Some readers may recall that my W2K machine died a couple months ago after an update (actually, it’s been over three months now). Well, a few days ago I finally found my install disk. Unfortunately, when I tried to use it to repair, it said it couldn’t find a Windows installation, so apparently the drive really got munged. I know all the data is there, because I mounted the drive on a Linux box and pulled it off, so I’m guessing that the boot sector is screwed up. Unfortunately, it’s a complicated situation, because it was actually set up to boot from Drive D (Drive C was a legacy 98 system, and both drives are partitions on a single drive). And of course, I don’t have a rescue disk, that I know of, for the current configuration.
So is it possible to go in and look at the boot sector in another machine and repair it manually? Anyone have any suggestions?
I found a utility called Active Recovery I’ve used in the past to good results. Not so much on 2k, but as I recall they supported. The old norton utlities had some pieces that could help as well.
Did the linux find both of the partions or just the 2k one? Also did you have fat on the 98 partion with NTFS on the 2k or where they both FAT?
Good luck
All the partitions were there, AFAIK. The 98 is FAT32 and the W2K is NTFS.
Try the active recovery thing. I can check when I get home as that is where the CD is. I used to revive a laptop. Makes a bootable CD that you can see the drive with and then walk the partions with options to repair or rebuild as needed.
Most likely the fat partion has the issue. It has been a while since I built a dual boot machine, but as I recall that is the way it worked.
check for a boot.ini file. In it, you should see something like:
[boot loader]
timeout=0
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=”Microsoft Windows 2000″
You’ll have to unhide files, but maybe linux can see it.
Here is a reasonable explanation of boot.ini
I mention it, because it could be pointing to a disk or partition that the installer isn’t picking up, since you seemed to have an odd boot setup.
Did you get recovery console booted ?
Another possibility :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BartPE
forgot to add: _If_ you manage to get into recovery console, try fixboot and fixmbr commands
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BartPE
Does it include support for Windows 2000? It’s not obvious from the wiki.
+1 to what kert said.
chkdsk is still something to cross you fingers on. It is a part of recovery console.
Being dual boot certainly complicates things.
Probably easier to run diags on the HDD to verify its integrity and if pass then wipe, reinstall, and restore data. If the drive fails the disk diags then it may serve you well as a slaved drive in another system for some time but I wouldn’t trust it to handle rigorous O/S duties. Determine the manufacturer of the drive (open the case and look at it) and locate the diagnostic boot disk in their respective support section.
The read/write head of a hard drive flies over the disk platter at a height of 40 atoms. This is like a 747 flying mach 800 3 centimeters off the ground counting every blade of grass as it goes. In other words, it is inevitable that they are going to eventually crash.
BartBE does Win2K, Win2K3 and WinXP to the best of my knowledge. Ive tried it with Win2K3 installmedia that i had lying around.