Just messed up my boot.ini

DEL 707

DEL 707

DEL 707

Soldato
Joined
20 Mar 2004
Posts
4,608
Need a little help.

My machine has 2 versions of windows installed, XP64 and XP, both on seperate hard disks, XP64 is on the C drive, XP on the D.

I plugged in an old IDE drive, tried to go into windows XP and it said it couldn't find a file, I can't remember which.
I restarted and the XP boot option has completly disappeared.

My boot.ini now looks like this.

[boot loader]
timeout=5
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional x64 Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /onecpu
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional x64 Edition Dual Core" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

XP64 works fine, I'm in it right now :confused:
 
[boot loader]
timeout=5
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional x64 Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /onecpu
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional x64 Edition Dual Core" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect


you need to change it to this, make sure you back up it on a floppy so you can boot from flopy if something goes wrong,
copy 3 files, boot.ini, ntldr and ntdetect from c:\

copy and boot from floppy first anyway,
good luck,



this should help you a bit,
taken from a www
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Descrip."

Most of these lines use what are known as ARC (Advanced RISC Computing) paths to specify the location of various boot partitions. Almost every machine using ATA (EIDE / IDE) hard drives will have: "multi(0)disk(0)". The multi(x) parameter is used to set the disk controller number, where x=0,1,2,... . The multi(x) parameter is always followed by disk(0); unless you're using a SCSI controller without the BIOS enabled.

The "rdisk(n)" parameter is for the HDD drive number, where n=0,1,2,... depending upon which physical drive this HDD is in your system. The "partition(p)" parameter is its partition on that drive, where p=1,2,3,... in order, counting from a 1 (not a zero).

So, the very first partition on this first physical drive (where our main Windows™ 2000 OS is located) is: "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)." The "\WINNT" which follows that, lets the OS Loader know that the system files are in the "C:\WINNT" folder! However, the Windows™ XP OS often uses the older folder name of "C:\WINDOWS," so the last part of its ARC might be "\WINDOWS" instead.

.......
lol another EDIT,
but best would be to edit boot.ini and copy it on a flopy +ntldr+ntdetect, and then dual boot, check both os if they load correctly,
then you can change the one on your hdd,
you can also fix it in recovery console but forgot which command to use,
 
Last edited:
Phew, back in windows, thanks :)

Little extra question, the boot option now has a "Windows (default)" in it now, how do I get rid of it?
 
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