Here's a tough one. Hope you can help.

[Boston Mike]

I currently have a dual boot Athalon 64. I am running win XP and Win 64 bit. All was fine until this morning. I went to the computer to find a black screen that said " insert bootable media". I have an SATA drive that was loaded with the current VIA drivers. It seems that the drivers went missing. I loaded the OS disk and it still sees the partitions. It seems like it can't find the SATA drivers. I also have a copy of Knopixx that I can run. I just don't know where to install the drivers that I need. Any info would be greately appreciated. -Mike

 

[FlashDude]

Your boot sector is messed up, hummm the trickey part will be keeping both os's,,, I am not sure what will happen to your dual boot because everytime I do this its to remove a grub and make the hdd single boot.

Boot to dos and type in A:> fdisk /mbr

 

[macdude425]

I advise that, if you still have the XP CD, boot from that instead, go to the recovery console, run fixboot and fixmbr, then restart. If it does only recognize one OS, then you can edit boot.ini by hand to add in the choice for the other OS.

 

[Boston Mike]

The knopixx can be run from dvd drive. Is there any way I can boot up with this and edit the boot sector? Or can I boot with Knopixx and place the SATA drivers where they need to go?

 

[macdude425]

Knoppix will NOT be able to fix the Windows bootsector; at most, it will install GRUB, which will just be a frontend until you get to the Windows bootsector which will still be screwed up.

 

[Boston Mike]

macdude425, I am not familiar with command line AT ALL. If I run fixboot or fixmbr, is that all I have to type there? Or do I need colons or slashes somewhere?

 

[macdude425]

Nope. You type fixboot, hit enter, type fixmbr, hit enter, type exit, hit enter, and hit the reset button.

BTW, if you could do it the way you wanted to, via Knoppix, you'd probably be doing a LOT MORE command line stuff.

 

[Boston Mike]

macdude425, You are the BEST!!!! You fixed my computer! Thankyou, Thankyou, Thankyou! I have posts out on 3 other online forums and you were the only one that could help me. THANK YOU!
You don't smoke cigars do you? I could send you a coupla nice ones to repay your help. LMK -Mike

 

[macdude425]

Glad to be of service

I couldn't accept the cigars for two reasons: one, I don't think it be would proper, and two, I'm not of smoking age anyways. If my parents saw a package addressed to me that contained cigars, they'd kill me

 

[FlashDude]

Your boot sector is messed up, hummm the trickey part will be keeping both os's,,, I am not sure what will happen to your dual boot because everytime I do this its to remove a grub and make the hdd single boot.

Boot to dos and type in A:> fdisk /mbr

Since your post sat here for 3 hours before I posted this I will take a cigar, lol