the former joe. b,
i didn't see your post until this morning. i would have tried that command if i had seen it.
i just spent 45 minutes writing a post an it disappeared. so i am going to make this shorter.
i want to thank everyone for the help on this problem.
i punted. i was able to install dos-6.0, win3.1 and then win95 to the c drive. now i have a running but crippled computer and can access the net.
i still can not boot the d drive, which is the main drive that i trade from. in attempting to image that drive, i find that ntfs is not compatible with norton ghost and i think not with drive image.
i like w2k because of its stability. if it is just as stable in fat32 that that seem a better way to go. in searching this thread, that seems to be the better way to go for a single home computer. i am using partition magic 7.0. has anyone actually converted a drive, with data on it, from ntfs to fat32 and gotten good results? i have been converting empty drives with no trouble.
1. i believe i will go with fat32 if it is just as stable.
2. i have apparently further damaged the files on drive d by installing dos and win3.1 and win95 on the other drive. according to windows help:
"You must install Windows 2000 only after installing MS-DOS or Windows 95 to prevent MS-DOS or Windows 95 from overwriting the Windows 2000 boot sector and the Windows 2000 startup files."
i would like to revive the d drive and its logical drives. does it seem likely that i could reconstruct these files?
i know that when i boot up, the boot choice is not w2k or w2k, it is w2k or windows. so as the machine boots it is reading d drive as windows although it is clearly w2k. although the choice is purely rhetorical as, when i chose windows, the computer just goes to a black screen with a blinking cursor. this makes me think it is booting into dos, but not exactly, and if i could just set the boot files right.....
3. is it more likely that i will have to do a reinstall of w2k on the d drive? if so, could i install over the existing w2k and save my files or is it just better to do a clean install and try to retrieve my data from a ghost image?
this is assuming i can do an install as i have control of the c drive and the cd-rom.
answers to these questions or any other ideas would be greatly appreciated.
sorry to be so long winded. i have been at this since yesterday morning and am not close yet.
thanks
belker |
