man, I really wish I could remember how I fixed this problem before, but it's been so long. I've had this happen twice, but the second time I just backed up all my files and did a fresh install of win2k.

Did you say you did a recovery install or a repair install of win2k. repair install should fix your boot problem. although I would boot from win98 boot disc and run "fdsik /mbr" and see if that might clear your boot problems first. You'll lose Grub and will need to install Linux again, but I would rather do that since you are new to Linux and probably haven't done as much in it as win2k.

If you don't want to re-write your /mbr, then I would run a repair install of win2k and see if that fixes it.

Running fdisk and losing the bootmanager does not mean that Linux needs to be reinstalled.
One could even check their confing file from Knoppix and reinstall a boot manager from there.

at this point, i don't care wut happens to my fedora installation. i'm planning on trying out a different distro.

i did try to boot w/the setup disks that u can make w/the win2k CD using "makeboot", but even w/that i got a NTLDR is missing message. that's wen i decided to boot from the floppy that had both ntldr & ntdetect.

i'm not too sure if i did a recovery/repair install. probably both.. even rewriting the NTLDR and NTDETECT from the recovery console didn't fix the problem. i also tried out the fixboot and fixmbr commands. and also the automatic repair option.

ok, well the only option you have left, short of re-installing both operating systems is to try, once booted into win2k, copying the ntldr to C:\ and overwrite your old one.

Other then that, I am all out of solutions for ya. I seriously can't think of anything else to try.

do i enter the "fdisk /mbr" command into a MSDOS prompt?

i took a look at my C: folder and found NTLDR and NTDETECT. yet it's still missing when it boots.

yeah, I usually try and save a win98 boot disc and when you get to the boot prompt (A:\) just type that command. As long as you are at a dos prompt, and not win2k's cmd window, it should work.

hmm.. i got this:

C:\>fdisk /mbr
'fdisk' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

As a follow-on to the foregoing - I have a 120 GB and a 30 GB HDD installed in a P4 box. The 30 GB came with the system, but when I installed the 120, I made it the master and the 30 the slave. I had to completely re-install Win XP once due to non-recoverable crash, so, I THINK the WIN XP OS resides on the master.

Question - Can I assume that if no data is showing on the 30 GB unit that the OS resides on the 120 unit? Also, if I try to install Fedora as a dual boot , how would I do so and insure it gets installed on a partition of the 120 GB unit.

Another issue - One time I removed the 30 GB unit thinking I would install it in a 2nd PC but the system would not boot without the 30 GB installed, so I had to re-install it and re-boot.

Question- (1) How could I configure the box by removing the 30 GB unit? Could I get the 120 unit to retain Win XP and then do a partition for my Fedora/Redhat OS?

fdisk is an old dos command that is placed on the win98 boot disc when the disc is created. in win2k, I do believe it no longer exists and therefore you can't run it.

If you have anyone with a win98 boot disc, see if you can make a copy of it. If you can't get a copy or have one made, let me know. I still have one and I can upload the files to my server for you to download.

As for you sgtbob, post your questions in a seperate post so we can attack your questions one at a time. your's could get lengthy as well. I will post some answers later this evening when I am being forced to go to work

sorry.. i don't noe anyone who operates w/a win98 machine anymore. it'd be great if u could help me out w/the files.

ok, here ya go.

http://www.gener8.com/bootdisc/boot_disc.zip

Download, extract the files, copy to a floppy and reboot with the floppy (no cd in cd drive).

It will boot you to an A:\ prompt under old school DOS. You can FDISK from there. I still use this method to format and repartition my drives when starting from scratch and wanting to install fresh. Whatever is on your hard drive, FDISK will remove it if you want.

But the command "fdisk /mbr" will reformat your master boot record only and not the actual partitions on the drive, so don't worry about that.

Now, I am not guaranteeing this will work, but you've tried everything else, so why not this.

Worse case scenario, after using "fdisk /mbr", you can boot up with the floppy, type "fdisk" and it will take you in to the fdisk program. You can, from there, remove any partition that linux installed and start from scratch with whatever distro you are going to install next. I would probably just wipe out all the partitions linux installed and start from scratch on your next install.

Hi Guys. Thanks for continuing to read this thread. My problem is very similar so I'm posting it here in hopes that someone will be able to help me.

I had win2000pro on the first 10 gig physical partition of an 80gig HD using NTFS.
I installed Mandrake 10 on the second partition and it hung when I tried to create a boot floppy. Mandrake warned me earlier when it was about to write a new partition table (I added a swap file), but it never told me that it was about to write a new boot sector to hda. If it had, I would have chosen to put it on a floppy instead.

So, I guess I don't really know what screwed up my ability to load windows...the repartitioning I did during the Mandrake install or the (unknown to me) writing of LILO to the boot sector...

Regardless, when I try to boot now, it says 'NTLDR is missing'. I've tried 'fdisk /mbr' from a 98se boot disk, but no change. I'm trying to build a floppy to boot win2000 that helped psyk earlier, so wish me luck. (the image from 2damncommon's site didn't work)

Anybody understand what went wrong here?

-Mike

As far as I can tell it is a problem with the Win2k files becoming corrupt or such.
I would still suggest checking out the M$ knowledge base article
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=318728
if you have not already.
You can see by the wide range of possible answers in that article that this may not be a simple problem.
Sorry my poor floppy with Lilo was not up to the task.

I am curious about your (itismike and psyk) Linux installs now.
Were hard disks repartitioned? If so, with what software tool? Was the Windows drive defragmented before repartitioning?

Here's the breakdown...I had a 10 gig NTFS partition at hda1 with win2000pro and a couple of 10 gig partitions after that (unused) that I made with the system storage tool available in the win2000 control panel.

I wanted to have my 80 gig hd divided into several 10 gig sections...one for each OS, the first being:
win2000, then:
Drake10, then:
Gentoo, then:
Slack, etc.

I installed the Drake 10 (beta- maybe that's my problem. ) cd and did the following:
I filled the rest of the drive with a fat32 system, then I deleted the
first 10 gig partition after win2000 (hda2) and chose 'automatic allocation' in the Mandrake installation tool. Mandrake built 3 partitions inside that 10gig space:
/home (5.8G), swap (500M), and /usr (I think?) (4.2G).

Then I clicked 'Write Partition Table to Disk' and clicked OK at the warning and let it eat.

So the windows partition should have never been touched. No resize...no boot loader selected yet...yet now it's not booting itself.

An interesting sidebar:
I had another installation of 2000 on another drive and apparently it's boot loader knew about the first installed system. I CAN boot into my original win2000pro system on hda1 from that loader (on hdb1).

Linux, however, hangs.

I am doing something wrong in making this windows boot disk...it looks like all I have to do is format a 3.5" floppy and put on it:
Ntldr, Ntdetect.com and Boot.ini, but it is unrecognized as a system disk.
Any help with this?
Thanks, -Mike

I had the exact same problem.

Since i prefered my Win2k boot, i decided to overwrite my Mbr with fdisk again.
That was the beginning of 10 hours of trouble.

I had missing OS errors, missing NTLDR, ect.
I backuped my files, and repartioned my HD, reinstalled win2k.
Still it didnt boot. In the end even fdisk didnt recognize my HD anymore

In the end i rewrote the first 63 sectors of my HD with a zero-fill, and suddenly it worked again.

I reinstalled Win2k, but back my files, and now i use a grub boot disk to acces fedora, and next time i'll think twice before touching my mbr again