Help!!! Disaster recovery

  • Thread starter Thread starter TonyG
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TonyG

My IBM Thinkpad notebook running Win2K (SP3) has suddenly decided that it no
longer wants to boot up. I have tried everything I know with no success and
am looking for ideas...

The emergency recovery disk is apparently corrupted, so I cannot use the
recovery console. The last know good configuration stalls half way through
the load in the main banner screen prior to logon. Safe mode startup
displays a list of drivers which fills the screen, but goes no further.

One possibility I still have left to try is reinstalling/repairing Win2K
from the Boot CD, but of course may will require a lot of software
reinstallation, so I consider it a second-last resort.

Any other approaches I may not have thought of? Machine was working fine
just two days ago. The last thing I did to it was to install the critical
update patch for the mblaster virus.

Thanks

Tony
 
Sorry, I can get into recovery console mode through the Boot CD repair menu.
So I can get a directory listing. There are no obvious problems with the
hard disk, so I am assuming something in the patch went wrong. Is there a
log file I should be looking for that tells me where the load got up to? Or
is there something else I can do from the RC prompt to find the problem?

Tony
 
TonyG said:
My IBM Thinkpad notebook running Win2K (SP3) has suddenly decided that it no
longer wants to boot up. I have tried everything I know with no success and
am looking for ideas...

The emergency recovery disk is apparently corrupted, so I cannot use the
recovery console. The last know good configuration stalls half way through
the load in the main banner screen prior to logon. Safe mode startup
displays a list of drivers which fills the screen, but goes no further.

One possibility I still have left to try is reinstalling/repairing Win2K
from the Boot CD, but of course may will require a lot of software
reinstallation, so I consider it a second-last resort.

Any other approaches I may not have thought of? Machine was working fine
just two days ago. The last thing I did to it was to install the critical
update patch for the mblaster virus.

Thanks

Tony
Click to expand...

You have a couple of options:

- Boot with your Win2000 CD, then select "Repair" when prompted.
- Boot with your Win2000 CD, then install Win2000 over the top of
this existing installation. You will not have to re-install your apps,
but the method might not fix yur problem.
 
OK. Something weird happened. After trying all of the recovery console
options short of rewriting the MBR (which worried me because there was the
chance of losing data files), I decided to reinstall, so I booted off the CD
and told it to install a fresh copy of W2K in the WIN2000 folder (the
existing install is in WINNT). On first reboot during install, it hung again
at the same point of the loader and I rebooted. Noticed there were now three
boot options - two Windows 2000 Professional and Windows Recovery Console.
Tried the second option thinking it would boot the new installation, but
what it actually did was boot the old installation and it seems to be
working just fine again. Now I am not at all sure where I am, except that I
have a very complicated boot routine at this stage.

Any thoughts?

Tony
 
TonyG wrote in
OK. Something weird happened. After trying all of the recovery
console options short of rewriting the MBR (which worried me
because there was the chance of losing data files), I decided to
reinstall, so I booted off the CD and told it to install a fresh
copy of W2K in the WIN2000 folder (the existing install is in
WINNT). On first reboot during install, it hung again at the same
point of the loader and I rebooted. Noticed there were now three
boot options - two Windows 2000 Professional and Windows Recovery
Console. Tried the second option thinking it would boot the new
installation, but what it actually did was boot the old
installation and it seems to be working just fine again. Now I am
not at all sure where I am, except that I have a very complicated
boot routine at this stage.

Any thoughts?
Click to expand...

Hard to say. "Peagasus" had suggested a "repair" installation _over_
your existing one. You did a "parallel" install.

It your original installation is working well, then you need to
manually remove the new parallel one. That includes removing the
\WIN2000\ directory tree and modifing the boot.ini file in the root
of the (usually C:) drive. That file is normally Hidden and/or Read-
only. Edit in notepad or other. It might be confusing. Copy-Paste
it here if you like.

My guess is that the failed new installtion re-wrote the MBR <G>
 
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