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Inaccessible Boot Device Error (W2K)

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17 replies

by tearley

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I run a dual boot system win98 and W2k pro, on separate physical partitions, Win98 on C: W2K on D:. They have work fine until I insalled W2K SP3, there were no problems durring installation, but after rebooting I got an "Inaccessible Boot Device Error". I put it down to a bad SP and reloaded W2K again and tried SP3 from another disk but got same results. Can't keep rebuilding.

17 replies

by tearley

Please also note that this error occors when you boot into W2K. Can't even get into Safe mode or use W2k CD to repair, Best I can get is into recovery console booting from the W2K CD, chkdsk reports no problems and also have tried FixMBR without success. Win98 works fine. Also Note W2K partition is NTFS.

by sgt_shultz

can you examine/edit boot.ini (hidden, system, read-only file located at w2k os root level.) you will need a boot disk with attrib, edit. sounds like boot.ini is pointing to wrong drive/partition? either that or somehow you are now missing hd controller driver? (is scsi or ide?)

by tearley

Boot.ini is find as you get a W2K startup screen, harddrives are IDE. Worked untill SP3 was installed.

by sgt_shultz

what is your stop error message?
virus protection enabled in BIOS?
what is model number of your ide controller?

by tearley

MSKB is usless, according to MS this error was fixed by SP3. No boot sector virus'. No hardware problems.

by tearley

Point value changed by question poster.
Serious answers only people I am a techie, please try if possible to generate this error and resolve it. I know from reading through the news groups others have this ploblem too. Many thanks.

by bobho

Have you tried booting into the w2k cd recovery console and running fixboot?

I put off upgrading to sp3 because my machine was running great with sp2. I finally did the upgrade a few days ago and it took me the rest of the day to fix all of the problems the upgrade caused. I will think twice about any future sp updates.

DrBob:>)

by tearley

Have allready tried fixboot and fixmbr these didn't help, don't believe HD is the ploblem (99.9% sure). How did you recover from you problems.

by bobho

I could still boot my system but had a number of other disk access issues. I had to remove all of the windows components and then reinstall them to get everything working properly again (this was all through trial and error).

One thing that has been posted in numerous ng postings is that sp3 installs an out-of-date ide driver for ata/133 controllers. If you have this controller you need to replace the ultra.sys file in the system32\drivers and system32\dllcache with the one from sp2. If youdo not have the ata/133 controller this will not help you.

Check your system and see.

DrBob:>)

by tearley

Managed to get win2k back up through setup and upgrade. I've had a read on this isues and tried the Microsoft patch and also the patch from Maxtor (ATA 66 to 100) neither helped infact they put me back a square one. Forcing me through the setup/upgrade again. I don't think I'll risk sp3 again for a while. Any other ideas let me know.

by sgt_shultz

see, which is why we asked what controller. but your a techie and want it all on your terms. you could slip up a copy of boot.ini if not too technically difficult. but being a techie, you understand the win2k boot process so you are sure it is not the problem...
good luck

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