I recently had a Win2K Prof. workstation give me a message during boot that read:
“Invalid Boot.ini File
Booting From C:\Winnt
NTDETECT Failed”
I had recently done a parallel install to C:\Winnt2 on this machine due to other problems. It hadbeen running fine. The user inserted a Zip disk and double-clicked on the disk icon, causing the system to lock up. His only option was to do a hard reset. Upon restarting, he received the message above. I checked out the Boot.ini file. It is correctly pointing at C:\winnt2.
I booted from the Win2K CD and selected Repair. I inserted the ERD and the system reported that it couldn’t do a repair due to unrecoverable errors on the HD. I then ran the Recovery Console, did a Chkdsk /f /r, thendid a Fixboot. Upon rebooting to a floppy disk, the only thing left on C: is a log txt file created by either the Chkdsk or Fixboot. I then examined the MBR and it is showing the drive as being a FAT12 disk. Orignially it was FAT32 (no NTFS was set up on this machine).
Since I haven’t written to any other area of the HD and haven’t changed anything with FDISK etc. (I have be cautious NOT to do this) I believe I can recover my data if I can restore the MBR/Boot Sector back to the way they were. I have a disk sector editor (MicroScope and others). Does anybody know where I can find the proper boot signatures for FAT32 and other file systems? Actually, any suggestions at all would be appreciated.
Brian