Boot fix quiz

[crosswire]

You have 2 HDs, and each HD has Windows installed. One of the HD has Win2000 and the other one has WinXP.

Each HD can boot up the machine when you take out the other HD. The default boot is the WinXP drive. The Master boot points to the XP drive

You accidentally deleted the NTLDR file from the WinXP drive and the machine fails to boot. What is the easiest way to fix this problem.










Caution: This is a tricky question, you should assume that your motherboard has boot features.

[Ropy]

If by the use of "fail to boot" you mean load the OS.

Then I would do the following:

• Start-up the PC with the XP disc in the optical drive.
• Load the recovery console.
• Copy the NTDLR from the disc to the /windows/systems32 folder.
• Remove the disc and restart the box.

[crosswire]

This is one practical solution.

Can someone else give me another?

Edit:
That is without using, the XP CD

[giarc]

Simply just download the above mentioned file, access the drive via externally and replace the said file.

[**ScarFace**]

without winxp cd i'll a try use the win2000 NTLDR bootloader on the winxp

[psybuck2002us]

without winxp cd i'll a try use the win2000 NTLDR bootloader on the winxp

Yeah, what he said(although, i dont think it might work).

[crosswire]

Most modern mboards can select the boot device HD1/HD2/Floppy/CD

It defaults to HD1 usually, set bios to boot from HD2 when HD1 fails (see question).

After booting up from HD2, go to HD1:\Recycled\ folder and copy the file that was deleted back to its original position at HD1:\NTLDR

Reboot normally


Explanation
1st Bios --> then the Master Boot (either HD1/HD2/CD/Floppy) --> then the Partion boot (NTLDR)

In this case each hard drive has one partion so only one copy of ntldr is present. NTLDR itself can also point to another partition.

The master boot on HD2 fires which points to one of its partition, its only partition. The partition boot fires and NTLDR is load, NTLDR defaults to the local OS installation and that loads. Remember that each hard drive is bootable by itself.

[**ScarFace**]

win 2000 NTLDR boot loader can use or boot in win 2000 and add winxp to the boot.ini u have dual boot u can boot in winxp if file was not in the Recycled bin

[crosswire]

win 2000 NTLDR boot loader can use or boot in win 2000 and add winxp to the boot.ini u have dual boot u can boot in winxp if file was not in the Recycled bin

I was searching for proof or disproof of this, and as far a my testing went, this will not work.

I used an XP boot-up floppy. (To create: format in XP's My Computer using defaults, then add ntdetect.com, NTLR, and boot.ini from IDE 0 partition 0, or from the main boot partition). Then I rebooted from floppy. Machine started up normally, except the floppy is used. Then I overwrote the 217kB XP NTLDR with 209kB W2K NTLDR. Then reboot from floppy. An error came up while loading XP saying some file could not be found. Reversed from W2K NTLDR to XP NTLDR. Machine booted XP from floppy again.

I am not really sure about the validity of the W2K NTLDR file because that was taken from a back up copy. My machine has dependent dual boot from only the XP NTLDR, at the moment.

The most practical solution so far was Ropy's. Honestly that is what I would do.

Even though the start up process was working!, a problem occurred for different files searched. I did not know before that the start up process would be compatible for both NTLDRs, and the boot process would reach as far as loading windows.

Reference:
http://www.xxcopy.com/xxcopy33.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTLDR
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_Startup_Process

Some things I might play around with, now that I found out that I can boot from a floppy.

multi(0)disk(0)fdisk(0)partition(0)
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(0)
multi(0)disk(0)cdrom(0)
net(0)
A:

Figure out how to boot from

• the XP CD using 3rd option above
• a DOS floppy using 5th option
• a usb thumb drive using 2nd option

Research:
http://www.geocities.com/thestarman3/asm/mbr/WTC.htm for extracting mbr and partition boot

[**ScarFace**]

nice Research u prove me wrong i was thinking if u dont have the winxp cd and file was not in the Recycled bin how would u fix it system32 must have a backup of the NTLDR boot loader