2 OS on 2 particians

damnyanks

Hey,

Last week I did a format of my hard drives after a little mishap. Got everything up and running just about then the other day it wouldnt boot up at all.

Slapped in the win2k CD and it installed on the I:\ drive. Now when my computer boots up I have 2 windows2k options. 1 on the C and I:\ Drive. When I use the I:\ drive I can view the C drive which still has all the files intact. However when I use the C win2k boot it doesnt show any of the stuff that was on the C drive. Its really annoying! All my software is installed on the C drive.

Anyone help me sort this out?

Champ

However when I use the C win2k boot it doesnt show any of the stuff that was on the C drive

Do you mean that you can boot up with the C drive; but that nothing appears on the drive itself when you view it in Windows explorer? Have you tried viewing the drive through a Dos Prompt?

Could you give any more details?

damnyanks

Hey,

When I boot into I:\ I can view the full contents of the C:\ drive. Everything is there, program files, login accounts. Everything.

Then I boot up with the C:\ drive and none of it exists. None of the other drives (C - I) have anything on them so I've no idea...

MrVestek

This may sound stupid but does the OS on the C:\ drive, do the folder settings have show hidden files turned off? If so your other files may simply just be marked as hidden.

Champ

Weird; never heard of anything like that happening.

Hopefully someone with more experience in stuff like this will come by; but i can only speculate.

(1) Maybe its your boot manager fouling up? I've never used the MS one (i'm assuming your using it); only Linux ones... still it might be worth it to peek inside and see what it's doing.. compare the instructions for I Boot to C Boot; with luck you can reference the latter to fix the former.

(2) Highly unlikely - Certainly not; but maybe it's how you got your partitions setup?
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/structActive-c.html

Champ

This may sound stupid but does the OS on the C:\ drive, do the folder settings have show hidden files turned off? If so your other files may simply just be marked as hidden.

Plausible as well; though i'd imagine for the effect he described that all files on both drives would have to have been marked as "hidden" on the C drive OS. I can't see that happening accidentally :rolleyes:

Hey; can you actually view the correct capacity of the drives when you boot into C?

Also did you try to view them through a Dos window?

damnyanks

Nah, its not turned to invisible

I just logged in. Everything is there alright on the C:\ boot. It just doesnt have anything installed. The only thing I can think of is that I somehow overwrote the actual windows installation on that drive (or someone else ).

Is it possible to re sync everything? The profile accounts are still in Docments & Settings but arent valid logins (Only Admin & Guest exist currently)

MrVestek

Ohh wait now i know what you mean. The programes and stuff are still on your drive, but they just aren't registered with that version of windows. Ok do what i'd normally do. Copy the start menu from one install to the other. Paste it into your username, or all users in the start menu folder of the username in documents and settings folder. You'll have all your shortcut icons and stuff there then. Some programes can run fine without entries in the registry, but some will need to be reinstalled. Just reinstall as you need app per app, you'll soon have that OS in full working order again.

thommcn

Hi damnyanks,

It would seem that the Win2k installer program saw a second OS and botched the boot manager installation. The boot manager is located in the Master Boot Record of your hard drive. The same thing happens when removing Linux.

You need Windows 2000 CD to fix the MBR


Win2k/XP Repair or fix master boot record using recovery console

Problems with the master boot record (MBR) of a system may prevent the system from booting. The MBR may be affected by malicious code, become corrupted by disk errors, or be overwritten by other boot loaders when experimenting with multiple operating systems on a host. This recipe describes one method of repairing the MBR for an XP host using the recovery console.

Directions
Boot with the XP installation CD.

When prompted, press R to repair a Windows XP installation.

If repairing a host with multiple operating systems, select the appropriate one (XP) from the menu. If you have only one operating system, enter 1 to select it.

Enter the administrator password if prompted.

To fix the MBR, use the following command:

fixmbr

This assumes that your installation is on the C:\ drive.

This is a problem as your new drive is i:\ If it was my system and I had the time, I would first fix the MBR, format the C:\ partition and then reinstall win2k. Once windows is up and running again format the i:\ partition.

You will be presented with several scary warning lines the reading of which will make you want to say no. Microsoft is exceptionally vague regarding the conditions under which fixmbr can cause problems although they are clear about the consequences (losing all data on the hard drive), so use this at your own risk.

Type y and ENTER to fix the MBR.

Type exit to leave the recovery console and reboot.

damnyanks

I just formatted everything instead