Windows 2000 won't start

[danmaday]

I have a friend who has a laptop that is having problems. It is running Win 2000 sp 2. I backed it up for him using "Backup My PC" v 4.61 onto tape. To try to ensure the tape was good (and to satisfy my curiosity about migrating back to a desktop) I restored the tape to an old disk (drive D) that I put in my XP Pro PC. The tape resored fine. Then I took the drive out of my PC and put in an old junker AMD 800 as Drive C:

Big Problems:

1. Had to do fixboot and fixmbr from the repair console of Win2k.

2. Had NTLDR and NTDECT problems. I fixed those.

3. Had winnt/system32/config/system "missing or corrupt". Fixed that.

Then I hit a wall.

The system would not boot.

I got about 3 white bars into the startup and it re-booted.

I used the ERD, which I created from the laptop, and did a system repair. Win2k repaired a lot of stuff and then about 96% of the way through the repair it said sp1.sif which is part of sp1.cab mentioned in [Sourcedisks] is missing and it cannot be repaired. So I answered skip it. The comment on the skip it answer was something like this could impact your system real bad.

I re-booted and got about 2/3 of the way through startup and it re-booted. I tried a boot log. Apparently I don't get far enough into startup to move the bootlog from the registry to the disk. Some Microsoft tech note about smss.exe said that.

Obviously skipping the sp1.cab repair was not correct. I imagine that's what is blowing me out of the water since the Win2k repair probably restored me to a pre-sp1 state and references to sp1 drivers are killing startup.

Anyway that's my guess.

I don't know where to go from here so that I can solve the sp1 problem. I searched using Google and there were a lot of the same questions but they referred to XP Pro and the answers were an in-place upgrade. Is there such a thing for Win2k?

As usual any help will be gratefully appreciated.

[rpertusio]

Originally posted by danmaday
in-place upgrade. Is there such a thing for Win2k?

Check out Article 292175 - How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade of Windows 2000

This should work great. If you have any questions, let us know. I personally have done an in-place upgrade many times on 2000 and XP.

You might also find this article of interest too:
Article 306952 - What an In-Place Windows 2000 Upgrade Changes and What It Does Not Change

- rp

[edit: added 2nd link]

[danmaday]

RP

Thank you so much for the references. It's very hard to find relevant info on the Microsoft site.

Now for the results. While the solution didn't work as advertised, after a little fooling around I got it to work.

Briefly:

1. Repair couldn't find my original installation but it did recognize that there was an operating system on the disk and asked me if I wanted to install in a separate folder. I said yes and called the new folder WINNTnew. It installed.

2. I reloaded all of my "save" from tape again.

3. I went back to the install CD and went to repair again. This time it could see my original Win 2k. It asked me if I wanted to repair. I said yes. Twenty minutes later it was done.

4. Because of the restore my boot.ini reflected my original WINNT. So when I rebooted again it came up repaired.

5. Somehow in the process some of my microsoft office products got messed up. When I tried to re-install then (Word and Excel) windows wouldn't let me because it said I had no CD at the source disk "1". Yep, no typo 1. When I said cancel it said my data1.msi set the disk location.

I went into the registry and searched for data1.msi. Found the key and deleted it. Then I could re-install office.

So I'm okay now.

Thanks again for your help.

Dan

[rpertusio]

Glad you got it worked out, even if you had to jump through a few hoops (of fire?) along the way!
- rp

[Jeordiewhite]

Once you get the data backed up, if he has any more problems, maybe you could just do a reinstall from there,
If you want to use SP4, try this: http://www.duspinnst.com/bootcd.htm
It also does the same with SP4 for win2k.
Then from there back up his system for another emergency.

[danmaday]

Jeordie

Thanks for the lead.

It always amazes me what a wealth of knowledge exists within the TECHIMO community.

Dan