Well ive managed to get myself into a grub related mess....

[Tanner31593]

So heres how i messed up my computer this time,
As of last week i had windows xp on one hard drive,
and ubuntu on the second hard drive so i had grub,
and i had just downloaded windows 2000 with limewire ((a very daunting task on dial up....14days 6 hours)) and i wanted to delete ubuntu completely and install windows 2000 over it.
Well, i burned windows 2000 on a cd-rw...that will mean something later.

I deleted ubuntu ((yeah and grub)), then i started the windows 2000 setup,
and it went through the first portion of the setup then at asked me to restart my computer and boot from the hard drive to resume the setup.
Well having no grub,
the next time i booted,
I couldnt......
Ive viewed other topics,
So i tried the windows xp operating system restore disk,
ran recovery console,
but when it said to enter administrative password is where i got stuck.
I thought that it was the password to log on and stuff,
but apparently not.
I tried making an mdos start up disk,
when i typed in fdisk /mbr,
it said path not valid.

So now im left with the 'oh sh*t' feeling,
but bottom line,
i want to delete ubuntu and install windows 2000 on that hard drive.
Oh yeah,
and i burned the windows 2000 iso to a cd-rw,
and the first time i put it in the drive it booted fine,
but the second or third time it did not boot,
and when i put it in the cd drive on another computer i get something like "E is not accessable." retry or cancel,
when i put it in a drive under windows 98.
As if it had been erased........i have had that problem before.


I desperately need to get back into my xp............then i can at least install the other boot loader i downloaded,
then make another win2k cd.
But how??????????


Tanner.

[Snee]

Man, if you formatted there should be no grub there to bugger things up for you, maybe your win2k installation just got buggered (sounds like the disc is messed up, all right), in fact even if you hadn't deleted grub first, the bootloader from 2k should have gone on top of it since windows always does that whether you want it or not.

Next time, however, maybe you should repartition the whole drive, or at least remove and remake the one(s) your OS(s) was/were on.

Did you get any I/O errors or anything like that? Ran into that when trying to install win2k on a new drive a little while back.

I honestly can't tell you what you are supposed to run from the xp disc to repair or replace the bootloader if grub was on that drive, it's been so long I'm sure someone here does, tho'.

Or was grub installed on one drive, and the windows loader on the other?


Also for future reference:

If you want to multiboot, make sure to install windows versions according to how recent they are, older before newer.
And if you want to put grub on top of the windows mbr, put linux in last.

[Tanner31593]

Sorry for the long gap,
it wouldnt let my post for a while,
Well,
the windows 2000 wasnt installed completely,
in fact i dont think the setup actually began,
it was just the part where i picked what drive for it to be on etc.....
And i dont really remember if i reformatted.......i dont know,
i had the flu.
Well I reinstalled ubuntu just to i could boot to xp to get all my stuff,
and now i guess grub,
when i click on 'windows 2000/nt/xp,
it goes right to windows 2000,
and since the setup was not complete,
i think grub wants to do windows 2000 as the default,
andit says such and such setup file is corrupt/deleted please run antother setup of windows 2000,
which i cant do because my disc is messed up,
and when i push boot to xp it acts as if i never clicked it and goes straight to 2000,
which gives me the error screen.

[4play]

whack in your xp cd and then get to the recovery console by pressing r when it says. The admin password can be blank so just try pressing enter and hope you never set one. Now type fixmbr and it should reinstall the nt bootloader.

If you have set a password for your admin account then you will need to download a linux live cd that has something like john the ripper on and hope its not too strong overwise it might take a while to break.

I hope you have installed this new version of win2000 on your second hdd overwise you might just have destroyed your xp install.

[Chewie]

My Bart Super PE disc has Locksmith that removes XP passwords fine.
Don't know if it's a regular feature of Bart PE though.

[4play]

My Bart Super PE disc has Locksmith that removes XP passwords fine.
Don't know if it's a regular feature of Bart PE though.

The problem with removing passwords in xp is that any data that has been encrypted with the password is now unrecoverable.

much better to try to crack the password with something like john the ripper or the now discontinued lophtcrack.

if you really want to overwrite your old admin password chntpw can do it and it will fit on a floppy so no large download.

[Tanner31593]

Well,
I will downloading chntpw or whatever it is,
I will probably be posting back because it looks a little confusing,
Maybe im just a.d.d.
Probably the latter......................
haha.

[Tanner31593]

Well that worked,
and i changed the password and did the mbr thing,
but,
now when i try to boot to xp it says Choose which operating system you would like to start or something like that and the choiceS are Windows 2000 and Windows xp, and i try to select xp but it seems to ignore,
i can scroll to xp but when i push enter nothing happens and it tries to boot 2000,
which the setup was never complete,
in fact im not even sure if it actually started,
Im not sure but i know that i didnt put them both on the same hard drive.
When you install like 98 or xp you know how its like a section then it has you reboot,
then it starts again?
Well it just finished the first little section,
with the welcome screen,
all i remember it doing is formatting the partition then asking me to restart,
Its only a 13gig hd,
And i think all of it is xp except for like 600mb,
So im sure i didnt do it on the same hard drive.
So it automatically boots to 2000 than says,
""""Windows 2000 could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: <Windows 2000 root> \System32\ntoskrnl.exe





??????????????????????????????????????????
God i really hope i didnt screw things up to the point where i have to reformat my hard drive....................

[4play]

sounds like you destroyed your xp parition when you installed win 2000. and since 2000 never installed properly you no longer have a working os.

either grab a linux live disc and have a look around the partitions to make sure xp is still there or just reinstall xp from scratch.