[davidgman]

Hello all,
At work we run winxp on all the machines, however we had need of win2k to run some old software. So being the rash kind of person I am I simply grab an old HD throw it in my box, drop in a win2k disc and install it on the new HD.

Everything seems to go well, and I just assumed I would boot off whatever drive I wanted by selecting the boot order in the bios. But to my surprise when booting up I had this cool dual boot screen that lets me pick what OS, I thought "how sweet!". So to the point, after setting up 2k and completing the project I go to boot up XP to get some real work done and it doesn't work.

After selecting XP at the boot screen it does a loading bar at the bottom of the screen however when that finishes it gave me a message that the installation needed to be repaired and I should use my windows disc. I did that(used the xp disc to repair the xp HD) and now after selecting windows XP it finishes the first loading bar and bounces back to the POST.

I'm not a real savvy computer guy, everything I do is pretty run of the mill and I am at a total loss. Windows 2k still boots fine so I have backed up most of my important files but I would really like to avoid having to reinstall everything.

ANY advice or thoughts on this problem would be greatly appreciated! The 2k installation is no longer needed, just want my old install back.

Thanks

David

[Advertisements]

Hi davidgman...

I think we can get this straightened out, but I'll need just a little more information. How did you run the repair to XP...was it the repair installation or did you use Recovery Console?

wannabe1

[wannabe1]

Hi davidgman...

I think we can get this straightened out, but I'll need just a little more information. How did you run the repair to XP...was it the repair installation or did you use Recovery Console?

wannabe1

[davidgman]

I did the repair installation. I wasn't sure how to use the console.

[wannabe1]

Let's use Recovery Console to explore the problem a little bit. Boot to the cd and at the Welcome to Setup screen, press R to load Recovery Console. This should take you to a black screen that will list your installed operating systems. Are both Win2000 and WinXP shown?

If yes, select the number that corresponds to the XP install to log on to that partition. You will be prompted for a password. Unless you have set a password, this will be blank by default...just press "Enter".

You should then see a command prompt. It should be C:\WINDOWS>...is this what you see?

If yes, type chkdsk /r and press "Enter". A chkdsk operation should start. This will be a very thorough check of the file system and may very well take over an hour to complete...depending on what it finds. Once it completes, you should see the command prompt again, type exit and press "Enter".

It should boot directly to Windows XP. Does it?

If this gets you back into XP, leave it there and let me know so we can cleanup the boot instructions before you restart the machine.

[davidgman]

Alright I gave that a shot. It took a long time and in the end it said it fixed one or more problems. It does the same thing though, when I select the windows XP it just reboots. Should I have unplugged the win2k drive or something? Other wise everything went like you described it except the end, it did not just load winxp.

Thanks for the help so far let me know if you think of anything else.

David

[wannabe1]

Yes...just disconnect the Win2000 drive and see if it will boot to XP normally. Let me know if it does.

[davidgman]

With the win2k drive unplugged it still asks me to pick which OS I want to use. When I select windows XP it gives me the screen that lets me choose to: start windows normally or in safe mode, last known good ect( which I have tried, it still just reboots after the first loading bar finishes). Should I go through the chkdsk again with the win2k drive unplugged?

[wannabe1]

Boot back to the cd and load Recovery Console as you did before. At the prompt, type fixmbr and press "Enter". Type exit and press "Enter".

Then try to boot normally. We may end up running another repair on this without the Win2000 drive connected. Try the fixmbr command first.

[davidgman]

Ok, It did it successfully but had no effect. It still asks me what OS I want and it does boot in safe mode or any other. All this has been done with the win2k drive unplugged.

[wannabe1]

Does or doesn't?

If it doesn't, run the repair on the drive again using This Guide as reference.

[davidgman]

Sorry, It doesn't. I'll give the repair a shot. Thanks

[davidgman]

Well I am up and running on XP now. It seems my XP user account is gone and all my apps are like they were just installed, but all data still seems to be here. I'll just have to figure out how to get my emails to show up again in eudora.

Anyway, Is there anything I should do now?

[wannabe1]

Are you still prompted for which operating system to boot to?

Try accessing your data files...do you get an access denied error if you try to open anything?

[davidgman]

When I first booted up after repair install it did ask me which OS I wanted still, I selected xp and it worked. I seem to be able to access the files ok, it seems like I just don't have my user profile anymore. No apps have any preferences set or anything, and my email app doesn't seem to be setup either. All the stuff that was on the desktop isn't anymore but I can still find it by going C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop. Is there anyway to recover my old profile?

[wannabe1]

I'm not sure, David. The repair done as the guide suggests should have left the accounts and settings as they were. This leads me to believe that the file system related to your user account may have been corrupt and quite possibly caused the problem. How did it become corrupt? I have no clue, but that's sure how it appears.

Open Control Panel and double click on the "System" icon. Under the "Advanced" tab, in the "Startup and Recovery" section, click on the "Settings" button. In the window that opens, click on the "Edit" button. A notepad window will open (boot.ini)...copy the contents of that window and paste it here for me.