Nimbus

Hellppp!!

My laptop running Win2000 has a problem. It will not boot up. It gets to about 3/4 then does not go any further. I think I know what's causing it, but I can not get into safe mode or any kind of Command Prompt to sort it out. None of the start up options start properly.

Is it possible to boot into a Command Prompt or DOS equivilent from a floppy disk in Win2000?

Cheers

Hanslow

Nimbus,

As far as I am aware you cannot boot to Dos on either Win 2000 or Win ME. Only found this out after moving to ME. Bit of a bugger cos it comes in handy

Your best bet is to find an old boot disk, or get one off someone else. I use an old Win98 boot disk, but then I also have 2 other PCs kicking around

DazV

You can boot into safe mode I think.

If you have the Win2k CD or floppies, you can boot into the setup program and choose to 'repair a damaged version of win2k'

You getting a report of a missing .dll or something ? Let me know and I'll email it to you.

DavidBrown

If you have the install CD, boot from that and you can select to boot into command prompt mode

You can't boot to DOS, like you could under Win98

ChrisB

Description of the Windows 2000 Recovery Console:

Nimbus

Hi Guys,

Thanks for your quick responses

Hanslow;
I've made a startup disk from my Win98SE computer at home. It now gets me into a DOS prompt. Thanks.

DazV, David;
I don't have the Win2000 setup disks. The laptop comes with a "Product Recovery" CD which is different to a normal setup disk. I think it's used to re-format the disk and install the O/S from scratch. It's still at work so I'm not sure if it comes with a "fix windows" type option . I’ll have to use this as a last resort if I can not get it fixed.

ChrisB;
Thanks for the links. After looking through them I think the problem is either:

a) A service trying to start.
b) Some critical files were replaced!
c) Ntoskrnl.exe or Hal.dll is damaged

The Win2000 Recovery Consol looks like it is the thing to use. The only problem is that I don't have the Win2000 setup disks so I'm not sure how to install the Recovery Consol. This sounds like the program I need.

Using the boot disk from my Win98 PC I entered the command "winnt32.exe /cmdcons" from the I386 dir as per instructions on the Microsoft page, but it says that this command can not be run in DOS mode!!

Also, it looks like there is a tool called "makeboot.exe" that I can use to make a boot disk (obviously ). Apparently there are two versions, 16bit (bootdisk.exe) and 32bit (makebt32.exe). As I don't have the right win2000 setup disk can anyone e-mail the programs to me, if there not to large? They should be on the "bootdisk" dir of the setup CD-ROM.

Here's the Microsoft web page on it;

Nimbus

Just thought though that I may still need the full Win2000 setup disk for the Boot Maker to work... Does anyone know if this is the case?