Scarecrow Man Posted June 18, 2004 Report Share Posted June 18, 2004 O.K. there's a story to this. :rolleyes: You don't need to read all of this, but to get a handle on the situation, you may want to.I had Win XP installed, and it worked great. But, I am learning to use Linux. So, I used partition Magic, made a new partition, set it as active (DUMB) and tried installed Caldera Open Linux 2.2 (from an old mag). No luck. Now I am stuck with a good win xp partition, that won't boot, and a linux partiton with no os.Euchered (sorry for typo ?) :blink: So, I formatted the to be linux partition to NTFS, and installed windows 2000 professional. Great! now I can log into an OS! :lol: After a few days of tinkering with win 2k (and backing up stuff from win xp) I re-installed windows xp back onto the partition it was on origionally.Before I continue, note that I formatted the win xp partiton, before installing it again.Now, I have windows xp back, but windows 2k won't load. :censored: I got an error saying NTDLR is missing (odly enough, right as I was trying to install windows xp) so I ignored it and installed xp, but, as I remember (from having this error happen before) that NTDLR has something to do with windows 2k and the boot process. So, I think... I may have screwed up my win2k partition, not that it matters, because I have everything I need in a folder on the win2k partition from backing up 2 DAYS AGO! I'd love to get 2k and xp back and working normally as a dual boot, if possible. :unsure: Please help! Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scarecrow Man Posted June 18, 2004 Author Report Share Posted June 18, 2004 I should add, that I took apart my machine and cleaned out the dust from the heatsink, fan, and graphics card fan, but it did work after that (this was before the xp install) I was at work, did these things, (it worked) brought it home and no go. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scarecrow Man Posted June 18, 2004 Author Report Share Posted June 18, 2004 Anyone?I have done a 2k install, then installed XP before, but it gives me a menu to select which I want... guess I got :censored: this time? :unsure: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nellie2 Posted June 18, 2004 Report Share Posted June 18, 2004 Are you able to boot into anything on this machine? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inprofile Posted June 18, 2004 Report Share Posted June 18, 2004 Check the bottom of the page:CREATING A WINDOWS 2000 BOOT DISKInp. B) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scarecrow Man Posted June 19, 2004 Author Report Share Posted June 19, 2004 Are you able to boot into anything on this machine?Yes nellie, I can get into windows XP, but it doesn't give me an option to boot into windows 2000.I have tried booting from the win2k CD, and doing a repair installation.. It asks me for a recovery disk, or it will locate the partition for me, well, I didn't make a recovery disk, and when I do a search it says no windows partitions found......I am thinking about scraping it, but it would be nice not to have to, as I am on dial-up and as we all know (or some of us) dial-up is sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow. and downloading updates and patches is very tedious.I am going to play with XP for a bit more, and if no one has any ideas how to fix this, I will scrap it this weekend some time and do it again. :mellow: Here's what I think happened:I installed 2000, fine, works, hurray! somehting happend to my MBR, don't know how but it did, and then I installed XP without repairing 2000... thus over writing the current MBR with a NTFS win XP MBR. not that the NTFS matters, because the 2000 partition is NTFS as well.. but I think I am going to have to re-do everything again.. looks like I have my weekend planned! :censored: Thanks Inprofile, I will try that link and see if I can repair this somehow.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scarecrow Man Posted June 19, 2004 Author Report Share Posted June 19, 2004 Alright.. I'm back.. and guess what! I am posting this form my Win2k partition!!!!!!!WOOOOOOOOOO! :lol: Heres what I did:read the post from Inprofile, which directed me to a site to make a windows 2k boot disk (not that this helped because I boot from the CD anyways... :blink: ) BUT for some reason, it sparked my intrest to edit my boot.ini file (again by the way) but for some reason, it worked this time... I did everything the EXACT same, but it worked... but hey, that's windows for ya.the only thing I can think of that I did differently was, add the /nodebug switch at the end of each partition.. example:[boot loader]timeout=30default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT[operating systems]multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /nodebugmulti(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect /nodebugI restarted my comp, expecting the same thing to happen as it did last time, no boot screen just straight to winxp, but no, I saw a boot screen and I was able to choose between the two.. very strange, but hey, it worked and saved me about 6 hours of work so I ain't going to complain! Thanks for help everyone, but this was one of those things you just need to do on your own I guess :rolleyes: here is my old boot.ini.. maybe you can tell me why this didn't work..[boot loader]timeout=30default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT[operating systems]multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetectmulti(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nellie2 Posted June 19, 2004 Report Share Posted June 19, 2004 Well done..... :clapping: Determination and downright stubborness are good attributes when it comes to our machines!!I don't know anything about boot ini files.... what does the nodebug switch do? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
baskar1234 Posted June 20, 2004 Report Share Posted June 20, 2004 Hello Nellie2 and Scarecrow Man, Good to see you in your forum. Just thought that i would give this link .It contains some info on /nodebug switch.LinkAlso , if Linux and windows installation screws up the MBR , there is an option to fix the master boot record in Windows XP. But it can be done only through the recovery console (or) using the XP boot disks. FIXMBR and FIXBOOT can be used from the recovery console then.For more information on using these two commands the Windows Help and Support centre is very useful.Also a win 98 or win ME boot disk can be used ..After booting with the win 98 or win ME boot disk ,the command below can be used . That should rewrite the MBR for windows installtions .But the linux boot option will be lost in all the above cases .fdisk/mbrA linux boot disk should be used then to modify the MBR again. That shouldnt be a problem with REDHAT which is the only Linux version i know about. Regards,Baskar. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nellie2 Posted June 20, 2004 Report Share Posted June 20, 2004 baskar1234 it is good to find you here too!! :welcome: I hope you will stick around and pop in from time to time!! :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
baskar1234 Posted June 20, 2004 Report Share Posted June 20, 2004 Thanks ,I will stick around. You may have to stick me off of the forum later. I am too sticky to comp stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scarecrow Man Posted June 21, 2004 Author Report Share Posted June 21, 2004 Hey baskar1234, I did use the fixboot and fixmbr from the recovery console with no luck.But I was able to fix it, and have had no problems since.I think what I may have done is misspelled something when I edited my boot.ini the first time.Figures.. one character wrong and I have no operating system.. damn computers and thier requirements of being PERFECT :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Posted June 21, 2004 Report Share Posted June 21, 2004 http://www.windowsforum.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=10374 ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madboy33 Posted June 21, 2004 Report Share Posted June 21, 2004 i was looking at this thread with great intent and though i know a man for this problem and got to the bottom of the thread and there he was allready postedYes that is powerless Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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