a Little problem

[broekage]

Hey everybody, just a little question.

Someone I know has had some computer troubles. She's using Win 2000 Pro and it started acting weird, so she reinstalled it, but she said that first she partitioned her drive so it wouldn't delete all her files. She lives halfway across the country so I can't be there to help her, but this is what I got from our telephone conversation:

- She can boot into windows, but her desktop isn't the same as it was.
- under C:\docs and settings\ there is a folder called "all users" and one called "all users.winnt" among others
- her boot.ini file looks like this (the stuff in the signature() is obviously different, but you get the picture, and I dont know why it's getting cut off):

[boot loader]
timeout=30

default=signature(d342552)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT

[operating systems]

signature(d342552)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect


I figured her partition went wrong or something, because I made her change the bottom one to say partition(2), but it just says that it doesn't exist.

However, she can access her files that used to be on her desktop. Instead of being in the C:\docs and settings\all users\ folder, they are in the C:\docs and settings\all users.winnt folder (or something like that). Also, her installed programs don't work anymore. Like if she launches a .doc file, it opens wordpad, not word.

I'm a little stumped, but I think something major is messed up, perhaps in the registry or something like that.

Any suggestions?

PS. She said she partitioned through windows, so I guess she did it before installation.

Thanks so much,
Broekage

[Buckus]

This is the kind of stuff that happens when you install Windows on a drive with portions of Windows still on it, mainly the user profiles. The extra all users.wnnit folder is a sign of that. One of them is from the old installation of Windows, and was automatically rennamed with the .winnt extension so that any data it it wouldn't be lost.

Second, since you only have one drive, the boot.ini only needs that last entry, you can safely delete the other stuff, unless you have multiple instances of Windows installed on your computer, i.e. Window 98, Window 2000, Windows XP...

[broekage]

Originally posted by Buckus
This is the kind of stuff that happens when you install Windows on a drive with portions of Windows still on it, mainly the user profiles. The extra all users.wnnit folder is a sign of that. One of them is from the old installation of Windows, and was automatically rennamed with the .winnt extension so that any data it it wouldn't be lost.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. So she messed up the partitions when she reinstalled, right?

Originally posted by Buckus
Second, since you only have one drive, the boot.ini only needs that last entry, you can safely delete the other stuff, unless you have multiple instances of Windows installed on your computer, i.e. Window 98, Window 2000, Windows XP...

OK, but does it matter which one, since it said the signature() one as default a couple of lines above that?

I actually had her boot with a boot.ini that had the second line removed, but that just booted into the windows that she normally booted into.

Is there any way to uninstall the newest installation of windows 2000, while keeping her files? Is there any way of her being able to launch all of her programs without formatting the whole thing and starting anew? I'm pretty sure she has lots of important stuff on there, but I guess she can back all of her stuff up to CD-R's if there is no other way.

What do you guys think?

Thanks

[broekage]

*bump*

Thanks!

[broekage]

please?

[broekage]

can anyone help me?

[Flying Fox]

It seems she can boot into both the new and old instances of Windows so this is actually an opportunity. Boot into the old one, closely examine what needs to be copied over (or backed up) and record them. Your friend seems to be organized enough so everything should be under My Documents and should be a easy file copy. The other tricky stuff would be IE favourites, cookies, Outlook Express messages and so on. Methods to export/copy those exist you should be able to search those. Just copy the stuff over to the new folder under C:\Docs and Settings\[new user]\My Documents

As for apps you may have to reinstall them and lose the settings unless you can back up the registry/ini/config files and that will be a bit more work but not impossible.

Then you can just "disable" the old OS by deleting the old entry in boot.ini or defaulting to the new one with a timeout of 0.

As for uninstalling the new instance of Windows, I'm not too sure if there is an option for you to save a backup if you install from an existing version of Windows (it's possible with earlier OSes but not too sure about Win2k).

[broekage]

Originally posted by Flying Fox
It seems she can boot into both the new and old instances of Windows

That's part of the problem: she can't. Both of the OS choices lead to the same instance of W2K. That's what had me puzzled.
I think that the new installation screwed up somewhere (or she did ;))

I guess that means that I should tell her to just save all of her important documents and stuff and just format and reinstall then, right?

[Flying Fox]

Originally posted by broekage
That's part of the problem: she can't. Both of the OS choices lead to the same instance of W2K. That's what had me puzzled.
I think that the new installation screwed up somewhere (or she did ;))

I guess that means that I should tell her to just save all of her important documents and stuff and just format and reinstall then, right?
Not really, you can locate the old files under C:\Docs & Settings and copy them over to be under the new profile. Data files are definitely copyable.

Then just disable one of the OS choices in boot.ini and you are done. This is by no means the "clean" way of doing it though but it should be quick.

[broekage]

Originally posted by Flying Fox
Not really, you can locate the old files under C:\Docs & Settings and copy them over to be under the new profile. Data files are definitely copyable.

Then just disable one of the OS choices in boot.ini and you are done. This is by no means the "clean" way of doing it though but it should be quick.

Do you mean just get rid of one of the things in the boot.ini file so that it will start up normally and not ask her which OS to use?

Won't is be a whole lot neater (and probably more stable too) to just reinstall the whole thing?

[Flying Fox]

Originally posted by broekage
Do you mean just get rid of one of the things in the boot.ini file so that it will start up normally and not ask her which OS to use?

Won't is be a whole lot neater (and probably more stable too) to just reinstall the whole thing?
The old instance of Windows is effectively gone so it should be pretty stable (we are not talking win9x/me here).

Unless you are prepared to walk her through the whole searching, cataloging, backing up and restoring process (in terms of data and app settings) this is the quickest way to go. The only issue will just be a number of extra profiles folders/files, which can sit there perfectly benign.

[broekage]

Yeah, I guess so...

Thanks Flying Fox ;)