hi all, i tried to configure my boot.ini to dual boot win98 on E: and winxp on C: (in an effort to get Linux installed on the remainder of E.

apparently, i screwed up and followed a bad example.

i made a copy of the original boot.ini...

how do i delete boot.ini and rename my copy boot.ini - linux apparently doesn't write to ntfs partitions and i can no longer boot into windows (yes, i tried booting 98 off the 2nd hd, but that isn't working either - don't know why).

i do not have a floppy drive and, amazingly, getting together a boot cd has been a royal pita.

i have the Ultimate Boot CD and will try that tonight - but i will have to learn as i go.

i have a boot floppy's files in a folder on my computer, but my cd software is cheap and doesn't explain how to take those files and make a bootable cd - of it even has that capability.

is there winxp freeware that does this? if so, how so?

tia...

Use your Windows XP installation cd as a boot cd then press R for the recovery console which will start the command prompt (you need the admin password)
then change to A:drive or F drive(Flash drive)

A:\>copy boot.ini c:

it will ask do u want to overwrite? enter yes or y

DS,

thanks, but i don't have the boot disk - it didn't come with my system IIRC.

i have the ultimate boot CD (UBCD) and i fire up freedos boot disk... it doesn't see boot.ini... or copy of boot.ini - both files are 100% there.

I fire up DRDOS, it sees boot.ini, but doesn't see copy of boot.ini, which is also there.le/.

this is bizarre.

i tried and edit boot.ini in drdos...

"Disk Error - operating system error number 1 Temporary file - c:\ED006180.$$$"

it is absolutely amazing how difficult something so simple ought to be.

the easy answer is... use the boot cd you got with your system... but many people don't get that cd b/c msft is darn cheap!

what then? burn the whole system b/c it is impossible to change 10 freaking characters in a text file?

unbelievable. unbelievable.

win98 on E: and winxp on C:\> ????? ?????
Wont work, W98 craves C:\>

the only way you may succeed with that is by installing W98 as normal
on C:\> and then open our computer and physically move your HD from master to slave. in which case you will have a very slow_loading W98 that will lie to you by saying that it is on C:\> while it's actually are placed as f ex e:\>.

I remember doing it once by misstake at a friends place, a long time ago.
When 98 still was in beta_stadium .
XP you can put on a secondary but W98 has to be
on your first primary Partition C:\> . No wonder it crashed

Now i'm not sure on what/how you have done anymore
Still, i'll leave it be and hope for the best .

When you installed linux you choose to put your bot manager on your HDA:s MBR? What one would call C:\ in dos right.
Or..
You have'nt gotten around to install Linux at all?
In which case you can disregard my question.

You could buy a floppy drive (usb f ex), they are cheap,
then search in google for boot diskettes for W_XP (five floppy's).
with them you may repair your original MBR/boot (as described above).
But no guaranty. It is after all XP.

You have W98 also, you could try to start with a start/system diskette for W98.
( Your W98_kernel_version system diskette ).
Or configure your computer (in your Bios) to start from an
usb_memory stick in wich you put your W98 start/system diskette.

Then after starting you go from the a:\> prompt to the c:\> prompt by writing
< c: >, then you will see the c:\> prompt in your dos (_black_that_is) window.

The reason why you need the absolute right W98 kernel
is because now you now will write this < fdisk /mbr > .

If it's the right kernel and you write exactly as i show you here there wont be any error_messages, actually no messages at all if all goes well.

With a Little luck you then will have restored your W98/W_XP dual boot.


Even simpler, put in your W98_boot_CD, get out of the installation GUI
( Graphical User Interface ) that is.
Then go to c:\windows\command by writing :
< c: > then < cd windows > then < cd command >
where 'cd' stands for 'call directory'.

After that you just do an < fdisk /mbr > and reboot without startdiskette / CD

That is because W98 keeps a copy of its MasterBootRecord which you now will have installed over the broken one.

If worst comes to worst you may get the better of those two OS:es back. Windows 98 that is .

Because: i don't know in which order you installed the two original OS:es.

If you installed XP first and then installed W98, ahh well, it's still worth a try

But either way you will have (as far as i know) to reinstall your Linux.
If you had installed it, that is...

Maybe there are some simple way of repairing your MBR
from Linux but i have'nt found it yet.
If there is i would love it

BTW: you wont destroy any data on your HD:s by trying this..


Regards Yoron.

yoron, thanks for the input. i actually have a simple problem - my winxp boot.ini is misconfigured and i need to delete it and rename my copy of the working boot.ini.

that's it - then i'm back in business.

i haven't messed with the MBR. i haven't installed linux at all. i haven't even shrunk my 2nd hd partition to make room for linux since i need to scandisk it - which is why i changed my boot.ini in the first place (winxp apparently doesn't do scandisk and i was getting errors trying to resize the partition).

i didn't know that dos boot disks can't access ntfs partitions...

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000434.htm

i do now! so linux won't work. neither will booting into dos.

i think i do need to swap HDs and make win 98 the master and HOPE it boots. then, maybe, i can acccess winxp and make the very simple changes to my boot.ini file and the working copy.

if not, i will have to haul my HD into work and load it as a slave drive on my computer. then i will due the maintenance to get it up and going again.

what a pain.

it is ABSURD that windows makes something so simple, so darn difficult.

AAAAAAAARGH!

Ok, WinXP actually do a scan of your filesystem if it finds it 'wrong', automaticly, in much the same way as Linux does, the difference being that in linux you have to say 'yes' to a filescan/repair.
Could you see your NTFS files by using DR whatever Dos . Sorry , never used that one.

