I have a non-bootable Win2K drive ("invalid system disk, press any key...."). I do not have a Win2K CD to attempt a repair, so I installed the disk as a slave in a XP Pro workstation & copied ntldr, ntdetect, & boot.in from the 2K drive to a floppy. Now I can boot into Win2K via floppy, but am unsure how to go about getting the disk to boot on its own. I've done something similar to this before, but that entailed the 2K CD for repair.

Since there's some very sensitive data on it, I figured this was as good a time as any to "ask questions first & shoot later".

Not much you can do there whitout a cd. Don't know if you can download the bootable set of 4 floppies for win2k.

however if you can get a cd try to run this two commands from the recovery console. One is "fixboot" and the other "fixmbr".

Ok, the customer managed to find their Win2K CD. I tried the fixboot c: & fixmbr options without success > still won't boot. I can still only boot into the OS via floppy, as per my post. This is so frustrating. Any other suggestions?

The version of windows you are using needs 3 files to boot properly. 1. ntldr to start the process and point to the second file boot.ini which contains your operating systems id and location on your boot sector, and thirdly you need ntdetect.com to allow the system root to be "found" and begin loading itself... These three files need to be native to the C:\ drive or your root directory on your boot sector for Windows 2k. If you boot off of c:\ but load windows on D:\ then make sure you put these files on C:\ not D:\

The first two commands you tried earlier are great. However, that just leaves you with a blank boot.ini file and this doesn't tell the ntldr what or where so it defaults to the last "active" partition and if you don't have the other files there nothing happends. So you have to coordinate!!

1. fixboot then fixmbr

2 copy or expand the original ntldr and the ntdetect.com files to the c:
then run bootcfg /add to put your system in the boot.ini file you just erased with fixboot and fixmbr. Here is the way to that from windows help...

Have fun!!

Remarks
The following is a sample of bootcfg /query output:
Boot Loader Settings
--------------------
timeout: 30
default: multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

Boot Entries
------------
Boot entry ID: 1
Friendly Name: "Microsoft Windows XP Professional"
Path: multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
OS Load Options: /fastdetect /debug /debugport=com1:
The Boot Loader Settings portion of the bootcfg query output displays each entry in the [boot loader] section of Boot.ini.
The Boot Entries portion of the bootcfg query output displays the following detail for each operating system entry in the [operating systems] section of Boot.ini: Boot entry ID, Friendly Name, Path, and OS Load Options.


Gary

go to bootdisc.com and download the file for win2k and create the 4 floppies needed

sorry but should read
http://www.bootdisk.com/

Easy peeze. Boot from the windows 2000 cd, and choose emergency rpair (not recovery console)

This will fix it right up, provided windows is on c:.

Having a very similar problem here. I have a Win2K machine and I have copied an image to a new HD. Problem is, I DO NOT HAVE ORIGINAL INSTALL CD. I tried fixboot and fixmbr, but I still get the error "ntldr is missing". Boots fine from floppy. I'm assuming the my bootfiles (ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini) are fine or I wouldn't be able to boot from floppy. Since this is a different HD, would there be a problem with the HAL? Don't understand this too well, but it doesn't make sense since the system runs fine and the drive is recognized correctly in the Device manager.

Create the below boot.ini file on the floppy diskette drive.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

Copy the NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM files from another computer using the same Operating System. Both of these files are located in the root directory of the primary hard disk drive. For example, C:\NTLDR and C:\NTDETECT.COM should be the locations of these files on many computers.


Once these files have been copied to a floppy diskette reboot the computer and copy the NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM files to the root directory of the primary hard disk drive. Below is an example of what commonly should be performed from the A:\> drive.

copy ntldr c:
copy ntdetect.com c:

After the above two files have been copied, remove the floppy diskette and reboot the computer.

This ought to work.

Get hold of a copy of Knoppix CD, so that you can boot from it and copy and data off the Hard disk. Then you can safely reformat the hard disk and reinstall W2K.

See other replies about repairing boot files (you really need a W2K disk to properly repair Windows).

Y don't u try downloading a Win98 boot disk from bootdisk.com and botting with it. At the command prompt type

sys c:/

(assuming C: is the drive you wish to boot from)

Now the drive becomes bootable.

PS: This works only if C: is FAT16/32