can i reinstall my Win2K?

  • Thread starter Thread starter promicro
  • Start date Start date
P

promicro

Hi

I can no longer boot my Win2K sp4, the erd and repair mode doesn't fix
it; I can only boot from my floppy boot disk. I've replaced my boot.ini
and edited them to see all of the drives and partitions with no success.

I would like to re-install the system over the existing system, so my
question is: can I do this without having to re-install the service
packs and additional installed software ??

thanks for all your help

rob
 
promicro said:
Hi

I can no longer boot my Win2K sp4, the erd and repair mode doesn't fix
it; I can only boot from my floppy boot disk. I've replaced my boot.ini
and edited them to see all of the drives and partitions with no success.

I would like to re-install the system over the existing system, so my
question is: can I do this without having to re-install the service
packs and additional installed software ??

thanks for all your help

rob
Click to expand...

You say that you can boot from your floppy boot diskette, can you
elaborate some more? If yo can properly boot the Windows 2000
installation with the floppy boot diskette then you should be able to
copy the files Boot.ini, NTDETECT.COM & ntldr from the floppy diskette
to the root of the system partition and you with the files in their
proper location you should be able to boot from the hard disk. What
happens when you try to boot with the hard disk?

If you can in fact boot properly with the floppy boot disk but not the
hard disk then I think that one or more of the following may be the cause:

1- The active flag has been removed from the System partition. Use the
Disk Management tool and verify that System Partition is "Active". You
can also verify that with a Windows 98 startup diskette and fdisk.

2- The MBR is damaged, the code instructing it to read & execute ntldr
is damaged. To fix this use the Recovery Console and run the FIXMBR
command on the hard disk.

3- The boot sector of the active (System) partition is damaged and
ntldr cannot be found by the boot record code. To fix this use the
Recovery Console and run the FIXBOOT command on the System partition.

John

PS. If you reinstall Windows 2000 you will have to reinstall SP4 and
post SP4 hotfixes, (unless it is slipstreamed to the intstallation media).
 
promicro said:
Hi

I can no longer boot my Win2K sp4, the erd and repair mode doesn't fix it;
I can only boot from my floppy boot disk. I've replaced my boot.ini and
edited them to see all of the drives and partitions with no success.

I would like to re-install the system over the existing system, so my
question is: can I do this without having to re-install the service packs
and additional installed software ??

thanks for all your help

rob
Click to expand...

If you can successfully boot into Windows with your floppy
disk then you don't need to re-insall Windows. The problem
can probably be fixed but you need to give full details about
what happens when you boot with your hard disk and what
you did before things went wrong.
 
promicro said:
Hi

I can no longer boot my Win2K sp4, the erd and repair mode doesn't fix
it; I can only boot from my floppy boot disk. I've replaced my boot.ini
and edited them to see all of the drives and partitions with no success.

I would like to re-install the system over the existing system, so my
question is: can I do this without having to re-install the service
packs and additional installed software ??

thanks for all your help

rob
Click to expand...


you would need to perform a repair install ...
but before you do that...
boot from your win2k cd
and from the repair console try (either or both)

fixmbr


fixboot
 
Thanks to you all for your replies, here's what I've done:

booted on Win cd and did fixmbr, fixboot (numerous times)

booted on XP cd and did fixmbr, fixboot (numerous times)

checked that the partition is 'active'

checked and modified my boot.ini file for different logical drives

my system setup is as follows:

physical drive C: = 2 partitions S: (a small FAT partition) & F: (NTFS
part for files) == 80GB ATA drive
physical drive D: = 3 partitions C:(my Win2K part), D:(future use), &
E:(file use) == 200GB SATA drive all NTFS

this problem began when I installed Windows XP Pro on my D drive - I
replaced my W2K ntdetect & ntldr with the XP version and modified my
boot.ini

I found that I could only run W2K with its ntdetect & ntldr and only
run the XP with its ntdetect & ntldr, not both...

so, I have been switching and swapping these parameters hoping to find
the right combination, but now not even able to now get back to where I
can boot from any hard drive.

I don't know what else to try or even how to get back to square 1.

thanks for all your help and suggestions..

rob
 
promicro said:
Thanks to you all for your replies, here's what I've done:

booted on Win cd and did fixmbr, fixboot (numerous times)

booted on XP cd and did fixmbr, fixboot (numerous times)

checked that the partition is 'active'

checked and modified my boot.ini file for different logical drives

my system setup is as follows:

physical drive C: = 2 partitions S: (a small FAT partition) & F: (NTFS
part for files) == 80GB ATA drive
physical drive D: = 3 partitions C:(my Win2K part), D:(future use), &
E:(file use) == 200GB SATA drive all NTFS

this problem began when I installed Windows XP Pro on my D drive - I
replaced my W2K ntdetect & ntldr with the XP version and modified my
boot.ini

I found that I could only run W2K with its ntdetect & ntldr and only run
the XP with its ntdetect & ntldr, not both...

so, I have been switching and swapping these parameters hoping to find
the right combination, but now not even able to now get back to where I
can boot from any hard drive.

I don't know what else to try or even how to get back to square 1.

thanks for all your help and suggestions..

rob
Click to expand...

You really need to tell us what exactly happens when you
attempt to boot into Win2000. Without this information you
leave us guessing.
 
Pegasus said:
You really need to tell us what exactly happens when you
attempt to boot into Win2000. Without this information you
leave us guessing.
Click to expand...
hi - the message I get trying to boot is 'Windows 2000 could not start
because the following file is missing or corrupt <windows 2000
root>system32\ntoskrnl.exe - please re-install a copy of the above file'

this file does exist but I have also replaced it from the system disk...

rob
 
Are you swapping disks? Are you swapping boot.ini? Sounds like an incorrect
pointer to the Windows 2000 boot partition or invalid boot.ini

If you can post someone can help.



--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect
 
Dave said:
Are you swapping disks? Are you swapping boot.ini? Sounds like an
incorrect pointer to the Windows 2000 boot partition or invalid boot.ini

If you can post someone can help.
Click to expand...
I did swap my primary boot disk in the cmos setup - my ata 80gig drive
seems to have to be the primary and my 200gig sata drive designated as
C: d: e: must be the secondary drive in my cmos, which is the reverse of
what I would like, but I can once again boot from my 80gb hard drive and
run Win2K on my C: 200gb drive...

I'm disappointed I can't boot on my secondary 200gig but at least I
don't need the boot floppy.

thanks to all, rob
 
You can't swap the disk and expect to be able to dual boot (not natively
anyway) The boot sector for both operating systems will always reside on the
system partition.

Also note the possible limitations here with regard to a system partition
greater than ~137 gB in size.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305098


--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect
 
Back
Top