Unable to Boot

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Guest

Arrghhh!!! I broke one of our computers, and I'm hoping someone will be
able to help me recover it!

Here's the sad tale (I did something REALLY stupid...)

The machine was set up to dual-boot PC-DOS (IBM) and WIN 2000 Pro. DOS is
on the "C" drive, which is the lowest physical segment.
The "C" partition is 2 GB in size, the largest allowable for 16-bit DOS.

WIN 2K is on the "J" drive, which is contiguous to "C" (don't ask about the
drive letters...).
The end of the "J" drive was 8 GB in size extending to the 1024 cylinder
boundary.

Next to "J" is the "E" drive, which had about 12 GB free space.

All was cool until I decided to take some of the free space on "E" and
attach it to "J".
The reason for doing this is that Picasa (Google's photo program) kept
warning of insufficient disk space, and
I tracked it down to insuffiicient space on the WIN 2K drive. There was
plenty of space on the system,
but Picasa only responded to what was on "J", which had less than 200 MB
free.

Anyway, the space on "E" we didn't need, so I decided to make "J" bigger by
taking all but 5 GB of the free space
on "E" and adding it to "J".

I used Partition Magic to move the free space at the top end of "E" to the
beginning, which made it contiguous to the
top end of "J", which, as I said, was right at the 1024 cylinder boundary
(Partition Magic marks the boundary).

Moving the free space went fine,no problems at all.

I then used Partition Magic to add the free space at the bottom of "E" to
the top of "J", and this is where everything hit the fan.

A warning showed up in PM about crossing the 1024 cylinder boundary, but I
didn't think it applied because all I was doing
was adding free space. Naturally, I was wrong - shouldn't have done it!!!

So, the status of the machine now is this:

(1) the space was moved

(2) the machine comes up in dual-boot mode (as it always has) and asks
which OS to start

(3) DOS runs fine, but, of course, sees only the 2 GB "C" drive

(4) If I select booting WIN 2K, it starts normally, at least at first, but
then asks to check each drive for errors.
If I let the drive check proceed, it checks each drive and finds no errors.
Then the system pops up the blue screen
of death with some message at the top that's too quick to read (but I did
figure it out - see below...), and then
the system re-boots. It just keeps on doing this, and it does the same
thing whether or not I allow the disk check
to proceed.

Question is, WHAT TO DO???? I'm ready to make the machine into a boat
anchor, but I really need what's on it. I'm not
concerned about losing applications, and I'm willing to reformat the drive
and start from scratch, but we must get the data
back (mostly photos not yet backed up to CD).

(5) Booting from another device? Seems like a good idea - but it doesn't
work! Even if I enter the BIOS at power-up and change
the order of the boot devices, trying to boot from a CD drive, it will not
boot! For example, if I insert the Win 2K steup disk
in the CD drive, it still boots from the hard drive. The system does boot
from a 3.5" floppy, and I've done that several times
using Win 98 and Win ME boot floppies. But they start the system in DOS,
not Windows, and it seems like there's no where to go to
retrieve the hard disk data.

Additional info:

(a) I was able to capture the error messgae that flashes too quickly to be
read just before the system re-boots (took a lot of tries
with a digital camera...). What it says is:

"STOP: followed by a bunch of hex addresses
The video driver failed to initialize.

Physical memory dump complete. Contact your system administrator or
technical support group."

End of message.

This message flashes so fast it can't be read at all. But it's the only
one that shows up, I'm sure of that.
After the message clears, the system goes straight to reboot, and the
whole business starts again...

(b) We have another machine that dual-boots Win 2K and Win ME. Any chance
that software available on that system could help
in reapiring the one I lunched???

Thanks much for any thoughts!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
BTB Real Estate said:
Arrghhh!!! I broke one of our computers, and I'm hoping someone will be
able to help me recover it!

Here's the sad tale (I did something REALLY stupid...)

The machine was set up to dual-boot PC-DOS (IBM) and WIN 2000 Pro. DOS is
on the "C" drive, which is the lowest physical segment.
The "C" partition is 2 GB in size, the largest allowable for 16-bit DOS.

WIN 2K is on the "J" drive, which is contiguous to "C" (don't ask about the
drive letters...).
The end of the "J" drive was 8 GB in size extending to the 1024 cylinder
boundary.

Next to "J" is the "E" drive, which had about 12 GB free space.

All was cool until I decided to take some of the free space on "E" and
attach it to "J".
The reason for doing this is that Picasa (Google's photo program) kept
warning of insufficient disk space, and
I tracked it down to insuffiicient space on the WIN 2K drive. There was
plenty of space on the system,
but Picasa only responded to what was on "J", which had less than 200 MB
free.

Anyway, the space on "E" we didn't need, so I decided to make "J" bigger by
taking all but 5 GB of the free space
on "E" and adding it to "J".

I used Partition Magic to move the free space at the top end of "E" to the
beginning, which made it contiguous to the
top end of "J", which, as I said, was right at the 1024 cylinder boundary
(Partition Magic marks the boundary).

