootable Windows Server configuration that will allow
you to see the C: folder structure, and check the registry, backup registry and event
log files in the 'real' Windows (in system32\config). Use regedt32 to check the
various registry and backup registry files, and you can use the event viewer to open
the event log which may tell you why it is rebooting.
And if nothing else you will at least be able to do any data file backups
you need before taking further, more drastic, measures.
If neither of the above get you anywhere you will have to restore the system
partition and system state from a recent backup.
If you don't have a system state backup and can't get your existing Windows
Server to load you have a lot of work ahead of you as you will need to
rebuild your domain structure all over again.
Steve Duff, MCSE, MVP
Ergodic Systems, Inc.
Saintpi said:
I was installing SP4 when power failure occured (about 50%).
Windows just continues rebooting. It cannot start again, even on safemode or command prompt. Just starts up, before it gets to the
welcome screen, reboots over and over. What can I do to restore the system? Windows 2000 server is installed.
