I give up, help please :( (might be long)

[Helevitia]

I HAD Win98, Win2k, and Linux installed and working just fine. I woke up last saturday morning, turned on my computer and all sorts of shit was happening. I will spare everyone the details as it doesn't involve my problem. Anyway, I ended up reformatting my primary drive and reinstalling win98. ok, no big deal so far. Now, I no longer have the boot.ini and ntldr file and I forgot to backup those files before I reformatted. So my problem is, I can't boot win2k. I thought I could figure it out but I can't seem to get win2k to boot again. I really don't know what to do exept create another boot.ini file and add the ntldr file. Problem with this is, I have 3 harddrives partitioned in all sorts of ways so I don't really know how to add the syntax in the boot.ini. Actually, shit I dont even know what I'm doing. Here is my HDD setup:

C: = Win98SE 10GB
F: = Games drive (logical partition of C: ) 10GB
C&F = 20GB Maxtor DiamondMax40 ATA100

D: = Win2k 7.5GB
The rest of the partition is used for Linux and linux swap 7.5GB
D = 15GB IBM ATA100

E: = Backup Drive
E = 12GB Quantum Fireball KA

Here is what I've tried so far:

1. Repair from Win2k CD, this doesn'twork because I don't have the emergency repair disks and when I tell it to find win2k, it doesn't not sure why.

2. Ran some kind of system commander style program and it tells me the ntldr is missing.

3. Smashed my computer into 5 million tiny little pieces. Not sure why this didn't work. I felt better though.

Noramlly I'd would have just reinstalled by now because I have no patience, but I would have to take my puter into work to get VPN working again and this would be the third time. What a hassle that is. Any help would be greatfully appreciated

Dave

[SteveC]

Re: I give up, help please (might be long)

Originally posted by Helevitia
1. Repair from Win2k CD, this doesn'twork because I don't have the emergency repair disks and when I tell it to find win2k, it doesn't not sure why.

Did you hit F6 and give the win2k setup program any drivers it needs to access your hard drives? (e.g. SCSI drivers/IDE RAID drivers/blah blah)

I've always done the repair from the win2k CD when I've had the same problem as yourself...

[Helevitia]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the reply. As a matter of fact, soon after writing this, last night, I remembered that small little detail(I'm a dumbass) and loaded the ATA100 drivers with F6. Unfortunately it crashed with some kind of fatal error but I was so tired I just turned it off and went to bed. I have never seen this fatal error before, it was something different, Usually it complains that it can't access the HDD or something but not this time. Anyhow, I'll keep try that. Atleast I knwo that someone has done the same thing and that is how you solved your problem.

Thanks,

Dave

[Helevitia]

process1_initialization_failed

Here is the error I get upon bootup:

process1_initialization_failed

Here is the article in support.microsoft.com:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q307/0/12.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=gn&FR=0&qry=process1_initialization_failed&rnk=1&src=DHCS_MSPSS_gn_SRCH&SPR=WIN2000

The article says that it is supposed to happen after a service pack install yet it happens to me when I run the recovery disk. To make matters worse, it tells me some files are encrypted. How do I see if these files are encrypted? Actually, how the hell does it even know I have Win2k files yet, I am just runnig the install CD. Shit, now everything I am saying doesn't make sense. Can anyone else makes sense of this? (sigh) I may have to reformat and reinstall, drag my computer into work, install the crappy VPN software that can only be installed from work and has a huge high cpu utilization bug, adn drag it back home. Reinstall everything, kick my dog, and bend over so Microsoft can rape me one more time. But I'm happy, really!

Dave

[bacon]

Erm, I'm not sure i can help, but my computer is a triple boot machine also. On boot i first get a linux boot manager that gives me the option of Linux or Windows only, on selecting Windows I get a second boot manager for XP and ME, is similiar to yours?
If you run the command fdisk /mbr it'll only remove the linux boot manager and you might be able to recover your Win2K installation this way......maybe.......

Anyway here's my boot.ini:

[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
C:\="Microsoft Windows Millenium Edition"

Maybe you can bastardise that. I think YOURs would look something like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows 2000" /fastdetect
C:\="Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition"

I think.

[Schorsch]

There is a small freeware tool called Bootpart which can be very helpful if you want to modify a Windows multi-boot configuration:

http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm

Maybe you can make some use of it...

Georg