when my favourite file system (NTFS) is a nightmare...

[alangeering]

Grrr.

This week I had the honor/horror of fixing a HP laptop, it was horrible. Running WinMe and FAT32 it was a pain... but one thing I could do was create a DOS boot floppy and get access to the hard disks. There is quite a lot that can be fixed from this position.

I'm using a DELL Inspiron 4100, which has been no problem through it's life. But, in the process of fixing my mates computer I think I overwrote my boot.ini file, (not a good thing to do).

With windows booting from an NTFS partition, if things go wrong, you've only got the WinXP cd to help you.

I'm going to have to go with the recovery/installation cd but I don't like it. I would love to back up my data before I do... but opening up my laptop is not something I'm too keen on doing either.

[neoteo]

mmmmm ... the back up is the main problem ...

for a simple clean of system with the win XP cd ...
its very easy
go to the BIOS ... set cdrom in the boot sequence

put the winXP cd in the drive .. press any key to start from cd

then find the partitions tool inside the instalation program

delete your C: partition .. and create another one using NTSF , format and install

i advise you to create 3 partitions .. so next time you dont have problems with backups and system ... always keep your stuff away from the system partition !

EX:

c: windows ( system )

d: programs

e: stuff ( and backups )

[sleepytom]

use norton ghost to create a image of your c drive - you can keep a copy of ghost on a floppy or bootable cd and easaly restor your computer to a know good state in just a few mins

never keep anything you want on the C drive - you cold well have to format it at any point in time!

the boot.ini issue should be easy to fix by booting off the install disk and running the installer in recover mode

[alangeering]

Yeah, it should be a simple job...

unfortunatly I don't know the administrator password so can't use the recover feature.

I've got quite a bit of important work on my HDD so a clean format and install is not an option. I think I'm going to have to take the HDD out and put it in my desktop to get the data off it first.

Oh how I wish I'd set a decent admin password. I don't think I've ever changed it. I don't have more than 6 passwords which I rotate through and it's none of those.

Alan

[alangeering]

Finally, with some cunning NT4 knowhow on my dad's part (I'm home for Christmas) we were able to make a minimalist NT boot floppy (note: this is nothing like a DOS floppy which you can make from the windows command line/GUI). Bit by bit we were able to change things to the point where we could find the problem.

Now I've got a few hours of windows downloads to get and hoepfully by tomorrow the laptop will be back up and ready for editing duty (this PC will go back to it's usual role of rendering and DVD authoring).

Grrr. I'm not going to get too much sleep.

Alan

[BrainStove]

Hmmmmm, looks like an old problem/mistake caused very often as result of installing previous/older WinOSs versions on top of previous WinXP resident installs in an attempt to create dualboot configurations.

If I?m understanding you well apparently you installed WinME on your own lappy which already had WinXP running there, so the problem arising now is that you lost/replaced these required XP boot files:
1) boot.ini
2) ntdetect
3) ntldr
Assumming you are a careful enough geek and you indeed already created a WinXP Emergency floppy disk, just copy those replaced files from the floppy back again on C:/ to restore your XP box functionality.
In case you didn?t create that XP emergency floppy, then go to someone else PC running WinXP and create the damn disk and after that follow the steps I?ve already told you above.

As for the Admin password bit you also could be interested to take a look on this software just in case things becomes more complicated than necessary.

http://www.winternals.com/products/r...mander2002.asp

Good luck

[robotfunk]

hey there is an NTFS driver for win98 you can use... its not that great or reliable for writing but works fine for reading, used it lots to recover stuff from NT partitions in a dual boot system

its from the same winternals ppl that made the erp thing mentioned earlier:
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/fr...tfswin98.shtml

[neoteo]

thanks for the links nice info

[alangeering]

Originally posted by BrainStove
Hmmmmm, looks like an old problem/mistake caused very often as result of installing previous/older WinOSs versions on top of previous WinXP resident installs in an attempt to create dualboot configurations.

If I?m understanding you well apparently you installed WinME on your own lappy which already had WinXP running there, so the problem arising now is that you lost/replaced these required XP boot files:
1) boot.ini
2) ntdetect
3) ntldr

Almost, but not quite. I didn't install anything on my Lappy, mainly just overwrote my boot.ini whilst preparing one for my friends laptop. (His was the one that had the multiple OS install problems - hence I was making the boot.ini for him)

Goes to show that you should take care of your self first!

Originally posted by BrainStove
Assumming you are a careful enough geek and you indeed already created a WinXP Emergency floppy disk, just copy those replaced files from the floppy back again on C:/ to restore your XP box functionality.

Unfortunatly this didn't fix the problem, That was the first thing I tried. I've done this before for NT4 so went through the drill and no ammount of playing with boot.ini would get it to pick up the OS.

It's all back to normal now except there still needs to be a lot of updates downloaded from the MS Update site. This is a PIA and I've got better things to do at present.

This was the first time my PC had to have any work done on the OS. Previous computers of mine had to have the HDD cleaned and the OS re-installed about 2 or 3 times a year for performance and stability reasons. XP on my Inspiron has been rock solid.

This was totally self inflicted - the moral, when hacking, don't save changes to your boot.ini