Moving the free space went fine,no problems at all.

I then used Partition Magic to add the free space at the bottom of "E" to
the top of "J", and this is where everything hit the fan.

A warning showed up in PM about crossing the 1024 cylinder boundary, but I
didn't think it applied because all I was doing
was adding free space. Naturally, I was wrong - shouldn't have done it!!!

So, the status of the machine now is this:

(1) the space was moved

(2) the machine comes up in dual-boot mode (as it always has) and asks
which OS to start

(3) DOS runs fine, but, of course, sees only the 2 GB "C" drive

(4) If I select booting WIN 2K, it starts normally, at least at first, but
then asks to check each drive for errors.
If I let the drive check proceed, it checks each drive and finds no errors.
Then the system pops up the blue screen
of death with some message at the top that's too quick to read (but I did
figure it out - see below...), and then
the system re-boots. It just keeps on doing this, and it does the same
thing whether or not I allow the disk check
to proceed.

Question is, WHAT TO DO???? I'm ready to make the machine into a boat
anchor, but I really need what's on it. I'm not
concerned about losing applications, and I'm willing to reformat the drive
and start from scratch, but we must get the data
back (mostly photos not yet backed up to CD).

(5) Booting from another device? Seems like a good idea - but it doesn't
work! Even if I enter the BIOS at power-up and change
the order of the boot devices, trying to boot from a CD drive, it will not
boot! For example, if I insert the Win 2K steup disk
in the CD drive, it still boots from the hard drive. The system does boot
from a 3.5" floppy, and I've done that several times
using Win 98 and Win ME boot floppies. But they start the system in DOS,
not Windows, and it seems like there's no where to go to
retrieve the hard disk data.

Additional info:

(a) I was able to capture the error messgae that flashes too quickly to be
read just before the system re-boots (took a lot of tries
with a digital camera...). What it says is:

"STOP: followed by a bunch of hex addresses
The video driver failed to initialize.

Physical memory dump complete. Contact your system administrator or
technical support group."

End of message.

This message flashes so fast it can't be read at all. But it's the only
one that shows up, I'm sure of that.
After the message clears, the system goes straight to reboot, and the
whole business starts again...

(b) We have another machine that dual-boots Win 2K and Win ME. Any chance
that software available on that system could help
in reapiring the one I lunched???

Thanks much for any thoughts!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Click to expand...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

It seems you made two capital mistakes:
- You did not back up your important files to an independent
medium once a week. What's wrong with a 2.5" disk in an
external USB case? Low in cost but highly effective!
- You performed open heart surgery without first backing up
things. Bad, bad, bad!

I suspect that your Windows installation is histroy. However,
your data is safe. Here are a couple of methods to retrieve it:

1. Install the disk as a slave disk in some other Win2000/XP
PC, then copy the data to a different medium.
2. Boot the machine with a Bart PE CD, then copy the data
to a different medium.

When finished, review your backup philosophy.
 
Pegasus said:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

It seems you made two capital mistakes:
- You did not back up your important files to an independent
medium once a week. What's wrong with a 2.5" disk in an
external USB case? Low in cost but highly effective!
- You performed open heart surgery without first backing up
things. Bad, bad, bad!

I suspect that your Windows installation is histroy. However,
your data is safe. Here are a couple of methods to retrieve it:

1. Install the disk as a slave disk in some other Win2000/XP
PC, then copy the data to a different medium.
2. Boot the machine with a Bart PE CD, then copy the data
to a different medium.

When finished, review your backup philosophy.
Click to expand...
If the partition (J:) that contains his data has been corrupted, would
he still be able to read it from another machine/system. I doubt it.
 
Let me start by saying the 1024 boundry is not a issue since your boot files
are on c: with is limited to 2gig.

What bit you in the butt, besides not backing up as Pegasus points out, was
your drive letter enumeration. Doesn't matter what windows sees them as as
long as windows boots. When windows doesn't boot, drive letter assignments
follow a very static rule. In this case your "j:" drive [I suspect but don't
know since you didn't say if there were any other drives in the system] is
now "d:". Of course over 4000 registry entries point to the wrong place J:
when they should be d:

This means your OS doesn't know where its brains are. Its looking a j: but
they are on d:. Solution is to boot the W2K cd and start the install. When
you get to the point of New or Repair choose repair [this is after the
recovery console repair choice]. This will refresh the OS files, correct the
registry entries and not change your data. You will need to redo the service
packs and reinstall any apps so their registry pointers are correct.

This is all assuming your partition merge was successful. If it gunnybagged
your OS and data are gone permanently.
 
If the partition (J:) that contains his data has been corrupted, would
he still be able to read it from another machine/system. I doubt it.
Click to expand...

I am not sure if the OP's problem is caused by a file
system corruption or by some damage to the OS.
If the file system is corrupted then he would have to
hand the disk to a recovery service. Not cheap!
 
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