Recovery Console-Bootcfg-rebuild-fixboot 1

[toolman59]

Tried to load Win98 on a friends computer, which already had triple boot XPs installed and working, formatted C: to get rid of redundant XP and installed Win98, copied back the boot loader files to c: root. Then could only boot into Win98, tried Partition Magic and Boot Magic from Win98, still only Win98 booting. Ran recovery console from CD and went thro' the bootcfg, rebuild and fixboot sequence which did not list the Win98 OS during rebuild. The boot menu now runs and lists the two XP NTFS OSs, choose anyone and XP starts to load but then says Autochk.exe not found and reboots.
Using Partition Magic rescue disc, made sure that all partitions were not hidden. Now cannot boot into any OS at all, not even Win98.
With much effort and research we are now deeper in the mire than ever, but at least we are familiar with recovery console.
What would be the best thing to try now?

Thank you

Toolman

 

[wolluf]

Are we talking 3 partitions on the same disk?

Its not obvious what's now broken - but you could probably restore 98 booting by booting from 98 boot floppy and running sys C:.

bootcfg only works for NT based systems - you'd need to do a repair reinstall of one of the remaining XP installations (when 98 is booting correctly) to recreate 98 menu entry in the XP boot loader (

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315341).

You can also do this manually using (or adapting)

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/tips/xp_repair_9x.htm.

You can create a boot floppy which should boot your XP installations (all things being equal - and if you haven't actually damaged their system files). Copy ntldr & ntdetect.com (they're on the XP install CD in \i386) to a newly formatted floppy together with a boot.ini which you should create yourself in notepad. If XP on partitions 2 & 3 on first drive, it should look like this:-

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

(Adjust rdisk value for subsequent disks, partition value as necessary)

XP creates boot sector on first active partition on first drive (assuming its fat/fat32/ntfs) normally - so when you formatted C: to install 98, you wiped XP's boot sector.

You can normally restore an XP boot sector by making sure it has valid copies of the files ntldr, ntdetect.com & bot.ini present & then running fixboot on it from recovery console.

I wouldn't use boot or partition magic until you've got operating systems to boot by themselves, you'll just complicate matters.

If you have 3 partitions on one drive, are they all primary (best if they are) or is it a primary & extended with 2 logical drives? One use I might put PM too if primary & extended would be to convert the 2 logical drives into primary partitions (if it will let you).

Hope this is useful - as its not obvious what's stopping you booting now (I'm presuming can still boot recovery console & the XP installations are still 'there' - btw, are they ntfs or fat32?)

 

[toolman59]

Wolluf

We have three primary partitions for Win98, NTFS for the XP OSs.

I will try your bootloader first on a drive A: and see what happens.

I have looked at both of the threads and will use the Dougknox suggestions to try and restart Win98, the MS thread I have already and will most likely do this when we have tried your suggestions.

PM and BM have already been tried, I think that that the root of the problem is that partitions are being hidden by PM, if you set one partition as active PM hides the others which might explain why autochk cannot be found.

At the moment BM is disabled in the Win98 partition.

Thank you for your suggestions will report back when we have had another go.

Toolman59

 

[toolman59]

Wolluf

Single disk

Toolman

 

[toolman59]

Wolluf

The recovery console is loaded from the CDROM as it was not installed on the HD.

Toolman

 

[toolman59]

Wolluf

We have got the XP OSs booting again, the basic problem was that PM was hiding the inactive partitions. I carefully checked over my multi-boot system in PM and copied my boot loader files to a floppy.

On the problem computer using PM, I first made sure that the active partition was C:, after that I set the other partions that were hidden to "None". Previously when I had done this in reverse order PM hid the partitions again when the Active partition was reset.

Rebooted from the floppy with my boot loader files and up came XP, copied the boot.ini file into c: root and we were back in business.

Thank you for your help, with the information you provided it made me take a different line to solving the problem.

Toolman

 

[wolluf]

Glad to hear you're sorted.