[TriLUG] Win2k boot problem

[Joshua Bedick]

Hello Ken,

Try the following - please make sure you have a lilo/grub boot disk as this
may cause problems.
Start the recovery console.
Type the Admin password.
Type "Fixboot [drive]:" where [drive] is the drive letter of your windows
partition, for example c or d.
Type exit

Try it now.

Fixboot writes a new Windows boot sector on the boot partition.
You could also try FIXMBR but that will most likely frag lilo/grub as it
rewrites the MBR.

If neither of those work make sure your boot.ini file (root of the win2k
partition) is pointing to the correct drive/partition combination for
windows.  You can actually add random entries until you get it right.
Remember that win2k treats all Primary partitions as occurring first and
Extended/Logical ones last.  So if you had a hard drive with 1 primary, one
extended and one logical in the extended then the primary would be 1 and the
logical would be 2.  Say win2k is installed on the logical drive.  If there
is space left on the drive and you create a new primary partition then the
order changes.  The first primary created is still one, but the second
primary is now 2, with the logical partition becoming 3.  If boot.ini is not
changed to reflect that then windows won't boot.  If you need to see how
win2k is looking at the partitions so you can modify the ini file type
DISKPART.  It's basically a M$ version of fdisk.  Let me know if you have
any questions.

Oh, I'm a windows sys admin converting to linux.

Take care,

Joshua


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>start original
From: Ken Mink <kmtrilug at nc.rr.com>

Yes, I'm asking a Windows question to a LUG, but there are plenty of
folks here that deal with both sides of the force. Also, my problem
involves Linux, sort of.
I upgraded the HD on my dual boot(win2k/rh8) desktop. See, it involves
Linux. I did a file based copy of each partition from the old drive to
the new one. Everything copied fine and once I got grub installed, RH8
has been running fine. Today I tried to boot to win2k and got a message
that it was an invalid system disk. I think all of the win2k files are
there and on the same partition (hda1) that win2k was on before the
transfer. It's a FAT32 partition. I'm pretty sure I need the Win2k
equivalent of 'SYS C:' or maybe 'FORMAT /MBR'. More likely the former. I
can get the repair console up on the non-booting installation, but I'm
M$ clueless. I have no idea what to do once I'm at the command line. Any
ideas?
Oh yeah. I can't go back to the original drive. It's already in my MAC
and reformatted.
Thanks,
Ken

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>end original


Joshua Bedick,  MCSE
Integrated Technology, Inc.
919-630-3303
joshua at gratedtech.com