Recovery Console HELP?!

[goobernoodles]

http://www.wown.com/j_helmig/wxprcons.htm

I was getting NTLDR Missing messages.. got the fix on a floppy, but that didnt work.. anyways I wanted to try the FIXMBR and/or FIXBOOT from the recovery console. I pressed c to start it and it asked which win 2k installation would you like to log onto? and 1 was the only choice, and I pressed 1, and nothing happened... help? lol

[Bill in SD, CA]

Welcome to TechIMO!

Did you press enter after inputting 1?

Bill

Are you booting w/ the 2K CD or an install of Recovery Console?

[goobernoodles]

At first I didn't press enter, because I wanted to see if it would go without pressing enter - because it said pressing enter will cancel... WHY would anyone program enter to cancel? especially something where you have to input something... morons...

Anyways.. I pressed enter and it would just sit there.... forever...

I am using the win 2k cd

[originel]

have you tried the automated recovery? if i remember right there is a section to fix the mbr.

As far as logging in...that's interesting. I would recommend trying your administrator account (if it's not what you normally use), guess it's there to prevent people from messing up an install.

after pressing enter, did anything happen? blank screen even? or did the screen not change at all?

[goobernoodles]

It did not change at all... and the other option- emergency something.. would just freeze..

[originel]

well...i'm all out of ideas there, that's wierd that it is just freezing like that. also i haven't seriously used windows in a long time since i'm a linux user, so i may be forgetting something

One idea if you don't want to reinstall windows...it's kind of radical and it might be fairly hard for you. But you could use a cd-based distro of linux (such as suse or knoppix) that has lilo on it and install lilo, which is (IMHO) rather easy to install, and you WILL get it to work (with our hellp of course). lilo is the linux bootloader, although you can set it to boot whatever you want, including just windows.

i won't go into the details just yet, i want your opinion on this idea. for a linux beginner it might be very difficult, just because the differences between the two operating systems are vast. but it will fix this problem. also i can give you a lilo.conf file for your system.

[goobernoodles]

Actually.. the computer is my dad's and hes in the middle of comprehensive exams, and he really needed his files so we went out and bought a 80gb ide hd, installed windows - and i was able to acess his files, and copy them to the ide hard drive, reformat the SATA drive, and reinstall windows.

Thanks for the effort.. I'm gonna have an extra 80gb HD in my computer now.