I have an old IBM 560X Thinkpad. It cannot boot off a CDROM; it uses a PCMCIA card to access a Panasonic CDROM. (This is how it was sold in 1997).
It has Win 2000 Pro. It is also corrupted: when I boot it tells me that WINNT/SYSTEM32/CONFIG/system is missing or corrupt. I have no system repair disk (foolish me). I have Windows repair console installed, but it will not work (add the fact that I forgot the password to “administrator”; my normal account is an admin too, so I never use the other).
Now I have in my possession a PCMCIA card with harness that can read this harddrive provided I remove it from the laptop.
So, I can retrieve all my personal files if push comes to shove. But what I’d like to be able to do is repair the Windows OS.
Can anyone think of a way to be able to run Win2000 repair on say a different laptop where the PCMCIA card is plugged in with my damaged harddrive attached. Can I redirect WIndows repair to say E:\WINNT?
Does it have a floppy drive? If so, you could boot into W2K setup from floppies… Don’t know if it would help you much though, without the administrator password. I’ve never had much luck with the wretched repair console anyhow.
Yes I can boot from Win2K floppies but to no avail. Once loaded, in order to repair it needs to have access to the CDROM which it cannot do unless the full OS is up and running (catch-22).
You could try creating install boot disks from the Win2k CD, and then re-installing the operating system, which restores all system files but doesn’t wipe your data.
-Insert the Win2k install disk into a working computer (Windows or DOS will work)
-Navigate to the BOOTDISK folder, and open MAKEBT32.exe (If you get an error message, try the MAKEBOOT.exe file)
-You will be prompted to insert floppies as the process runs (I think you need 5 total)
-Boot the non-working computer from the first floppy
-Start the Windows install process. I don’t remember whether it start automatically, or if you’re required to locate the winnt32.exe / winnt.exe file and run it
-Run a repair installation. After it searches for previous versions of Windows, you can select your old installation and select the ‘Repair’ option (I think you hit ‘R’)
Can you not load a specific mass storage device driver during the setup from floppies? If so this would enable you to use the CD drive. I don’t really know enough about this stuff, but until someone with more smarts comes along I’ll keep suggesting things…
For clarification, the process above creates multiple floppy disks that circumvent the need for the install CD for the entirety of the installation (IOW, you could install and run Win2k permanently with no cd-drive)
I have the set of 4 boot floppies. I’ve tried this many times. Once you use the install disks and try to repair Windows, it insists on access to the CDROM drive.
so.