I rename boot.ini and now W98FE doesn't start!

[Nuclear Krusader]

As some of you know, I had been using the Windows XP Pro RC1. OK, it expired last december so I got back to Win98FE. However the start menu always appeared at boot. Wanting to get rid of it, the genius of me, renamed it. Then rebooted. And now Windows doesn't start. It gives the message that something is missing and that I must press any key. When I press any key it just reboots.

Good thing I installed Mandy on that machine before playing the geek. But Mandy doesn't read my Windows partition so I cannot access my files.

Any suggestions on how to fix this.

I tried booting with a W98 boot floppy disk and could get to the command line, but it doesn't let me rename the boot2.ini back to boot.ini.

Thanks in advance for any input.

[homey]

As far as accessing the windows partition from mandy, have you tried this?

mkdir /mnt/win

then mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/win

then cd /mnt/win

then ls to view the contents of you windows partition.

Note: this sort of assumes that the C:\> is on the first partition of the first hard drive (hda1)

[TwoRails]

Interesting, Nuclear Krusader. I don't even have Boot.ini on my Win 98.2 boxes (just checked).

Do you have a straight DOS disk you can use? Or how 'bout a Ghost disk? Or any startup disk that's not a Win disk? That should override any renaming blocking.

HTH

TwoRails

[Nuclear Krusader]

Actually, the boot.ini was put there courtesy of XP Pro. :(

Yeah, I have my old DOS 6.22 set of disks.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Can't wait to try dat tip, homey, thanx. :)

[homey]

Normally, I would suggest using a win boot disk and typing fdisk /mbr. However, that could put your mandy install at risk (which can be fixed with some doing) so don't do it. :)

When you do gain access to the boot.ini file, instead of renaming it, change this line to timeout=0

That should eliminate the windows boot loader screen.

[Nuclear Krusader]

10-4.

[reboot]

Boot to the Win98 startup disk.
At the A: prompt, type: attrib -h -r -s -a c:\*.*
Boot.ini will now be "visible" and you can rename it.
BTW, if you care, the -h -r -s -a is for unhide, unreadonly, unsystem, and unarchive. Some people do it: -r -a -s -h "rash" so they can remember all 4.
This command overrides any Windows attributes, so if you want to make it hidden, archived and readonly again, you'll have to change it back.

[Force Flow]

I think that if you use the copy command, you can rename it.

"copy C:\boot2.ini C:\boot.ini"

[reboot]

Nope. if it's hidden you can't. You still need to unhide it before you can do anything with it.

[Nuclear Krusader]

Done and done.

I just booted using a W98 boot floppy and then, at the command line, typed edit boot2.ini and then saved it as boot.ini.

Voilà! Windows is again working. :)

[Markoman01027]

Good to hear that Henry! Nothing but the good Rename Trick LOL

[TwoRails]

Well... I just got email notification that this thread had a reply!!.... A little late...

Glad to hear things are fixed, though :)

TwoRails