PLEASE help me guys :)

[downhiller80]

Right, I used to be pretty good at sorting problems out, but since installing win2k I've not had any OS related problems for over 2 years!

But yesterday I booted and got this:


"windows 2000 could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM"

So I tried to repair it by booting off of the win2k CD. First hurdle was that it couldn't find myh installation, I remembered I need to show it the Promise Ultra100 drivers, which I've now done.

Then it gives me two options; console repair or automatic repair. Automatic repair will not work because it asks for an emergency boot disc and I've no idea where it is. Pressing "L" to make it search for the installation itself is also fruitless.

Which is odd, because if I go to "console repair" it has no problems finding my winnt directory.

But I don't know what to do in the console to fix my windows problem. There's an indentically sized file called SYSTEM.ALT which I could try renaming to SYSTEM I suppose, but I suspect things might only be made worse by this 🙂

SO - how can I sort this out? My "tool" at the moment is my housemate's aging windows 98 laptop. Not going to be easy to create a win2k emergency boot disk on here is it....

CHEERS

- seb

 

[downhiller80]

anyone.... got some work i have to finish, in a bit of a rush 🙂

 

[bmacd]

try posting this in the appropriate thread..."Operating Systems".

-=bmacd=-

 

[yoda291]

u could try copying the file over from another functioning system if it's one of those non-system specific files. Else, you're prolly going to have to restore from backup. You do have a backup right?

 

[downhiller80]

I have a single hard disk, 120GB. I could restore from backup but it'd be pretty old to be fair...

My partition is one large NTFs one. It's been a while since I played around with this sort of stuff.

Can I re-install win2k to another folder on the same partition, without losing everything on the partition AND will I be able to access all of my documents etc from a new installation?

- seb

PS alternatively I have another hard disk I could plug in and install to. But the same question stands - would I have access to all of my old data on the NTFS partition? Also I seem to remember moving hard disks around before and win2k not liking it one bit, the GUID of the drive changed and I couldn't access anything, or something odd like that.

Any input appreciated. Posted here instead of "operating systems" because I need help swiftly and I know this forum gets a lot of traffic. Guilty as charged.....

 

[yoda291]

Originally posted by: sebfrost
I have a single hard disk, 120GB. I could restore from backup but it'd be pretty old to be fair...

My partition is one large NTFs one. It's been a while since I played around with this sort of stuff.

Can I re-install win2k to another folder on the same partition, without losing everything on the partition AND will I be able to access all of my documents etc from a new installation?

- seb

PS alternatively I have another hard disk I could plug in and install to. But the same question stands - would I have access to all of my old data on the NTFS partition? Also I seem to remember moving hard disks around before and win2k not liking it one bit, the GUID of the drive changed and I couldn't access anything, or something odd like that.

Any input appreciated. Posted here instead of "operating systems" because I need help swiftly and I know this forum gets a lot of traffic. Guilty as charged.....

IC, I generally recommend that data is kept on a seperate partition from the system, but I guess that ship has sailed already eh? You can drop a clean install on another drive and your data should be accessible. The most troublesome thing I've usually encountered is that you may need to import your drive as a foreign volume in disk management. As far as installing on another folder is concerned, it should work (it does as I've done it), but you run the risk of futzing with your boot settings and you'll get an annoying prompt at boot time to ask which windows 2000 installation you want to get into. I recommend that you install to another drive, slave your old master drive to that installation, copy over all your data to cd/nfs server and then wipe it out, repartition reformat and redo the system.

 

[wnied]

try posting this in the appropriate thread..."Operating Systems".

-=bmacd=-


Man aint that the pot callin the kettle black. Seems I saw a post you tried to link earlier on your Linux problem.
~wnied~

 

[WebDude]

Originally posted by: sebfrost
Can I re-install win2k to another folder on the same partition, without losing everything on the partition AND will I be able to access all of my documents etc from a new installation?

Yes. You can even install over the same WINNT folder, and not loose your documents. As long as you don't reformat the partition, your document files will remain. However, you will have a new win2k install, with a clean registry, and to read or use your documents, you will have to reinstall Word (or whatever program you were using).

WebDude