How do I recover my Windows XP installation from a corrupt or incorrect boot.ini, without an installation CD and the system will no longer boot?
I am actually going to write the resolution after spending hours overnight trying to recover my PC. http://www.bootdisk.com/ntfs.htm did actually get me most of the way there once I really understood what I needed to do.
I got myself in a mess when I was attempting to stabilise some issues with my XP installation, without a manufacturers install CD. I foolishly edited boot.ini incorrectly and my system failed to boot and I was stuck.
First I had to create a boot CD, as there is no floppy drive on most modern PC’s. This was actually relatively easy with Nero (CD / DVD writer utility, free demo downloads on the Net), which has a standard template to create a BOOT CD. However, once I had booted from this CD into a DOS shell I was unable to manipulate any files on my failed boot (C:\) partition as all the utilities I could find gave me the ability to read my NTFS partition to recover files from it, but wouldn’t let me write to it.
I eventually discovered NTFS4DOS from Avira. I dropped this utility on my boot disk (or USB stick which my PC could also read) and when I ran it (ntfs4dos.exe) it remapped all of my available partitions a 2nd time, but ensured that the 2nd copy was read writable. I was then able to delete boot.ini and replace it with a standard copy from another PC. My PC would now boot again
Also whilst investigating my problems, I discovered that my PC manufacturer had created a 4GB FAT32 partition named recovery. This is presumably to enable me to restore my system to a factory default configuration without the need for an XP installation disc, which presumably Microsoft want a much higher license fee for.
I surfed around my recovery partition whilst I was booted into DOS from my recovery CD (from above). On there I found a utility called WWBMU.exe. When I ran it I got a whole load of information in German. Having done 1 year of German at school 20 years ago, I was naturally able to understand not one word. However I foolishly muddled around what appeared to be a partition boot utility and managed to get my system to boot from the recovery partition.
This appeared to attempt to start a recovery, but then a got a full screen image saying your system is protected by PC Angel shortly followed by a Blue Screen failure. In hind sight, it appears I was indeed going to overwrite my boot (C:\) partition and that PC Angel prevented me from doing this (a damned good job too). However, with that said WWBMU.exe did look like it had options for me to delete & recreate my C: partition. In the event that I did need to restore my PC from a fatal XP issue, it would appear that I could re-initialize the partition and then recover the manufacturers default factory image using WWBMU.exe.
I am no Windows Guru, but I hope this might help someone get out of a mess, like I found myself in.
I am actually going to write the resolution after spending hours overnight trying to recover my PC. http://www.bootdisk.com/ntfs.htm did actually get me most of the way there once I really understood what I needed to do.
I got myself in a mess when I was attempting to stabilise some issues with my XP installation, without a manufacturers install CD. I foolishly edited boot.ini incorrectly and my system failed to boot and I was stuck.
First I had to create a boot CD, as there is no floppy drive on most modern PC’s. This was actually relatively easy with Nero (CD / DVD writer utility, free demo downloads on the Net), which has a standard template to create a BOOT CD. However, once I had booted from this CD into a DOS shell I was unable to manipulate any files on my failed boot (C:\) partition as all the utilities I could find gave me the ability to read my NTFS partition to recover files from it, but wouldn’t let me write to it.
I eventually discovered NTFS4DOS from Avira. I dropped this utility on my boot disk (or USB stick which my PC could also read) and when I ran it (ntfs4dos.exe) it remapped all of my available partitions a 2nd time, but ensured that the 2nd copy was read writable. I was then able to delete boot.ini and replace it with a standard copy from another PC. My PC would now boot again
Also whilst investigating my problems, I discovered that my PC manufacturer had created a 4GB FAT32 partition named recovery. This is presumably to enable me to restore my system to a factory default configuration without the need for an XP installation disc, which presumably Microsoft want a much higher license fee for.
I surfed around my recovery partition whilst I was booted into DOS from my recovery CD (from above). On there I found a utility called WWBMU.exe. When I ran it I got a whole load of information in German. Having done 1 year of German at school 20 years ago, I was naturally able to understand not one word. However I foolishly muddled around what appeared to be a partition boot utility and managed to get my system to boot from the recovery partition.
This appeared to attempt to start a recovery, but then a got a full screen image saying your system is protected by PC Angel shortly followed by a Blue Screen failure. In hind sight, it appears I was indeed going to overwrite my boot (C:\) partition and that PC Angel prevented me from doing this (a damned good job too). However, with that said WWBMU.exe did look like it had options for me to delete & recreate my C: partition. In the event that I did need to restore my PC from a fatal XP issue, it would appear that I could re-initialize the partition and then recover the manufacturers default factory image using WWBMU.exe.
I am no Windows Guru, but I hope this might help someone get out of a mess, like I found myself in.
