I'm trying to reinstall W2000 SP4 in my PC from CD in a new partition.
The intall runs first a textmode (DOS?) program that formats the partition, copies some files ant then restarts.
There starts the problems. If i let the PC boot from pc it stops with the message "No OS found". If i let the CD boot it runs again the textmode program, asks to format again.....
Any ideas?
If you give me the solution I'll explain how did i lose my OS, so you can laugh at me....
Before the first reboot, the Windows 2000 installer modifies the MBR of your first HDD. If you were multibooting already, it adds an entry to "Keep installing MS Windows 2000" or something similar. If you weren't, it just does nothing.
The "No OS found" happens when the computer doesn't find a bootable MBR in your HDD. You are doing it right removing the CDROM from the drive (although you will be prompted to reinsert it afterwards during the installation). I really don't know what's happening.
You can try booting with a Windows 98SE boot diskete and trying to fix the MBR to a MSDOS/Windows 9X one using FDISK /MBR, then try to install Windows 2000 once you have done it. Your MBR may be heavily damaged and probably the Windows 2000 installer cannot modify it correctly.
If the partition is formatted using NTFS, you'll have to destroy that partition with FDISK, create a FAT32 one, format it, then install Windows 2000, and from there, convert the partition to NTFS. This _may_ fix it.
Anyway, I would need to know more: Are you installing it in your first partition? Is there any other OS installed in the HDD? Which one?
Knowing how you broke the previous installation would help as well, besides making us all laugh
.
Don't be afraid, I've broken lots of stuff in the most stupid ways :lol:
The partition is NTFS and all my downloaded music and books are there so i would prefer not to delete it. I have 10Gb free in the disk so I could reinstall there if it's possible. Another solution would be to recover the files then delete the partition, if i can access NTFS from anything else than W2000, is it possible?
The problem arose when I tried to install Linux (in it's own partition) with a faulty CD, the install halted and left me without any system. W2000 repair options did not work, as they asked me for the Repair disk, you can imagine I did'nt bother to make it.
I already tried to boot with W98 and use FDISK with no success. I did'nt know that /MBR option, I'll try again.
Btw: Yesterday i added a second HDD and Ubuntu Linux working (so it says), and a lot of unpartitioned space. I installed Linux after the 3rd try to install W2000 failed. Perhaps it can help.
Can't you start the recovery console from the Windows 2000 CD? If you can, you can always try to execute the FIXMBR command and then the FIXBOOT command which should place a correct MBR on your hard disk. Performing a CHKDSK after that would also help if the directory has been damaged.
Check this:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.asp...-US;229716
If everything else fails, you can temporally install another HDD as the primary one, leaving your current one as slave. Install a temporal Windows 2000 (minimal) on the new drive, run the recovery console, and try to perform such tasks from there. Then remove the new HDD and put everything as it was before.
Thanks for your help Nathan!
I'm currently writing this from a fresh install of W2000, with access to all the data i did'nt want to loose.
... In fact one of the problems was I had set the boot sequence in the bios as Diskette-CDROM-HDD1 and i did'nt notice HDD-1 is in fact the slave disk, the master is HDD-0....Stupid. :roll:
I'm waiting to finish downloading the updates from MS to do an emergency repair disk, now I have lost my Grub Linux boot, so I must keep mangling with the boot sectors....
Glad to help
I'd suggest you looking for a good boot manager.
You recommended GAG sometime ago. Have you changed your mind since then?
Somewhat. Note that I used GAG to boot a machine that had MSDOS, Windows 95, Windows NT and Debian Linux. It worked just fine, but maybe you need something better.
I can't remember its name right now, but there's a free partition manager that runs in a DOS box that is able to install a nice and featured boot manager. If you can wait until this weekend I'll check it out.
Anyway, I found this one with a simple "free partition manager" in Google, so it shouldn't be hard to find
A boot manager allows you to select the OS at start AFAIK, what more features does have "something better" than GAG ?
More abilities. The ability to swap disks (MSDOS, Windoze 9X/Me should be instaled on drive C:, this program makes the computer believe that the fourth partition in the extended partition in the third HDD is C: so you can install MSDOS there, for example), to do cascaded boot managing (you can point to the second HDD via a menu entry and have another boot manager in there) and some other things, like timed automatic boots (i.e. when 3 seconds pass, the computer boots to a concrete partition). The proggie also lets you manage partitions, create them, convert their formats, split or join them with ease and on the fly.
GAG looks somewhat ugly, also
This one is plain text mode, GAG is in "SCREEN 12" and look very "Borlandish"
Plus I haven't tried it with anything older than Windows NT 4.