Windows 2000 Quick Fixes

Your only volume is NTFS and Windows 2000 won’t boot

When your system uses FAT or FAT32 volumes you have some additional options for booting the system. You can use a bootable DOS or Windows 9x diskette to boot the system and potentially fix whatever is preventing the system from booting normally. When your only volume is NTFS, however, you need to use other methods to boot and troubleshoot the system.

Boot from a diskette

If your system isn’t booting because of a problem with the boot sector, or if the system disk is on a different volume from the boot volume and the boot volume has failed, you need to use a Windows 2000 boot diskette to start the system. Just insert the diskette in the system and restart.

If you don’t have a bootable Windows 2000 diskette, you’ll need to create one. See Section 13.8.2 to learn how. Since you can’t boot your own system, you’ll have to create the diskette using another system. If your system uses the scsi( ) syntax in boot.ini, make sure to copy the correct SCSI driver to the diskette.

Use the Recovery Console

If your system won’t boot because of a hard disk corruption or failure, you probably won’t be able to boot using the Recovery Console even if it is installed. If it is installed and the system does at least attempt to start, you can press F8 after the initial BIOS message disappears to display the boot menu and select the Recovery Console. Once the Recovery Console is loaded you can begin troubleshooting and repairing the system.

If a hard disk ...