Making Win2K partition bootable

[syngle_w_children]

Before installing a new hard drive, I saw a chance to test out my backups,
and see if they were useful, as I have several apps that claim to clone
disks, do backups, etc, along with the windows backup sets.

Sooo, I made quite a few versions of backups, clones, copies, winbackup of
the registry, and the whole partition, and figured to try them with my new
drive.

I would start each try with a blank drive, no partitions, no format,
nothing.

Each backup restored all the data, near as I can tell, but none of them
made the partition bootable. I can "clone" my C drive to this new hard
drive, or at least restore backups, but again, the drive never is made
bootable. The message tells me that the boot sector is corrupt, or its an
unmountable partition.

For one attempt, I simply did a minimal basic installation, and then
restored from the windows backup, and it still came up as an unbootable
partition, so I am stuck.

My question is, how do I make the partition bootable after do all this
fancy restoring? There must be a simple way to get the system to boot up.

Right now, I have a C partition with what appears to be all the data
restored and directories where they ought to be, but I can't boot it. How
do I get there from here?

Much obliged for any help.

John

 

[syngle_w_children]

In addition to the below stuff, I should have mentioned that I booted the
CD and chose the repair option to try and fix the boot sector and files,
but it doesn't work, in the sense that one time it said it was fixed and
it was not, and other times it says the partition is unmountable, yet when
I do a fresh install of Win2K, it has no problems and boots fine.

I could just rebuild my system, with a fresh install, but there is an
issue here that I want to be able to prove the ability to use a backup
program, and so far, I have not had any success. I would think that there
is a method that should work, when the obvious is failing

Thanks, sorry for any missing information.

John

Before installing a new hard drive, I saw a chance to test out my
backups, and see if they were useful, as I have several apps that claim
to clone disks, do backups, etc, along with the windows backup sets.

Sooo, I made quite a few versions of backups, clones, copies, winbackup
of the registry, and the whole partition, and figured to try them with my
new drive.

I would start each try with a blank drive, no partitions, no format,
nothing.

Each backup restored all the data, near as I can tell, but none of them
made the partition bootable. I can "clone" my C drive to this new hard
drive, or at least restore backups, but again, the drive never is made
bootable. The message tells me that the boot sector is corrupt, or its an
unmountable partition.

For one attempt, I simply did a minimal basic installation, and then
restored from the windows backup, and it still came up as an unbootable
partition, so I am stuck.

My question is, how do I make the partition bootable after do all this
fancy restoring? There must be a simple way to get the system to boot up.

Right now, I have a C partition with what appears to be all the data
restored and directories where they ought to be, but I can't boot it. How
do I get there from here?

 

[Dave Patrick]

Boot a win98 startup disk and make sure the partition is marked as active.