Home PC won't boot from w2k boot floppy disk 2

[thefourthwall]

Hi,

I took a FAT-formatted 3.5" diskette and copied boot.ini, ntdetect, and ntldr files to it. see

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;101668.

I use this disk at work to boot user's pc's when their pc's won't boot normally, like when the boot.ini file is damaged on the user's hard drive. Because all work pc's use a standard image, the disk is consistently useful.

On my home pc, however, the behavior is different. this pc has an amd "dual bios" and on boot is set to look for 'boot records' from the cdrom then floppy then hard drive. the bios doesn't recognize my floppy as having a valid 'boot record' however.

i assume this is a limitation of my home pc's bios? any ideas would be much appreciated,

thanks!

 

[wolluf]

has an amd "dual bios" - que? Can you explain more please.
'from the cdrom then floppy then hard drive' - if you set it to look for flopy first, does your boot disk work? (I've never had a problem getting such a boot floppy to boot)?

 

[browolf]

apparently you can get mobos with 2 bios's
tho i'm not quite sure what the advantage is.

....

it seems to be a thing on gigabyte boards.
if one fails, the other takes over.

wouldnt have thought that was particularly aimed at home-users.

http://tw.giga-byte.com/home/dualb.htm

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[thefourthwall]

browolf,

you're right -- it's not a home user-oriented pc. i built it for my lan server out of parts i bought "here & there," and the mobo is indeed a gigbabyte board - was able to get it at a good price, and found out afterwards that it's a 'dual bios.'

seems that the bios is programmed to look for boot records defined as dos or windows 9x-type files on the disk such as msdos.sys, io.sys, command.com, etc.

any ideas on a workaround to allow the system to boot from a boot disk with just ntdetect, ntldr, and boot.ini?

thanks,

 

[wolluf]

thefourthwall,

Will this bios boot from an NT/2k/XP hard drive then? (because they also use the same boot files as are on your floppy). Have you tried more than one 2k boot floppy? (floppies/floppy drives can be very finicky - do you know bios will only look for 9x/ME boot files, might just not like the disk you used).

PS. Have you tried it with floppy as first boot device?

 

[thefourthwall]

wolluf, the 2k hard drive is on a promise ultra 100 controller for which i had to load drivers during initial 2k setup on this box. the bios does not see the hard drive though it does the ultra 100 controller as a boot device. i tried two floppies as originally described, and the bios just loves a 98 boot disk... strange

and yes, i've tried floppy as the first boot device with no luck. right now the boot order is 1.cdrom 2. floppy 3.raid100/ultra100 controller.

 

[wolluf]

So, does this mean you can't boot into 2k at all on this machine at the moment? Is there another operating system on the machine? Must admit, don't understand your bios at all. Thought all bios did (regardiing booting) was load the mbr of the boot device into memory, which then passed control to the active partition - which if that contained a valid boot sector would boot machine with appropriate operating system. Sounds like there's some extra 'filter' in that process on your machine.

PS. Probably irrelevant point - were the floppies originally formatted by a 2k system? Clutching at straws!

 

[browolf]

could the boot disk be having trouble finding the harddrive if it's on some raid controller thingy? ===============
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[wolluf]

Good point Browolf - is it failing to boot the floppy, or is the boot loader on the floppy not finding the hard drive?

I'm not sure if 2k treats disks on a controller card as 'scsi' (know bioses often do) - thinking about boot.ini.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;119467

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;130921

 

[vistabud]

Theforthwall, all you have to do is rename the 'ntldr' file on your boot floppy to 'setupldr.bin'. It will then work fine on any Windows 2000 system including 'Advanced Server'

 

[wolluf]

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=119467

includes this:
'The Windows boot disk must include the Ntldr (or Setupldr.bin in Windows NT 3.5),Ntdetect.com, and Boot.ini files, and may require ntbootdd.sys which is the device driver for your hard disk controller renamed to ntbootdd.sys'

Might that be it - you need device drive for your controller card renamed to ntbootdd.sys?

 

[thefourthwall]

wolluf,

Thanks for your very helpful responses -- i have not been able to test this the past couple of days -- family's been sick, etc., etc... i will try your suggestion tonite and post the result. thanks!

 

[Rascii]

I'd have to agree with Wolluf last post. You could also try editing your boot.ini file from Multi(x) to SCSI(x) or vis versa.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;102873

But, it doesn't sound like your even getting that far. In that case I would again ask if you formatted your disk with an NT box first before loading the files?

 

[thefourthwall]

browolf & wolluf,

thanks to browolf for putting wolluf and me on the right path -- the onboard controller is a Promise Ultra 2xxx device that the OS treats as SCSI.

after booting normally, i identified in device manager the driver used for the Promise controller, copied it to A:\ & renamed to ntbootdd.sys and ...

it worked Beautifully!

Thanks Very Much!