win 2k boot problems

[denver]

Hi,

My computer was running with win98se and win2k. I installed win98se first. I have a 80gb harddisk and set up a c: partition for 98. The rest of my drive was made as an "extended drive" (don't know what it means excactly in PQMAGIC7.0) And split in to smaller drives. The d:\ drive had win 2k installed. Because i never use 98 i delted the drive and allocated the memory to my other drives. I didn't delete the drive itself because it was the active partition and i couldn't set any of the other drives as avtice. The drive still showed to be having some memory so i figured it ket the boot image. But now I can't boot my computer. I get the error "Couldn't find NTLRD". I'm guesiing this has something to do with a missing boot sector. Do you have any ideas how i can recover from this situation?


Thanks

[Murf]

Hi, Welcome to CTH.

1. Hard drives do not have Memory, they have space.

2. As you just learned you do not delete a operating system, but I think we can help fix er.

The operating system (Windows 98) was resting on C: which is the Boot Drive, when you deleted it, the computer could not find it, so you got the error. Actually the computer is trying to boot NT (Win 2K) from the hard disk and cannot find the NT Boot Loader program.

3. Reboot and get into SETUP (usually hit the delete key when the first screen comes up) Set the CMOS to boot from the floppy drive.

BTW: How did you "Delete the Drive"???? just deleted all the files on it?????

4. Now boot with a Windows 98 Boot Disk to get to the A:/> drive then at the A:\> prompt type the following:

fdisk /mbr (hit <enter> key)

This will restore the master boot record to that drive.

Now what do you want to do. Keep W2K as the only operating system? If so then you need to move it tto the C: partition.

If you do not have a program such as Partition Magic, then go [url=http://www.ranish.com/part/]Here and download Ranish, run it and you can move the contents of D: to C: or eliminate D: all together and merge it with C:

[denver]

i know the harddisk has space and not memory ;) just tired so wasn't thinking clearly.

yeah.. i just delted all the files on the c: drive..
hmm if regenerate the mbr.. won't that load the old win98 booter?
Does it automatically remove the win98 option if i move win 2k to the c: drive? ..

IF i use PQmagic to move the drives.. how will this affect my programs?


thanks alot

[denver]

hey.. i have tried to run

fdisk /mbr

but the program only runs for like 1sec.. and when i restart it still crashes

[denver]

hmm just checked some sites on fdisk /mbr which suggest u souldn't use it.. i hope nuthing has ****ed up because of that..

foudn out that i need some boot files for windows. so trying to download a bootdisk and see if i can get the system to work by copying

ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini

to the c: drive..

[jtdoom]

fdisk /mbr was suggested because it rebuild master boot record

the way I understand it, this mbr holds pointers to what partition the computer must use to boot and to the bootloader

doing fdisk /mbr gets rid of, for instance, LILO errors
(guys that messed with linix and then repartition and format the drive still find the bootprocess tries load LILO)

thus, fdisk /mbr was but one of a series of steps.

the bootoption loader was on the windows 98 partition
NTLDR (amongst others) was on the windows 98 partition
to get windows 2000 running again, you will have to use the windows 2000 CDROM
you must boot from it to repair bootloader

(it's been too long ago I done that myself, so I cannot describe the steps right now... )

[denver]

I was able to boot my computer using a disk with the ntldr and boot.ini. I jsut ahd to edit the ini file so it found winnt on the d: drive.. noe i copied the files to my c: drive and the computer starts fine. Now I'll have to see If i can move my drives around in PQmagic so i move windows2000 to c: drive..

[jtdoom]

AH...
the power of the floppy with the files one needs on it.