XP Fixboot fixmbr commands

[Bullitt]

A few days ago, I was the victim of a borked 'nix install. The daily-build installer couldnt grab some packages because they were broken, blah blah blah, I cancelled the install via the menu.

Of course, it had to mess with my MBR and I got the dreaded "cannot load operating system" after a reboot. No problem, slap in XP disk (XP Sp2 and Textmode SATA drivers pre-loaded via Nlite) hit F10 and jump into recovery console and isssue the fixboot and fixmbr commands.

No dice. What am I missing here? The raid drivers are loaded on the disk, the install using said disk worked well until I got the wild hair up my butt to go install 'nix on a pre-defined empty partition, the system was working (aka it rebooted properly for three days before I had time to mess with a 'nix install) so I feel the textmode RAID/SATA drivers were properly slipstreamed. During recovery console, I see windows loading the "Nvidia SATA Raid drivers (required)" and I can get into recovery console on the c:\windows without a hitch.

System is a Shuttle SN85g4v3 (Nforce 3 250 ultra chipset) using a pata optical drive and a sata hdd. Partitions are now (according to windows) a 15gb, 100gb, and roughly 38gb free.

What did I neglect? Fixboot and fixmbr didnt do the trick, unless I missed some program switches.

 

[pxc]

Maybe the active partition is no longer the WinXP partition.

Try running fdisk (DOS/Win9x boot disk) to check and change which partition is active.

 

[Bullitt]

Maybe the active partition is no longer the WinXP partition.

Try running fdisk (DOS/Win9x boot disk) to check and change which partition is active.

Aahhhhh!! Thats one thing I did not check. I thought the fixboot and fixmbr would correct such oversights.

Will a 9x boot disk make partition changes like that to a NTFS drive? I sorta archived all my 9x/dos boot disks after I switched to NTFS based drives back in '01 (2k then XP) as I was under the impression that those tools were obsolete or non-functional.

 

[Bullitt]

SInce its SATA and I'm not really afraid of hotswapping those drives, could I put it in my existing working box and "disk management" my way outta searching for a boot floppy image? (err, no working floppy drives in any of my systems since I discovered USB drives and bootable CD's in 2001 either)

 

[Bullitt]

Solution was:

repair console of XP
diskpart - to zap the offending partition (Linux EXT3 and swap)
fixboot
fixmbr

Booted back into windows after a chkdisk and all is well. PXC you were on the right track, the active partition was set to the 'nix EXT3 partition I created, I "disk managed" it to make the "C:" partition active with another PC, but that didnt quite solve my issue, but it was a promising step. I appreciate the help