Usually means ntdetect.com is missing or corrupt. Try booting the recovery
console and from a command prompt issue the command;
fixboot
To start the Recovery Console, start the computer from the Windows 2000
Setup CD or the Windows 2000 Setup floppy disks. If you do not have Setup
floppy disks and your computer cannot start from the Windows 2000 Setup CD,
use another Windows 2000-based computer to create the Setup floppy disks.
Press ENTER at the "Setup Notification" screen. Press R to repair a Windows
2000 installation, and then press C to use the Recovery Console. The
Recovery Console then prompts you for the administrator password. If you do
not have the correct password, Recovery Console does not allow access to the
computer. If an incorrect password is entered three times, the Recovery
Console quits and restarts the computer. Once the password has been
validated, you have full access to the Recovery Console, but limited access
to the hard disk. You can only access the following folders on your
computer: %systemroot% and %windir%
Or try creating a boot disk. For the floppy to successfully boot Windows
2000 the disk must contain the "NT" boot sector. Format a diskette (on an NT
machine, not a DOS/Win9x, so the NT boot sector gets written to the floppy),
and copy ntldr, ntdetect.com, and boot.ini to it; and possibly ntbootdd.sys.
Edit the boot.ini to give it a correct ARC path for the machine you wish to
boot.
Since you now have a dual-boot and it sounds like you wanted a clean
install. To do a clean install, either boot the Windows 2000 CD-Rom or setup
disks. The set of four install disks can be created from your Win2k CD-rom;
change
to the \bootdisk directory on the cd-rom and execute makeboot.exe (from dos)
or makebt32.exe (from 32 bit) and follow the prompts.
When you get to the point, delete the existing NTFS and or other partitions
found. After you delete the partition(s) abort the install, then again
restart the pc booting the CD-Rom or setup disks to avoid unexpected drive
letter assignments with your new install.
During Windows 2000 setup, at some point, will want to confirm the previous
operating system for the upgrade (if an upgrade version); at that point
you'll simply insert the qualified product install CD for it to verify. Then
the install will proceed.
