Ok, so I decided to uninstall Vista Beta 2 today by formatting the partition inside XP, and now for some reason the computer wont boot. It stops right after the BIOS screen and just sits there.
…Tried Knoppix liveCD and it works perfectly.
…Tried XP recovery console: ‘fixboot’ and ‘fixmbr’ didn’t fix the problem. ‘bootcfg /rebuild’ also didn’t help me correct the problem.
FIles are still there as I can see, so just a corrupted bootloader? Any idea to get back inside XP? I am kinda desperate since I have a lot of deadlines to meet this week…
Please share your knowledge and help out a fellow blender head…
Also, is there anyway to edit the NTFS files under Knoppix(i have a feeling that my boot.ini is wrong)? I tried to install CaptiveNTFS (on Knoppix 4.0 CD) but ran into some errors.
If you have two computers, like your drive into the other computer, I’v had to do it for when a bootscreen didn’t install, works perfectly… if you know what your problem is. You could also try safemode (F8) and see where that gets ya
Well, I can’t get to safe mode because the bootloader is messed up. I do have a really old computer I can use, but I am trying to boot right into XP without too much hassle… My other computer has 32mb ram and a 100mhz processor.
The following could be said about almost any operating-system, in trying to diagnose this sort of problem…
(1) The first thing that your computer will do is to execute self-tests and such, as defined by built-in software called the BIOS. Then, it will try to load an operating-system. It will do so in a very simple fashion: by trying to locate, load, and execute a very small master boot record (MBR), which is responsible for finding and executing the “real” boot-loader.
(2) The “boot loader” is a program whose responsibility is to find, load, and execute the “real” operating system. On most modern systems, the boot loader is aware of the structure of the host filesystem and is able to search for the operating-system’s so-called kernel in an intelligent way.
(3) “The operating system proper” consists of the “kernel,” which is loaded into memory by the boot-loader and subsequently stays there until the computer is turned off. Once the kernel is successfully loaded and initialized, it might load all sorts of other files (“VXDs,” “kernel modules,” what-have-you) to fully initialize the system.
So, the real trick is to try to observe what your computer is doing as it starts up, to try to guess where in the aforementioned process it has “gone wrong.”
I’ve borked grub several times playing around with various distros and such on dual boot system (XP/*nix).
Gag will save your bacon till you can get things back in order.
Rescue CD is a bootable cd (or usb stick). If you boot up with it (restart), your system will be gentoo linux. It does not matter what your “normal” system is as this is bypassed by booting with this one.
You only have to tell your machine to boot off of CD or USB instead of hard drive first, this can be done by accesing your bios and assigning which drive order to try to boot from. You can (usually these days) have your system check drives in any order. If a bootable system is found, the first one gets launched. For example A: then D: then C: (or whatever). From that point on, it is a different operating system, yet still will allow access to physical drives present in your system. If no bootable system is found in the first selection, your box will try the next.
You will have to refer to your specific machine’s owner’s manual to find out how to get to the bios set up screen. On mine, I have told hold down F12 while booting. Sometimes during startup you will see a prompt that tells you the correct key to press to enter bios setup. A word of caution here, remember what changes you have made in case you want to change back!
