What Are Some Solutions for an Older Computer's Boot Up Issue?

[kmbop53]

hey, I have an older computer that I am messing around with. I am by no means an expert, i am really doing this to learn about how things work.I can get through the first part of boot up (windows 2000). Then an error message comes up that say that it cannot find the boot data in the floppy drive, no matter what I do it always seems to get hung up there. I don't know any input wold help. I don't know if this is of any value i have a slave drive hooked up that is running windows 98, i don't know if this would conflict but I would think it shouldn't matter.

 

[Luminous Blob]

How old is this computer? Is Windows 2000 already installed on it, or are you trying to install Windows 2000 on it and having trouble completing the install?

 

[kmbop53]

How old is this computer? Is Windows 2000 already installed on it, or are you trying to install Windows 2000 on it and having trouble completing the install?

Windows 2000 is already installed. it was working but I messed with it and it won't boot, maybe i screwed up the wiring or somthing. It was an old computer from my mom's work.

 

[fargoth]

it starts loading win2000? or does it look for the floppy drive and complains before you see win2000 starting to boot?

before you do anything try hitting F8 and selecting last good configuration.
if that won't work try safe mode.

if you can't even get to that selection menu, you might have a damaged MBR (main boot record).
try booting with you win2000 CD, get to the recovery console, type
do a chkdsk, fixboot, and fixmbr.
if fixmbr won't work, try running diskpart and see if the partitions are all okay (i.e the one with win200 is there and marked active for starters).
for more info look here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q229716/

if you discover the problem is with the partition, boot from the CD again, and select install, it'll say there's already a windows there and ask if you want to repair or do a clean install, select repair...

well... come back and post what you get if you follow my suggestions...

 

[rcgldr]

Did you always have both hard drives hooked up, or did the problem only occur after connecting the second hard drive? It's possible that you don't have the hard drives setup on different cables, or setup as master / slave on the same cable.

If the Win2000 hard drive connection was changed, or on some systems, if the "boot order" in the bios was changed for the hard drives, you may need to edit boot.ini to change the rdisk value. I'm assuming you didn't add or change partitions.

 

[Integral]

Just to cover the obvious bases... You don't have a floppy disk in the floppy drive do you?

You could always remove the floppy as a boot option in bios.

Oh yeah, If it can run Win2k then it is not that old of a computer.

Now if you were booti9ng from 2 floppy drives... That is an old computer!

 

[kmbop53]

no I don't have a floppy in the floppy drive, the problem is that i don't have the win 2000 cd the computer is from my moms work and i don;t know if it is still there. I'll try some of those things, i am pretty good a usiong computers just pretty illiterate when it comes to seting them up and that sort of thing.

 

[fargoth]

well, if you don't have a win2k CD, it's not a poblem.
there are several rescue CD's (it's a good idea to have one around anyway):

for windows using bart's PE
http://www.ubcd4win.com/downloads.htm

for both windows and linux:
http://trinityhome.org/trk/

but if you can log-in with F8 (last good known configuaration) the problem is solved, and if you can get into safe mode, you probably won't need the rescue disks.