Whistler\98 Repair help?

[mycoman]

I had whistler and ME installed on seperate partitions, and used ntloader to boot into the appropriate OS. Last week i decided to go back to 98, so i reformatted C: (ME\98 part) and reinstalled. I knew it would wipe over my mbr, but since i had been able to manually repair the same type of situation on a 2K\98 machine in the past, i thought i'd skip it. doh.

When i boot with the whislter cd, i get the option to install, repair thru recovery console, and exit. When i choose recovery console, i login as admin, and execute

FIXBOOT
FIXMBR

After post, i get "cant find Ntloader".. I was under the impression those two options above did just that, can anyone help me so that i'll get the ntloader option menu without reinstalling? Also, how do i make the ERD's in whistler if i didnt do it upon install?

keep in mind i :

1.dont have ERD's
2.have access to the full directory structure of the whistler install via the 98 WinExplorer.

Thanks for the help.

 

[tontod]

are you a registered microsoft beta tester? if not, you're probably on your own, whistler is a beta OS, it hasnt even reached beta2 yet. There are known problems with it trying to install it with other OS'es, read that somewhere.

 

[mycoman]

This is not a beta issue, this happens with all MS OS's when you install 98 secondly. I was just wondering if anyone knew how to direct my machine to ntldr. After i repair the mbr with FIXMBR, it tries to load from ntldr, but because i formatted the C drive, its not there. . .or where should it be?

 

[jaywallen]

If the Whistler repair options are the same as on W2K, just choose to repair startup files. It will re-create the boot.ini, ntdetect.com, ntldr files in the root of the C drive. (If you're booting from a SCSI drive, you also have to have the SCSI loader.)

In W2K if you are issuing FIXBOOT without any parameters, then it writes a new partition boot sector on the drive onto which you are logged in Recovery Console, not necessarily the one that needs it.

But I've never touched Whistler, so I don't know how it behaves in this instance.

Hope you get it fixed.

Regards,
Jim

 

[mycoman]

What paramteters must i use to write that to the C drive, rather than the one im logged on to (F)? The menu for whistler appears to be different, i only get the option to repair via recovery console.

 

[jaywallen]

Sorry, I've been away a night-and-a-day.

I don't know what to tell you for certain about Whistler's recovery console. To fix the partition boot sector for drive C: in the W2K version of Recovery Console, I'd simply issue "FIXBOOT C:" (no quotes) from the command line. I've never actually needed it, but I've tested it. But I'm also not so sure about the way you've got your system partitioned. How are / were the partitions layed out? Where do the intervening drive letters (D: and E between your WinME/98 and Whistler partitions come from? I gather that Whistler is installed in a Extended partition? How many physical drives are there? Are they all IDE? How many Primary partitions exist on each drive? I know that you said that you're using the "ntloader" for choosing, so you mean that the NT boot manager is on control, or is any third party partition control or maintenance software, particularly anything that might hide one partition from another? Can you see ntdetect.com, ntldr, boot.ini (and any scsi drivers, if they are required)in the root of C:? If they are there, and ntldr isn't being found, then it sounds like the FIXMBR command you issued from Recovery Console isn't doing its job for some reason.

Anyone have an idea? With any luck if this line of inquiry doesn't pan out, someone will see us floundering and toss us a line!

Regards,
Jim

 

[vailr]

To create ERD, Start/Run ntbackup.exe.