Error loading os

[LFB]

Hi All,

I had two drives on my machine. The master had ME installed, the slave Win2k. I always used Win2k and since this was on a bigger drive wanted to make it my primary drive then remove the old volume with ME to install on another machine.

So I managed to re-format this drive with ME (my C:\ drive) which of course contained the master boot file and other boot information required to load the Win2k operating system.

I removed it from the system and made my Win2k disk the master drive. Of course I cannot boot from here anymore. I tried running the win2k recovery console and repairing, but this didn't work. I tried using the FIXBOOT command but it didn't seem to do anything. I then started running the FIXMBR but it warned it could corrupt the entire partition.

I admit I'm a bit surprised by how complicated this is becoming. I would have thought people would be swapping volumes all the time and assumed an operating system boot file could be redirected to whereever you wanted. Anyway if someone could point me to an article or knowledge base on how I get myself out of this mess, I would appreciate it.

Thanks

 

[pbxman]

if you think windows is rough doing this..try it with any other filesystem.

sounds like you didn't run fixmbr - thats what you need to run before you go further. it will not corrupt your drive - it's already toast, and it doesnt touch anything besides the MBR, so you could always slave your drive elsewhere if it doesnt work and still access your files.

When you're messing with multiboot systems, you really need to know your stuff, and if not - use a 3rd party utility like partition magic runnin with Boot magic. At least make the rescue disks which will get you out of a jam all the time. You can change active, hidden, boot partitions from the floopy and get yourself back on the road.

Dont be afraid of MS's warnings with fixboot and fixmbr - and as a caveat - dont put your OSes on seperate drives and start switching them out anymore - thats not gonna make you feel all warm & fuzzy when you play switcheroo

pbxman
Systems Administrator

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[wolluf]

You will also need to copy the files ntldr & ntdetect.com to the root of 2k drive (they're on install CD in \1386) & create a boot.ini file (use notepad) which also goes in root of this drive. If its now master drive, boot.ini should look like this:-

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

You may need to run fixboot again after copying these files in place.

Notes:- You may still have some problems. 2k may now think its on C: rather than D:? as its only drive/partition in the system. All your registry entries will be pointing to D: (or whatever drive it was on) - particularly if pagefile was solely on this drive, 2k will log you off as soon as you log on (it doesn't run without a pagefile).

For future reference - you can create a floppy which would boot your 2k - copy ntldr, ntdetect.com and an appropriate boot.ini (the one I posted is obviously for 2k on 1st partition of 1st drive). This will boot the installation, even if its own boot sector it missing/corrupted.