no boot.ini

Yo-Yo

Yo-Yo

Member
My boot.ini is still here but when opened, there is no text. Any suggestions? I know if I restart, I may not be able to load windows. I do not have a backup. Would System restore work? Here's how it went missing.
I have xp home and a 64 bit pro trial. on xp 64 i install acronis disk director 9 trial with a little boot loader. I forget that the disk program is linked to the boot loader and i format that partition:o . So then my pc would turn on, say something, then turn off. So I think reformat the whole thing. I put in the xp pro 64 disk and do the first part of the install over the partition that i formatted earlier and after it restarts, i'm back in xp home.:confused: so now here i am, afraid to see what will happen if i restart or anything. and I keep getting a this file is corrupt, please run chkdsk blablabla. So that is my story. What should I do next?
 
To repair the XP Home mbr you would boot from the Home version's installation disk to the recovery console since you have removed the XP 64bit installation there. The default Windows installer looks by default for the first partition on the hard drive. Without having first corrected the Home version's mbr the other installer couldn't correctly write the needed changes.

Try entering "Fixmbr" and "Fixboot" at the recovery console for XP Home. The default XP Home boot.ini file should see the following without XP 64bit installed.
[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 home" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

You will have to excuse the "Window s" and other separation of letters seen when pasting from the boot.ini file directly. For a look at how the Home/64bit boot.ini might look,
[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 home" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft windows xp professional 64bitl" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
 
Are you still trying to load XP 64 or Home at this point? If you have a full install disk for the Home version you can try the repair install method. This would restore the mbr by essentially writting a new one. The Home version would then load from that with the Acronis tool taken out of the equation. The 64bit version would later be reinstalled without the Acronis shareware to see if that will detect and edit the new boot.ini on it's own. Read the article on performing the "install to repair" method at http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm
 
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