Boot Problem, No Drive Letters

[the_straw]

I have a triple boot with Win98Se, Win2K & XP (installed in that order) on separate partitions plus several other partitions. While defraging a non-system partition using Diskeeper 7 my computer froze. It happens. Now my computer will not boot in any operating system. The partitions were set up using Partition Magic (PM). I'm not using any bootloader other than that offered by MS as part of the Operating Systems.

Running PM rescue disk I noticed all of my drives do NOT have drive letters but look OK otherwise. Running "check for errors" using PM on the Win98 partition I get error 993 "Partition contains open files. Use Op Sys Check Utility" I assume this means run Scandisk/Chkdsk (all partitions are NTFS except Win98). Problem is Chkdsk requires a drive letter parameter and mind currently do not exist. I believe the drives are OK I just can't figure out what I need to do.

Running "check for errors" using PM on all the NTFS partitions gives error 1516 "partition improperly dismounted"

I ran scandisk on Win98 and it says OK.

A friend mentioned running fixMBR. Is there only one MBR? And is it on the first partition? I'm assuming it is since all partitions are built on top of Win98 (C. Do I need to run fixMBR for each OS or will running it once from say the Win2K Recovery Console clear up the problem on all drives?

Any help would be appreciated.

[bonzai]

Let's try to figure out how and why the problem happened before we try to solve it, otherwise we'll be "fixing" something we weren't supposed to be fixing. Under which OS did you use Diskeeper 7? Win98? Is Diskeeper 7 only for win98?

Now the only way I can picture that you ended up defragging a non-system partition is that you used Diskeeper 7 under win98 to defrag an NTFS partition. Most likely, it may have caused irreparable damage. Now to see if this can be saved. You can try FiXMBR, that will attempt to repair the master boot record. But I'm not even sure if the Master Boot Record is the problem but you can try. If it does fix the MBR, you might have a chance of booting into win98. However, results regarding your NTFS partitions look dim. Let me know what happens.

[the_straw]

Bonzai
I ran Diskeeper from Win XP on a NTFS partition that is not a boot partition (the 4th partition, see below). The computer froze sometime during the defrag. My computer tends to freeze occasionally. I did a manual defrag (i.e. unscheduled) and was going to setup a schedule there after. I had already performed a defrag on several other partitons without incident. Also, I did not defrag the Win98 partition, it didn't need it since I rarely use it.

The HD on IDE 0 is a 120 GB WD with 3 primary partitons and 1 extended partion with 1 partition inside (i.e. a total of 4 useable partitions). I also have a 120 GB WD drive on IDE 1 which also has no drive letters for any of the 4 partitions as a result of this problem.

When I said the computer wouldn't boot, I mean it get's to the windows logo screen (XP) and then the status bar just keeps cycling. It doesn't freeze. It's like it can't find what it's looking for.

As for my original questions...
Would I only need to run fixMBR once?
Does it matter from what OS?
Is the MBR only on first boot drive (Win98 (C in this case)?

Thanks in Advance
the_straw

[bonzai]

Yes you only need to run FIXMBR once, for there is only one master boot record, it is located before the 1st partition. It doesn't matter from which OS you run it, althought FIXMBR is only a feature part of WINXP, 2000, and maybe NT. This is the one you want to run, and not the one from win98, because you are doing a multi-booting system. When there is a mult-booting system, Windows will use the most recent OS's bootloader, in this case, WINXP's ntldr. so don't use win98's or it will actually mess it up.

However, you are telling me that it is freezing at the WindowsXP logo screen. That means in the boot sequence, it already has passed the MBR so most likely it is not the problem. The problem lies somewhere else. But, in my opinion, it won't hurt to run FIXMBR and see what happens.

[the_straw]

Bonzai,
I ran FIXMBR from XP Recovery. It warned that my MBR was non-standard or invalid. I backed out the first time & pondered the problem and then decided to go for it. It worked! Problem solved. I guess the boot sequence is still utilizing the MBR after the windows logo screen appears.

Thanks for your help.
the_straw

[bonzai]

Good to hear it worked. Now I learned something too.