dual boot with dual hdd 1

[dooahhdoo]

I have a dual boot system with a faulty 40gig Fujitsu and an 80 gig Deskstar. I have an install of win 98 and xp on the faulty item (which also holds boot.ini) and an install on win2k on the 80 gig. I propose to send the 40 gig back to the manufacturer for repair.

Is there any way to get the machine to boot from D: (win2k) with the boot.ini file on C: removed? What would happen if I just re-installed win2k on the disk? Would I lose any files, programs etc?

Thanks.

 

[wolluf]

You can make a boot floppy that will boot 2k on 80gb drive. If you can still access other drive, just copy ntldr, ntdetect.com & boot.ini to newly formatted floppy. If not, ntldr & ntdetect.com are on the 2k install CD & you can create a boot.ini using text editor (like notepad) eg:-

[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

(this will boot from 1st partition on 1st disk - adjust both rdisk() & partition() values as appropriate - though presumably this will be your situation while other disk is being repaired). Just one word of caution - where is the page file defined for this installation (2k isn't happy when it's pagefile drive isn't there).

PS. You can also make the hard drive bootable - just copy same 3 files to root of its partition then run recovery console (boot from 2k CD & select repair using recovery console) & run fixboot.