Re: Retoring Dual-boot: MSDOS and W2K

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From: George Hester (hesterloli_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 07/11/04 

Date: Sun, 11 Jul 2004 14:26:03 -0400

First I am surprised that you are using MS-DOS for "disaster recovery." I suppose if you are not planning to do anything in the Windows installation (being NTFS I hope) then I suppose there is some recovery in there some where.

So it sounds like you have lost the information in the boot sector. What I would do is install Power Quest's Boot Magic version 5 is the best in MS-DOS. Then rum that and let it find the Windows 2000 installation. This assumes the boot.ini is NOT in the MS-DOS partition. The boot partition will be MSDOS Boot Magic picks it up and then sends control to the partition where your boot.ini is.

In my experience the best thing for disaster recovery besides of course backups is a different harddrive (partitioned) on the system with Windows 2000 that is rarely used at all. That way if something goes wrong with the main op sys (the server in this case not registry related) you can boot into the spare op sys you have and make changes on the Server's NTFS without issue. 

-- 
George Hester
__________________________________
"Warren C. E. Austin" <warrenceaustin@netscape.net> wrote in message news:OxePcF2ZEHA.1000@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
> My Server/Clients have been set-up to dual-boot to either MSDOS or W2K; the former being used primarily for "disaster" recovery, with MSDOS level Diagnostic/Network and other Utilities, including a hardware Modem and MSDOS-based Web-browser and e-Mail applications.
> 
> Yesterday noon-time, upon daily reboot to flush the W2K-generated RAMDrive (used by all Users for Internet-related Cache, Cookie and History, and application specific Temporary files) the system failed, with it shortly thereafter being determined the boot-drive's (Drive C:) FAT1 was missing entirely and FAT2 partially destroyed.  Recovery of essential files was attempted, and thankfully somewhat effective, with the hard-disk subsequently being re-formatted, and the contents of the entire drive being restored from a recent archival tape-backup.  Mercifully, this entire process took just a shade less than 5-hours
> 
> Unfortunately, this did not restore the dual-boot.  I am able to access the drive in MSDOS-mode so this is not critical; if I boot to MSDOS using a boot-disk, it is possible, if I choose to enable the MSDOS standalone boot; but my doing so disables any subsequent ability to then boot to W2K without resorting to the Repair Console and electing the "FIXBOOT" command; which in turn then disables the ability to boot to MSDOS.
> 
> How do I fix this?
> 
> There has to be a simple, easy and effective, solution without my resorting to a "Dummy" install of W2K, with MSDOS-boot active, and my then having, from MSDOS to remove the "Dummy" install, restoring the original Registry Configuration from the backup; and the attendant nonsense of deleting all the superfluous folders created by that dummy install.
> 
> Warren C. E. Austin
> Toronto, Canada
>

Relevant Pages

  • REVIEW: "Disaster Recovery Planning", Jon William Toigo
    ... Toigo's first edition outshone almost all later DRP (Disaster Recovery ... Planning) and BCP works. ... Toigo examines the question of whether people will see this ... perused for problems (such as security), while, at the same time, they ...
    (alt.computer.security)
  • REVIEW: "Disaster Recovery Planning", Jon William Toigo
    ... Toigo's first edition outshone almost all later DRP (Disaster Recovery ... Planning) and BCP works. ... Toigo examines the question of whether people will see this ... perused for problems (such as security), while, at the same time, they ...
    (comp.security.misc)