messed up my boot.ini

J

Jakeman1086

New Member
I'm an idiot and messed up my boot.ini file. Unfortunately, I can't use the bootcfg /rebuild option in windows recovery. An error is displayed "Failed to successfully scan disks for Windows installations. This error may be caused by a corrupt file system...". I think it is b/c I'm using an OEM Windows XP cd.

Is there any other way I can edit the boot.ini. I just need to freaking reset it. I messed the boot.ini up so bad that it doesn't detect any windows installations at all :(

I have a LOT of important stuff on this computer.

Thanks!
 
You can try ERD Commander
Boot from it and edit your boot.ini
If still can boot him up, you can always conect that HDD to another computer and take you stuff out.
Hope that helps
 
This may or may not work, use at your own risk. If it doesn't work you used it at your own risk...

1) boot off your windows XP cd and boot into recovery console

2) Choose your installation and log in as admin

3) run the following commands:

Code: 
attrib -h c:\boot.ini

attrib -s c:\boot.ini

attrib -r c:\boot.ini

del c:\boot.ini

Each of those codes is a separate command...

Now rebuild the boot.ini file

Code: 
bootcfg /rebuild
When it asks you to add installation and gives you the all/yes/no option, you choose yes. Load Identifier is just a fancy way of naming the installation, so you would just say Windows XP Professional, for example. Then it will ask for other two options, set them as /fastdetect and /noexecute=optin

then run...
Code: 
chkdsk /r
This will repair any file system problems that may or may not have been part of or resulted from the issues that caused the boot.ini to go bad. This takes a while to run, and is not always necessary but considered to be "best practice."

Now finally run
Code: 
fixboot

That will write your new master boot record to the boot sector
 
LoL just open the "boot.ini" file with the Linux Ubuntu 9.04 OS and write this text in:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn


This example is for the Microsoft Windows XP Professional edition with ONLY ONE PARTITION!If you have more then one partition,just make the right changes,save the file and shut down the Linux Ubuntu 9.04 OS.




Cheers!
 
S.T.A.R.S. said:
LoL just open the "boot.ini" file with the Linux Ubuntu 9.04 OS and write this text in:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn


This example is for the Microsoft Windows XP Professional edition with ONLY ONE PARTITION!If you have more then one partition,just make the right changes,save the file and shut down the Linux Ubuntu 9.04 OS.




Cheers!
Click to expand...

If there is any file system corruption or corruption among other needed system files that method will not work. Which is why I posted what I did as it would cover all bases and probably would take just as much, if not less time to run than booting off a live Linux CD, if you left out the chkdsk command.
 
Thanks for all the help. I should mention that there shouldn't be any other corrupt files. All I did to corrupt the boot.ini was edit it directly. Then, I immediately rebooted, and it failed to load.

Would you still recommend your method tlarkin?
 
Jakeman1086 said:
Thanks for all the help. I should mention that there shouldn't be any other corrupt files. All I did to corrupt the boot.ini was edit it directly. Then, I immediately rebooted, and it failed to load.

Would you still recommend your method tlarkin?
Click to expand...

You can skip the chkdsk /r then, but that will create a new boot.ini file and write it to the boot sector, which is what you need.
 
I tried everything in the Windows recovery console. Nothing works. I'm in the ERD Commander gui right now. Seems promising. How do I access and change the boot.ini from within ERD Commander though?:confused:
 
Haha!!!!!!!!!! So it finally worked. What'd I do? A whole bunch of random crap. But, what finally worked? I opened up ERD Commander (an amazing program by the way), located the backup boot.ini I had (you can view all your files through ERD Commander), and saved it to the root C:/ and D:/ drive, probably just needed D:/ though. Restarted, and worked like a charm.

Thanks for everyone's help!!

Btw, I would have been okay anyway, because ERD Commander allows you to view all your files. So, I could have simply transferred my backup saved on the same computer to my external and restored after reinstalling windows. I know, I'm an idiot for only having a backup on the very same computer, lol.
 
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