Win98 FAT32 Start-Up Disk + WinXP NTFS = ?

[GeorgesPC]

So..., me, being the crack tech guy that I am, stuck a win98 Start-Up Floppy into the WinXP Machinna and booted. Of course, the PC complained about no partitons [Well, none that it could see], and all that, but I figured, "Oh well, let's just see if we can root around and find some files outside the OS." I wanted to rename a system file that was in use by WinXP so I thought "Hey, I'll just boot to DOS, it couldnt hurt, right?".

Well, now after rebooting because I couldnt do anything with a NTFS partition from a FAT 32 floppy, I just get that silly blinking cursor in the upper left corner.

When "they" say there is no more DOS in XP I guess they mean it, eh? Apparently, XP doesnt even like touching 98.

My bright idea was to try again. Maybe a little "fdisk /mbr" would work? Nope.

I know, "sys c:"? ...
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Nope.

Is there a WinXP boot floppy?

How do I access NT-DOS?

Can I "Ghost 2003™" another drive onto this one using a crosslink cable?

Our XP cd wanted some diskette, blah, blah, blah...

But, the PC right next to it has the same set-up. So, would the easiest thing be to just copy the drive?

Licsense isnt an issue... we've got corporate XP Pro.

To think, all I really needed to do was sign on as administrator and do what needed to be done... Oh well, anyone have experience with force feeding XP old windows floppies?

[custompccases]

http://www.bootdisk.com/

That's for the xp boot disk. Your going to need a lot of floppies Past that someone else will have to help you with the other questions.

[GeorgesPC]

Thanks.

Anyone know if the "Ultimate Boot CD" can help me?

[Bill in SD, CA]

Maybe this will help:

DOS NTFS boot disk to access NTFS partitions in Windows XP 2000 or NT

Bill

[GeorgesPC]

Do you know why putting a Win98 floppy into an XP pc would make it unbootable afterwards?

Does the floppy write to the MBR?

[pelicanman]

Originally posted by GeorgesPC
Do you know why putting a Win98 floppy into an XP pc would make it unbootable afterwards?

Does the floppy write to the MBR?

A standard WIN98 boot disk created via the add/remove control panel applet will attempt to create a temp RAM drive to speed things up. If this instruction got munged and a it created (or tried to create) this RAM drive other than where it was supposed to (ie in memory) it's possible something bad could have happened, but this is somewhat farfetched.

[Kimbo]

My bright idea was to try again. Maybe a little "fdisk /mbr" would work? Nope. I know, "sys c:"? ...

Did you actually run the fdisk /mbr and sys c: from the Win98 floppy? Don't know if it's possible that could overwrite the boot record of an NTFS partition, but if it did I would think that would make XP unbootable.

[Bill in SD, CA]

Have you tired to repair the installation with the XP CD?

Bill

[GeorgesPC]

Yes, I did run fdisk /mbr nad then sys c: from the 98 floppy.... he he he. I knew better but, I havent bothered to make my 6 floppy XP set. And, if w2k or xp are installed with FAT 32 it actually works.

But, the NTFS doesnt like the flavor of DOS unless it is heavily sugared with NT...

My first and fatal flaw was booting the comp with the 98 Floppy. I did not do anything else. But with the warning that there were no partitions and me just smacking down on the "enter key" to get to the a:\> and then going to the c:\> to try to look around anyway. Did something to the partition or MBR. After rebooting to get out of dos, thats when I realized I had messed up.

Not being content with this minor problem, I then reinserted the win 98 floppy and typed fdisk /mbr... rebooted.

Still not happy with the destruction I had wrought I inserted the win98 floppy one more time for good measure and typed sys c: ... rebooted.

Now..., now I was confident that I had screwed the pooch sufficiently.

Luckily it is not a critical PC and there are 20 more to use in the room. But, before I go on to the next unsuspecting installation of NTFS XP, I would like to understand what the win 98 floppy did to the NTFS structure when I initially booted the PC.

[Bill in SD, CA]

If you have Windows NT / 2000 / XP, you can boot from startup floppy disks or CD-ROM, choose repair option during setup, and run Recovery Console. When you are logged on, you can run FIXMBR command to fix MBR.

http://www.ntfs.com/mbr-damaged.htm

Don't know if it will undo what 98 did.

I also don't know if the mbr is ntfs on a ntfs system.

I get the feeling that it isn't.

I'm sure I'll be corrected if this is wrong.

Bill