Hi kids! Glad to hear I'm not the only one fighting this weird problem.
Here's my gig:
I have a dual-boot machine, with c:\windows as Win98 and e:\winnt a
Windows 2000 directories (on the same drive). Everything ran like
charm up until a few days back.
Now, I attached a second hard drive (which later turned out to hav
serious damage, and I mean holes-in-the-chips type serious, from
lightning strike) as a slave on the same cable in order to see if w
could recover any of the files on the disk. My BIOS took one look a
it and flatly refused to even give it a try, but I let Windows 200
boot on, figuring it couldn't really hurt... could it? Well, that'
what I thought.
Worse luck for me, my Windows 2000 partition first at least managed t
get through the "booting line" (you know, the screen with the 16-colo
"animated" horizontal... erm... streak, or line, or something), i.e
just before the mouse would appear with the login screen. After
detached the faulty drive, however, it refuses to do anything past th
options menu. You can try safe mode or anything else that turns yo
on, and immediately afterwards the machine freezes and sits ther
grinning at you with nothing but a blinking cursor which seems t
repeat "Now what, Einstein?".
"I'll show you what now," I muttered, and dropped in the Windows 200
CD. Automatic system restore, file fixer, and boot checker in one!
ran the automated recovery option and instead of getting me to ru
again like a good little disc, I get the following error:
Automated System Recovery encountered an internal inconsistency (A2210
and cannot continue.
Figures. My PC at home is also down for a bit, and this is evidently
conspiracy to keep me from e-mailing with my potential new g/f. (I als
can't send her SMS's anymore with my phone, would ye believe that? Go
has some explaining to do.)
All that bogus aside, I'm now sorta stuck. I can access the hard driv
no problem (with e.g. Knoppix) and all the files appear intact. Th
Windows 98 installation on the C-drive also runs without any problems.
It's not the boot sector, since it gives a boot menu and 98 seems t
work fine. I could reinstall Windows, I suppose, but that takes a lo
of time and it was a highly tweaked system.
Now, this is only guesswork, but I suspect that Windows 2000 go
confused by the new hard disk via the BIOS. Maybe it tried to abus
it's ACPI rights and demanded IDE info from the BIOS, and the BIOS sai
ok, ok, I found something but it looks like a toaster with its eye
blown out but I wouldn't try to use it if I were you, but Window
ignored the warning and said "GIMME!", tried to add it to its LD
partition tables, and got so confused it decided to turn my screen int
something resembling a black hole. It might be that after adding th
drive, it got its letters mixed up (or rather, the references to th
varying partitions). Or something.
Naturally, my question to my fellow geniuses is:
HELP! *kernel panic, blue screen, etcetera*
I'm stumped. I've run into a few similar stories both on Annoyance
and off, but no solutions. Here are a few links of more productiv
answers I found for those of you who are coping with similar problem
(or are just feeling really generous and want to help me out):
http://forums.windrivers.com/archive/index.php/t-57102
http://tinyurl.com/3w2zj
http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/win2000/t1054782266
Any help would be most welcome. Of course, maybe if I just chase
different girl everything will magically right itself, but I gotta fin
one to chase first, aye? What a world, what a world
regards and thanx in advance,
Jyn
-
Jyn
