Boot.ini problems

T

TicTac

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 5, 2005
Messages
210
Hi all,
I have messed up my Windows install, I will try and explain the situation.

I have a 160gb IDE Seagate HD with my Windows XP Home Install and al my other documents on 1 large partition.

I recently got 36gb Raptor for my Windows install. I also installed XP Home on that HD. However, I wasn't ready to start setting up all of XP, so decided to have a quick go with Vista. After another format I had a clean Raptor.

Of course however my boot.ini file had two OSes to load from, both under the same name. This was annoying as I had to chose rthe bottom on everytime Windows booted so I actually got an OS to load.

I figured I could go into my boot.ini file to change this. So I went in to it and deleted one of the operating system's line.

But it $"&"($& was the wrong one, and I deleted my actual OS install part, fleaving the non existent raptor install code line left :(

Anyway I can change the boot.ini file without booting into windows? I can boot from the Windows XP disc and go to the recovery console, but 'fixboot' doesn't work (well it says it does but nothing changes) and when I try thee 'bootcfg' it says something about my Hard Drive being corrupted. . .

I'm trying to install Windows on the Raptor Hard drive again, it all goes well until I need to reboot, and nothing happens: I either can boot from the disc and be back to the beginning, or get an OS Load error thingmygig

That probably wasn't very clear,
but from what you can understand, any advice? :(

I cn't belive deleting the wrong line can turn things so much for the worse.
 
What would I type in the command prompt?

Remember I can't get into Windows. .

Thanks
 
try booting to the recovery console with the winxp cd, at the command prompt try running the command.

bootcfg /rebuild

next time within windows, click start/run then type MSCONFIG, click on the BOOT.ini Tab, then click on "check boot paths", it should prompt you to remove the not needed entry.
 
thanks for the help, but I'm just giong backwards.

I am just trying to install Windows on another partition but I can't even do that. . .After it restarts from copying the files, I either can boot from the cd ang go back to the beginng of the setup, or I can not boot from the CD and get 'Operating system error' or whatever. . .

That same thing has happened with two hard drives, I guess this is still related to boot.ini? I've tried Knoppix but can't really find anything that would help in that. . .

So why won't Windows even install. . .?
 
Argh, wth is the 'administrators password'? I thought it was just the password for the adminstrator's account but that won't work. . .

Deleting the top line rather than the bottom line looks like it has caused me to have to format my hard drive and spend about a month getting everything back on :(
 
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