win2000 drive recognition and boot problem. 1

[sampsononline]

Please help if you can.

I have a system running win2k. The hard drive was installed using the "maxtor" disk which for some reason made a small dos partition before allowing me to install win2000 on the rest of the drive. because of this i have always had certain problems with drive recognition. My system was working ok though until I got a corrupted msvcrt.dll

Windows would not let me replace the file when running the OS or even from safe mode so I booted to command prompt and renamed c:\winnt\system32\msvcrt.dll to msvcrt7.dll . I was going to then restart, go into the OS, and replace the msvcrt.dll with an uncorrupted version I had on my desktop. Well aparently the file is critical because now I can't get into the OS at all, not through any of the options found by pressing f8 during startup.

I have tried using the emergency repair console but it just comes to a command prompt after stating "file or directory not found" I thought then I could rename the file back from that prompt but it will say none of the directories are there, i.e. c:\cd winnt etc.. Then if I change to d: and try to go back to c: it says "no such drive". I tried using an emergency repair disk from another win2k sys since I didn't have one from my own, it says 'no repair possible'.

Now I decided to start the "install win2000' process after going through the 4 floppy boot disk routine for the 50th time. It says the main drive is "EZdrive" taking 39072 mb of the 40gb hard drive (other 1gb being used on useless dos partition which is not shown along with ezdrive). I assume this is the work of maxtor. If I could just get to an authentic and functioning c prompt now then I could c:\winnt\system32\>msvcrt7.dll ren msvcrt.dll and then get back into win2k!

How can I do this? How can I make it call that drive C: and not EZdrive? I guess normally the EZbios maxtor crap tells the comp to boot into EZdrive. now it's doing that, but every time it gets almost to the desktop then restarts, assumingly because the msvcrt.dll is not working.

If you made it to here that's great, if you can help that's awesome. thanks. P.s. I can't just reformat because I don't have backup (cd-rw wasn't working because of .dll problem) and too much valuable stuff on the comp. so if I can't get back in then I'm screwed and have to go to some data recovery shop. THANKS A MILLION>

 

[Klae]

are you using NTFS or FAT? if FAT format then aquire a Windows 98 boot disk and access your system from there, is that possible or have you tried and got the missing directories still?

 

[sampsononline]

it's NTFS. maybe there is no command prompt I can work from then? perhaps the one I was on before was a virtual prompt? any ideas? I have tried anything you mentioned. still no go. I am having no joy here, somebody help!

 

[Klae]

If you are using EZdrive (Dynamic Drive Overlay software) then booting to a floppy disk is a bit different. you have to wait until the hard drive has just booted and then hold down CTRL or SPACEBAR (the EZdrive banner should tell you which key)and then insert the boot floppy or CDROM. basically if you boot straight to a floppy you cannot access you DDO'ed hard drive at all. have you been booting to floppy the EZdrive preferred way?

 

[edfair]

Earlier EZ had a utility that would put the overlay driver on the boot floppy. You might want to look into that. Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[sampsononline]

This is going to sound complicated, but here goes..

A while ago I tried to switch the hard drive to the "dynamic disk system". After that I couldn't get into my drive. As part of the solution to fix it and get back in, I had to disable ez-bios.. Anyways, now when I try to get into my hard drive it says -

"Searching for boot record from floppy... not found
Searching for boot record from IDE-0.. OK
EZ-BIOS: Initializing...
EZ-BIOS: Not controlling any drives. Unloading...
EZ-BIOS: Continueing startup...

NTLDR is missing
Press any key to restart"

I tried to hold down control or space but it made no difference. Before the comp would have loaded on into windows, get almost to the desktop then quit. Now it says "NTLDR is missing" for some reason, I don't know what I could have done that would have caused that. Any ideas of what is the best way to move forward?

Another person recommended that I install win2000 on another hard drive then mount the corrupted drive as a slave and then I should be able to transfer the files, would this work?

