Ok I reformated my drive (it had xp on it) then I try to reinstall 2000. The setup utility runs fine and all files are copied over to the HDD. When the computer restarts, it gets to the win2k splash screen, then it blue screens with the error inacessable boot device or something like that. I restarted the machine then went to the recovery console and used the fixboot utility. Blue screen again, in the same place. So I went back to the RC and use fixmbr. Same result. I checked the boot.ini file and it is pointing to the right drive. The thing I just dont understand is if the boot device is not accessable, then why is the os able to start (and find) ndldr and ntoskrnl.exe? I can access the drive just fine from the recovery console, but the damn os still gives me that error! Anyway I think that xp did something to the drive because I (re-re) installed xp and it worked just fine, while all of my 2k installs failed. Also this drive is partitioned and I have a lot of data on one of the partitions so I would like to know if there is a way I can repair the drive without having to fdisk or whatever and loose all of my beloved partitions. Thanks in advance.