Be Excellent To Each Other

Raptor came thismorning. Disconnected the other drives and installed Vista on half of the Raptor, leaving the other 40gb free for games to be installed on.

All went well, installed SP2, all the updates blah blah.

Plugged my XP drive back in and booted into Vista, picked it and the other storage drive up no problems.

I decided against building a dual booter because my motherboard allows drive selection during post. Went into that, selected the 250gb XP drive. NTLDR is missing.

Now I fucking know that Vista has purposely deleted this to be a cunt, so now I can't get back into XP.

So. I downloaded EasyBCD, created a menu for Vista and added XP MCE to it replacing the missing NTLDR NTDETECT and all the inis.

However, I can't seem to get XP booting from there and I'm sure it's because I need to create a boot.ini again.

Reason I know this is because the very same fucking thing happened last year when I dual booted Vista with XP but for some reason I can't for the life of me remember how to configure the boot.ini to point to the right drive etc.

This is a typical boot.ini

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons

That I found on m$.com

Now. Here is a list of my drives in the disc manager, drive H: is where windows XP is as /WINDOWS



As you can see, it's listed as disc 2.

And here is the root of that drive.



Now, can someone who understands this please tell me what the heck my boot.ini should look like according to all the info above?

I simply have to get back into XP ASAP.

Thankoo.

From memory, it isn't boot.ini - there is a folder on the XP partition c:\boot or something.

Can;'t be more helpful (my dual boot machine is at home and I haven't used the XP bit for ages) but have a look on there and I think there is a switcher type program that tells it to go into XP.

boot from xp disc > recovery console > select XP Partition > FIXBOOT

Then do you're silly dual boot nonsense.

Jeez, pick an OS already!

That would be a great idea and I have tried it. But for one thing.

I can't remember my administrator password for XP so it wont let me into the recovery console.

Hence why I need to create the boot.ini myself.

There are several bootable linux CD ISOs you can download that will reset the admin password to whatever you want it to be.

Malc

Or this

Malc

Easy enough to download a linux CD that'll reset the XP admin password.

Have you tried not putting one in?

I've rebooted three times now. Ive tried nothing, admin, root and any other password I use (nine attempts total) and none of them work.

To top it all off I can't even find my XP MCE disc so I am trying to use XP pro which could of course be why it's not working.

God only knows, but I do know my blood pressure is rising and I am becoming more and more wound up as the hours pass

Problem with those password reset utilz is that I can't burn anything because I'm in Vista and I don't have a burning app for it.

I've done it using the above method before, but that was with one hard drive so it was pretty easy.

Now I have all manner of drive letters, partition numbers and god knows what else to contend with.

Oh and I don't have any blank media to burn.

GNNNNNNNGGGHHH!

That makes you one of them. You know, them! The ones who bring their computers to me, the crappy desktops from PC World with Celeron Processors and 256mb or RAM claming "The guy told me it was top spec". Except that was 1999 and now it's clogged to the gills with virii and spyware and crappy freeware software and toolbars and 3 different messenger apps and it takes 20 minutes to boot and then crashes and I say "what's the admin password" and they look stupid and shrug and I say "I may have to wipe it, do you have a recovery disc?" and they look stupid and shrug so I say "is there anything that needs backing up?" and they say "yes, every [fucking] picture that I've taken since the dawn of time that I haven't backed up anywhere and couldn't live without because it's the only picture of granny left and the baby pictures and that time when Steve threw Jenny in the pool. Oh and 20 gigs of (fucking) music that little Timmy has downloaded from Limewire and NEEEEEDS and would kill me if he lost HAHA" and then I cry and die a little and do it anyway for my meagre fee cos I'm a dirty IT bod and I deserve it.

You know, them.

The truth is Dave that I don't even have an admin password, hence why I don't know it. Fuck knows why it is asking me for one because one does not exist.

Noone goes near my computer and would die if they did so so I don't bother with passwords. Which as I said is why I posted the long winded post above asking how to do it that way specifically (IE - the hard way) and not the easy way.

ImgBurn

Free. Awesome.

Not awesome enough to magic a CDR out of the air, I suspect

*puts left index finger on side of nose, closes left eye, points to Grim with right hand*
You have a point

What's annoying is I used my last blank CDR to give my friend a copy of the XP MCE I use and that's how I not only seem to have lost my original CD but don't have a blank.

Sod's fuckin law.

Well, there goes my XP install and everything who sailed in her.

I finally found my XP MCE setup CD. Booted from it. Ran fixboot it said it had rewritten the boot.

Rebooted.

"Windows cannot boot because there is a problem with your disc's partitioning" and aload more jargon.

Rebooted the CD and this time disconnected the other drives. Ran fixboot AND fixmbr. It said it had rewritten them both properly.

Rebooted.

"Windows cannot boot because there is a problem with your disc's partitioning" and aload more jargon.

I can access the drive in Vista, but unsurprisingly I get this when I look at the drive. It seems that Vista has deleted XP's boot file partition so now I can't repair it.

I love Vista. I really do.

oh dear... erm... it still sees the space as being used... that means the data is still there.

might be time to run a repair install of xp bud.

I can still see the data aye. What it's done is basically deactivate the boot partition on the XP drive and deleted it. Rendering it a data drive.

I haven't lost anything apart from installed games, which of course will no longer run because they can't find their registry entries. Which isn't a problem until you hit one slight snag. Fallout 3.

Install the game from the skullptura compressed image. One hour. Install the Skullptura hot fix. One hour. Install the 1.5 update to make broken steel work. One hour. Install all the DRMS. A couple of hours. For one game

I have saved all of the saves (ooer) so that's not an issue this time, but tbh it means a full switchover to Vista because it's not really worth reinstalling XP. I don't use the PC for media anymore since getting the Xbox and a 32" TV.

Oh well, it could have been worse I suppose.

Should have bought a Mac. And an XBox.

and an Ice cream

*SLURP*

FTFY. Lord Sugar FTW!