I tried to install win2000 to another 30gb drive I have but it would go through the process, copy a bunch of files off the cd then after the first restart it would come to a black screen and do nothing. When this happened the first time, after waiting for 20 minutes for the black screen to change, I restarted, same thing, so I went back through the boot process with floppies. When I got into where it shows the partitions it was very wierd.. I assume because the install process had been disrupted. It said there was one partitioned space,one space that had some other name, then two chunks of unpartitioned space. I deleted the two partitions, now that left me with two chunks of unpartitioned space and I didn't want to install on one of them. SO I shutdown and booted again, this time it showed one chunk of unpartitioned space but said it was 85gb, 55gb more than the drive. I knew this is wrong but couldn't think what else to do so I decided to install again. It said there was another OS installation on the space which win2k would make inactive, I said ok. I went through the process and same thing again, after the first reboot, nothing but black screen.

THe only cause of this that I can imagine is that the disk I am using is a cd-r which does not have the correct title, this turned out to be a problem with some other cd-r's I burnt, I didn't know the title was important... I had thought this also might be the reason that my sys won't boot from cd with it when it had booted from cd with another cd before.. I am not a pirate, i had my own copy which came with the sys but it got scratched so I copied a friends, I had already given bgates his $140. Could this be the root of my problems? Does anyone have any ideas that would help me, advice of any sort on this entire problem?

Thanks - jonathan robinson.

P.S. thanks very much to the two previous respondants.

 

[Klae]

Things to try:

1. the W2k on another Hard drive idea is a good idea this may be needed.
2. If your 110% confident that you know how to flash your BIOS with the motherboard manufacturer's latest BIOS revision then I advise this.
3. Make another copy of W2k pro from your friend to replace your scratched legit copy but do so with your CDRW software's "CD Copy" routine don't just drag the contents of the legit W2k CD to a blank CD. Use the Copy routine or wizard this will create an exact copy. The title will be the same and it will also be able to boot to CD.
4. Make sure your corrupted 30gb HDD is completely out of the equation when trying to install onto your fresh 30gb, by removing your corrupted 30gb out of the system entirely.
5. Tell me if EZ-Drive (EZMax?) is needed or can your motherboard support large hard drives stand alone? if so then with the fresh 30gb do not use EZ-drive/EZMax at all.
5a. use a Win98 boot floppy with the file fdisk.exe on your fresh 30gb and run "fdisk" and check the aprtiton readings in there. Delete any partitions, NTFS or Non-DOS partitions on your fresh 30gb.
6. On the first reboot take the CD out of the CDROM and let the PC boot to Hard drive and then reinsert CD later.
7. If by a miracle you do get W2k onto your fresh 30gb then connect your corrupted 30gb as a slave and just copy from Master to slave the msvcrt.dll (It is a critical file "Microsoft Visual C++ Run Time Library&quot. Come back to Tek-Tips and write the progress.

 

[sampsononline]

Well this is cool. It turns out I have done everything prescribed. I flashed the bios with the latest version, I had to use the maxtor boot disk to partition the drive then I used the 4 win2k boot disks and ended up getting win2k installed.. all is good in that respect.

I have also already attached the second drive as slave. Now when I go to start>settings>control panels>administrative tools>diskmanagement> it says the second drive is a fat when I know it's ntfs... the problem is that I had used the maxtor disk when installing that OS and it MAKES you install a small fat partition before you can install the drive on ntfs in the rest of the drive. I mounted the drive to letter F: and it shows up under my computer but when I click on it there what shows up is a title name $ which is 4.81 mb and another named A which when I right click on it and go to properties it says "used space 6.73mb, free space 3.36, capacity 10.1.

I guess A is the name of the real partition.. That the little one that maxtor made in order for me to install win2k. How do I get past that I and to my 15gb of essential files behind it or else just to where I can rename that .dll and then it should work anyways. Thanks much for your help.

Jonathan Robinson

 

[ShaithisDanoveur]

http://www.winternals.com/products/repairandrecovery/ntfsdospro.shtml

You need NTFSDos to get in there and replace that dll file.

Or you can put your drive in as a secondary on any running Win2K system.