If you edit your Win ini file B u t have your MBR intact, you should still come, when starting your cmpta, to a dual boot ? Ini files the cmpta reads after the boot, they are steering the OS into the right lanes so to speak.

Even if you only just booted up in XP directly before (without ever seeing your W98), you will still be able to use 'f8' , directly after you passed your cmptas bios_testing.

You had a dual boot from the begnning (i presume now).
Because: without the dual boot, how did you choose which system to start in??

If you still have it then you just have to press 'f8' after choosing WinXP, that should give you your choices. If you don't get a dual boot and you had it before, then your mbr are broken in wich case you need to fix that first. Then it has to be your MBR, and nothing else.
And if you never had a dual boot fr your XP/98 then you had something going that i don't get.

When you press your Cmptas_startbutton, first it does a bios check which involves testing/communicating with your hardware and seeing what you have (new/old) on your cmpta, when it's satisfied with that working it goes to your Hd to look for your mbr, which is where your operating system takes over (software). You should be very carefull with using 'thirdparty software' to fix/manipulate your XP, the only software i've used for XP, to change partiton size, is partition manager. Which i can vote for as actually functioning

After pressing 'f8' you should try to chose " last working XP" first, Xp takes 'snapshots' of your OS with inifiles and all at specific times, called 'restorepoints', if you're in luck that should be enough. otherwise you try 'safe mode' and after being in your XP, look for where you can change to the very first 'restorepoint' your XP made, as a last resort you try what the first guy told you, as that offer exist there to after your 'f8'.

Still, i would prefere W98, i find it more versatile , smaller, faster, more 'known', working third party software, and with the last updates you can find (use google), better for a private citizen. And it will work with Linux...

To fix the mbr, if you have a standard WinXP cd (as opposed to a system restore cd), you boot it and run the

recovery console (password required), and type

FIXMBR
ex: fixmbr \Device\HardDisk0 ( writes a new master boot record to the device specified: )

FIXBOOT
ex: fixboot d: (writes a new partition boot sector to the system partition in drive D


fixmbr writes over the mbr
fixboot writes over the boot sector

( see http://www.microsoft.com/resources/d...ns_fixmbr.mspx )
....................................


You can completely bypass the mbr, boot sector, and boot files quite easily from a boot floppy (or boot cd) ...........

1) see XXTB #33 at http://www.xxcopy.com/xxcopy33.htm.

just boot your homemade floppy and XP should boot boot.


(2) There exist an alternative way to make your boot at:
http://www.xxclone.com/

and on

http://www.ranish.com/part/
But read on first and check especially the helpfiles before doing anything.

( thanks to GuestToo (Puppy Master) and jcoder24 for pointing me the way )

Quite incredible how folks here manage missing the point.
GNewbie, I see two options here.
1. Find a Linux distro which supports writing NTFS right out of the box (easier) - or build yourself such a custom boot disk (harder).
2. Pull out that hard disk and connect to some other box which can write NTFS.

You know you guys think XP is good and try to use it to multi-boot Linux. That is the longest way.

If you install a Linux with Grub (Ubuntu, Mepis, Suse, Debian, Fedora,Mandriva.... then you don't have to change the disk order. Win9x can still be in E and XP is keeping its place. Grub can do all this by a few lines of commands.

Grub has a map statement that can re-map the disk order on-the-fly so that Win9x in E can still be booted into a "C". Grub can also hide any M$ partition in fron of a target partition to satisfy M$ system's fantasy of being in the first partition of the first bootable disk. I have made Grub boot 4 XP once.

When a good Linux is installed it checks every partition for a boot loader and include it for booting automatically. Thus you could get Linux to boot XP and Win9x without lifting a finger. Grub control everything by a batch text file always stored as /boot/grub/meny.lst. Typically a system is booted by 3 lines.

You can put Grub in a floppy, a root partition, MBR or/and a CD. Every system in my box can be booted by a Grub floppy.

I have 2 DOS, 2 Windows, 1 Win2k and a XP among 50+ systems and they all booted by one Grub. I keep every boot loader in my box and so XP is booting 10 systems too.

One can get one boot loader to boot another. The technique is known as chain loading and is the only method XP knows how to boot others.

In conclusion I suggest you resize a hard disk, make 2 partitions (1Gb for a swap and 5 to 10Gb for a Linux), and install a Linux in it.

I would say Mepis is probably a good one as it comes as one Live CD but with an installer inside (an icon named "Insatll me"). Ubuntu has different disc for hd-installl and another one for Live CD. Fedora/Suse/Mandriva/Debian are big guns each with 3 to 12 CDs. You need a Live CD to rescue a Linux if it doesn't boot.
---------

Lastly you don't know what you have missed out until you get a Linux Live CD, boot it up, copy the boot.ini into a thumb drive, do whatever amendment with it (in Linux or Windows) and put the modified version back by a XP, DRDOS or any system that supports NTFS filing system.

Emerson,

thanks for the input. i didn't know some linux versions had ntfs support. i solved the problem, so i won't be looking.

the solution was to create a Bart's PE disk...

the instructions are here...

http://webserver.computoredge.com/ed...ver&issue=2345

i followed the instructions and it worked like a charm. i would recommend bart's pe to anyone with a windows box.

plan b was to set up the drive as a slave on another computer with admin privileges... i didn't need to go that route, though.

i have more questions, but they are off topic for this thread.

thanks for all the help and i hope someone else finds this information valuable.