Invalid Boot.ini booting from c:\windows\

[Jack Ruby]

I am getting an "Invalid Boot.ini" message on my computer. Windows XP (home edition) will not boot up. My computer just goes into a cycle of trying to reboot - then displying the "Inlvaid Boot.ini" message again and again. Keep in mind that I have two hard drives. Windows XP resides on my D: drive.

I went to Microsoft's site: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;330184 and followed the directions to restore the Boot.ini using my Windows XP (home edition CD). Unfortunatly, after I type the portion "/fastdetect", and then press ENTER, I get an error message that reads: "Error: Failed to add the selected boot entry to the boot list".

Any help woule be appreciated.

Thank you,

Tim Bickford

 

[Jack Ruby]

Hi-

I just noticed, when I'm in "DOS" mode I can't change to some of my directories. I.E. d------ Camera_Photos (is this a permissions problem). In XP "R" repair mode, when asked for a password, I hit enter. Franlky, I've never had a password. If I try to enter a password it give me three tries before it boots me out. So .... I've been hitting enter. That's the only way I can continue.

 

[Jack Ruby]

I gave up.

Re-enstalled!

Thanks

 

[sean.ferguson]

In XP "R" repair mode, when asked for a password, I hit enter. Franlky, I've never had a password.

The password it is referring to is the administrative account password that is setup during installation, if your system is a bought system which was pre-built chances are you wont know this and the best bet is to use the restore disc bundled with your new PC.

I gave up.
Re-enstalled!

Also, you should really try to hang around for an answer to you problem, before jumping to the (what may seem) easiest option. With people from different timezones on this board answers most often cannot be given instantly, while others will take some time to research their answer to ensure they dont give you false positives.

Your reinstall, might just end up giving you a much larger headache.

Welcome to the community anyhow

 

[Admiral Michael]

Is there not a tool in the Recovery Console to fix the boot.ini file or something?

 

[j79zlr]

You can use NT Password to reset any password on your system: http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/

FIXBOOT will rewrite all of the boot files in the recovery console.

 

[Son Goku]

It is possible to manually edit the boot.ini file (it's plain text) if you know your drive setup. AKA, is it a seperate physical drive, a seperate partition on the drive, etc... It doesn't follow the Windows drive letter format, so the specific meaning of the options would need to, can be searched. It's been awhile since I looked into this.

BTW, when you have a good setup on your computer, it is possible to create an NT boot floppy. It has to be formatted in winXP and not DOS or win9x, as the boot sector needs to point to loading ntldr and not the DOS boot files.

From here, you copy ntldr, ntdetect.com, boot.ini, bootsect.dos (a copy of your older boot sector, and present if you multi-boot between this and a DOS or win9x based system), and possibly a copy of your SCSI card driver, renamed to I don't remember what, if it's needed.

That floppy could then boot your computer should something happen to the boot loader on the HD, as well as be used to restore the stuff back to the partition you normally boot off of.