w2k pro Boots to blinking cursor

  • Thread starter Thread starter Stefan Edlund
  • Start date Start date
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Stefan Edlund

I copied some large files and system behaved funny.
Canceled the transfer and restarted. Works 99% of the
time, right!? But instead it boots to blinking cursor and
just stops. No error messages ot nothing.
All ideas appretiated!
/Stefan
 
This usually happens when your boot partition is not set
to "active". Try this:
- Boot with a Win98 boot disk from www.bootdisk.com
- Run fdisk.exe. Set your boot partition to "active" if necessary.
 
Is it safe to use fdisk on large disks? I have a 200GB. If
so what should I do in fdisk? Don't want to loose my data.

Thx
/Stefan
 
Yes, it is safe to use. Just select "Set partition active".

About losing your data: there are two groups of people -
those who don't believe in backing up their important
files, and those who do. Ultimately everyone ends up
in the second group. The transition can be very painful.
 
Ok tried fdisk. It only came up with
The only startable partition on Drive 1 is already set
active.

That's bad right? I assume that's my D-drive.

I borrowed a program called ERD Commander 2000 (5
floppys). Is it to any use?

Thx
/Stefan
 
You must now find out what's left on your disk. Try this:
- Boot with a Win98 boot disk from www.bootdisk.com
- Run this command: ntfsdos /L:EFGH (get it from www.sysinternals.com)
- Run fdisk.exe. What partitions do you see? Which one is active? What
are they - FAT32 or NTFS?
- What do you get against this command:
dir c:\
- What do you get against this command:
dir d:\
 
I tried that. fdisk (with w98 disk in drive) gave:
Current fixed drive 1 (should be 2)
Partion: 1, Status: A, Type: NTFS, Mbytes: 63402
(incorrect), Usage 100%
I'm not sure but I guess this is my D-drive. Should I
disconnet D-drive to be sure?

dir c: shows MS-Ramdrive so guess it's not important.
dir d: gives CDR101: Not ready reading drive D

I also tried Maxtors PowerMax utility and it didn't find
any errors, so guess it's something with boot table or
other.
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/powermax.htm
there's a users manual there too if you want to take a
look.

I'm using win98 ver 4.10.2222 and ntfsdos v.3.0 if that
matters.

Thx for helping me out
/Stefan
 
Things don't look good for your system drive. I hope you
have all your data on drive D: . . .

I would now do this:
- Disconnect the second disk
- Boot once more with the Win98 boot disk and check for
existing partitions, as per my previous post.
- Download some partition recovery tools (see below)
- See if you can recover anything

http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/~tkuurstra/downloads.htm
http://www.restorer2000.com/r2k.htm
http://www.zdnet.com/downloads/stories/info/0,,001CVX,.html
http://www.hddrecovery.com.au
http://bootmaster.filerecovery.biz

Someone else used the last link only last week, and was
wildly enthusiastic when recovering his partition successfully.
 
Ok finally some good news from me :-)
Disconneted my D-drive and looked in fdisk. I was wrong
the one showing up is my C-drive.
I also ran nfsdos (without /L:EFG) and it mounted the
drive as f.
dir f: gave my directories and files. Plz tell me this is
good news.

Thx
/Stefan, who haven't given the battle up just yet
 
OK, it now likes like your Win2000 installation is still there.
I would try this while the second disk is disconnected:

- Boot with a Win2000 installation CD
- Select "Repair"
- Select "Repair boot environment"

I trust that your disk is still set to "active".
 
Yes it´s still active in fdisk.

My w2k-CD isn´t bootable. Is it possible to make the same
thing in "w2k dos" using boot-disks? Or am I better of
with a bootable CD (I will see if anyone has one)?
Saw a command in w2k-dos, fixboot, but don´t know if it´s
smart to use it...

Thx
/Stefan
 
AFAIK all Win2000 CDs are bootable . . .

You can also do this:
- Boot with your Win98 boot disk
- Make sure you select the option that loads your
CD driver
- Execute this command:
d:\i386\winnt

I'm not sure if this will work with an NTFS partition.

I believe that the fixboot command is OK to use.


Yes it´s still active in fdisk.

My w2k-CD isn´t bootable. Is it possible to make the same
thing in "w2k dos" using boot-disks? Or am I better of
with a bootable CD (I will see if anyone has one)?
Saw a command in w2k-dos, fixboot, but don´t know if it´s
smart to use it...

Thx
/Stefan
 
Hmm, booting from the CD didn't do the trick. It says:
Can't find a Windows 2000 installation to repair.

In the console, dir c: can't find any files (like ntfsdos
did). It says An error occurred during directory
enumeration.

What's next? Try the boot fix command in the console? Or
do something thru ntfsdos that found the files?

Thx
/Stefan
 
I think you are now left with two choices:
- Get a bootable Win2000 CD, or
- Partition & format your disk to FAT32, then
install Win2000 as per my previous post.


Hmm, booting from the CD didn't do the trick. It says:
Can't find a Windows 2000 installation to repair.

In the console, dir c: can't find any files (like ntfsdos
did). It says An error occurred during directory
enumeration.

What's next? Try the boot fix command in the console? Or
do something thru ntfsdos that found the files?

Thx
/Stefan
 
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