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Win2K Boot Failure! Please help.

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drdoug26

Member
Joined
Oct 2, 2001
Location
San Jose, California
Hi all,

Here’s the problem:

My sister brought over her main office computer panicking. No recent back-up!!!!!!!
It had crashed and would not boot. It gave the message NTDETECT.COM FAILED. I Have not been able to even get into safe mode. FDISK shows normal partition stuff.

I have tried the following tricks using the Recovery Console:
1) used chkdsk /r to repair and recover data. I first ran chkdsk and it told me that there was problems with the volume- so I ran chkdsk /r. It was completed successfully and did not that sectors were bad and repaired.
2) Scanned the boot sector with Norton anti-virus (reported no viruses)
3) Used fixboot. And successfully redid a new boot sector.
4) Used ‘fixmbr’ to redo the master boot record. ********(when I did this step I was warned that “THE COMPUTER SEEMS TO HAVE A NONSTANDARD OR INVALID MBR”
5) Used ‘Copy’ to copy and replace a new ntdetect.com from a floppy to the i386 (successfully)

Despite everything I’m still getting ntdetect.com failed and no boot?

I do not know what else to try. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Are there more files that I could try to replace?

Thanks in advance!!!!!!!!!!!!

Doug
 
TRY THIS:

1. Start the computer from the Windows 2000 CD-ROM.

2. Select R at the Welcome to Setup screen.

3. Select Manual Repair.

4. Select only Startup Environment.



:)
 
Tried using Manual repair > Startup environment

and got this error message:

Automatic system recovery encountered an internal inconsistency
{A2210} and can not continue.

Any other thoughts?????

Thanks

Doug
 
drop the drive into another computer and pull all of the stuff thats important off of it. Mind you, this is only a really viable option if you're using FAT, and I think that you are, because you stated that Fdisk said all normal partition stuff.

then format and re-install Windows.
 
drdoug26 said:
Hi all,

Here’s the problem:

My sister brought over her main office computer panicking. No recent back-up!!!!!!!
It had crashed and would not boot. It gave the message NTDETECT.COM FAILED. I Have not been able to even get into safe mode. FDISK shows normal partition stuff.

I have tried the following tricks using the Recovery Console:
1) used chkdsk /r to repair and recover data. I first ran chkdsk and it told me that there was problems with the volume- so I ran chkdsk /r. It was completed successfully and did not that sectors were bad and repaired.
2) Scanned the boot sector with Norton anti-virus (reported no viruses)
3) Used fixboot. And successfully redid a new boot sector.
4) Used ‘fixmbr’ to redo the master boot record. ********(when I did this step I was warned that “THE COMPUTER SEEMS TO HAVE A NONSTANDARD OR INVALID MBR”
5) Used ‘Copy’ to copy and replace a new ntdetect.com from a floppy to the i386 (successfully)

Despite everything I’m still getting ntdetect.com failed and no boot?

I do not know what else to try. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Are there more files that I could try to replace?

Thanks in advance!!!!!!!!!!!!

Doug



i got the SOLUTION FOR YOU....................You formated your computer, didn't you?

let me know if you still need help..........i will give you the instruction how to solve this problem

it's so easyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

did you try to copy ntdetect.com to c:\ from winxp cd rom?

if not, try that..........and let us know ok?
 
I agree with Oni.
Pull the drive and drop it into another PC. Pull off what ever data you want to keep. Though If you are running a NTFS file system you'll have to read it with another OS running NTFS. NT, Win2000, or XP. Win 98, or ME wont read it. When you get off the data you want to keep then stick it back in the other PC, get to a dos prompt and delete all partitions. Then start from scratch. I believe a clean installed is far better then a repaired OS anyway. You just never know.
 
Heres the fix.

After trying all suggestion from all the boards I posted this on, I was only able to recover the important files by reinstalling windows 2K on the same drive but in a different folder. I think I named it WINNT2. Windows set up fine and when It was done it had saved all the old files associated with the original WINNT2 folder.

I was not able to pull out the hard drive for it was in a laptop.

Although I could not log onto the original desktop, I was able to copy all the files that we needed.

Thanks for the replies.

Doug
 
That's pretty good. I probably wouldn't have thought of that. I'm so accustomed to doing clean installs after reformats. And I didn't know it was in a laptop.
Glad to hear you got it done though. Good Job!
 
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