ack.. deleted my boot.ini

[eversio11]

I had a dual boot of Windows 2000 Pro and XP Pro, and I always had that screen while loading that allowed me to select which OS I wanted to boot with. Well, I accidently deleted my boot.ini, and upon restart, it said 'INVALID BOOT.INI / BOOTING FROM C:\winnt". This is will boot windows, but win2k only. I want to boot XP. I know of ways to change and alter the boot.ini file, but I don't have one at all, how do I go about recovering or creating one? I really need it to give me those two options at startup.

TIA

 

[TrukinDave]

Get a program called system commander, And yo ucan have all the operating systems you want without fail..

 

[eversio11]

No offense, but I'm not going to pay $50 for a program that does something Windows did for free before.

 

[EricB]

you will need the PartionMagic rescue disc or a drive image 7 boot disc to restore the MasterBootRecord (MBR)

 

[brady]

create your own

 

[TheMajor]

Insert the XP disc, boot from the disc. Enter the recovery console (follow instructions on screen)

type:
"fixboot"
and
"bootCFG /rebuild"

Good luck.

EDIT: I think you can skip the "fixboot", just try "BootCFG /rebuild"

 

[Apokalipse]

you might want to try making one with edit.com (which you can use in the recovery console) and get used to editing text files from it

 

[Chankama]

Yeah that's what I did once with my dual boot with linux / Windows 98 (used edit and typed it up). I screwed up something back then too!.. Can't remember how tho. lol..

 

[foxhound]

about the boot.ini it can easily be written in wordpad . i'll give you an example of a boot.ini file and give some info on how to add multiboot to it

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOW
S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect


k thats the boot.ini, if you want the timer before it automatically selects something to freeze, you enter -1 for it, if you want it to automatically select the default opperating system then you put the timeout on 0.
default is your default os wich it selects when the timer runs out.
and to add for example windows 98 wich is saved on the first partition of a 2nd hd (then you have to add after [operating systems] and after your first line there you add :
multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\win98="text you want to show on boot screen, could just aswell be ms sucks" /fasdetect

ok the multi is usual 0, disk 0 = primary hd, disk 1 = secondary hd, rdisk should only be changed if using SCSI hd's, partition 1for first partition and numbers go on, \name of os system folder, name to show on bootscreen, /fastdetect disables scanning of serial and paralel ports to boot faster, other options to add are /noguiboot, /memtest, and some others i forgot.