Is it possible to transfer or merge two W2K installations ?

[Geros]

Hi All ,
I had an istallation of win 2000 which i couldn't boot to.
It was freezing at the windows screen ( after the bios loading and the f8 option to choose ).
I tried to boot
1. from the emergency repair disk failed
2. from the original win 2000 Cd succeded but when reboot from the HD failed.
I also tried the repair option but wasnt able to boot from the HD.
At a point wasn't able to boot anymore neither from the win 2000 CD.
I decided to install win 2000 at the same HD without making a new partition and now i have win2000 at C:\WINNT1 ( the new ) and C:\WINNT ( the old )
The file systen is NTFS.
I Checked the disk with chkdsk /r
Now i can boot to the second installation.
Is there a way i could transfer or merge the old installation to the new one ?
My nightmare is to do all the programm installations from scratch ,configurate the varius programms and so on.
I'd like to repair the first installation of win 2000 and after that i can boot to it , delete the second one.
Or if it's a way that i could " transfer " the programms from the old installation to the new ( it isn't obviously paste and copy )
Any idea would be highly aprecciated.
Thanks in advange .

 

[Ididmyc600]

You could try this

Dont know if it would work but it's worth a play

Slave the drive into a machine running 2K.

Make a ghost copy of the drive or similar , in case it fails

Open explorer

Copy the contents of the winnt1 into and over the contents of the winnt, this will replace the system files but not damage any files relating to installed programs.

Check that the boot.ini relates to the correct installation, to do this open boot.ini which is a hidden file on the root drive it should look like this

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

If you have a second entry like this

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT1
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT1="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

Then make a copy of the boot.ini and edit the boot.ini to look like the first one with one entry.

Once saved reboot the PC

This is all guess work and it may not work if so just restore the ghost backup ( YOU DID MAKE ONE).

Jud

 

[Geros]

Make a ghost copy of the drive or similar , in case it fails

Gonna search for other posts about ghost , in case isn't difficult could you tell me more details ?

Check that the boot.ini relates to the correct installation, to do this open boot.ini which is a hidden file on the root drive it should look like this

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

If you have a second entry like this

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT1
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT1="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

Then make a copy of the boot.ini and edit the boot.ini to look like the first one with one entry.

i have allready copied the originall boot.ini which is :
[boot loader]
timeout=12
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

The current boot.ini is :

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 OLD"
/fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT1="Microsoft Windows 2000 NEW"
/fastdetect

but in my case i don't see any importance at the boot.ini file as its scoop is to give at the user the change to choose the operating system ( in my case old installation of W2k or new installation of w2k ).The problem is that the old installation doesn't boot after the selection.

 

[RealBlackStuff]

Bite in the sour apple and start from scratch. That merging will never work.