MiniNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

[Skipbrac]

I had a fatal error (thank you BitDefender, not) sometime ago and gave up trying to recover from whatever happened. Thought it was time to try again. Ran rescue and recover from two sources - CD's and portable HD. Thanks to excellent inputs from this forum I got past the HAL.DLL problem. I get the subject message now tryingto start up. I have looked at the installed drive (starting up temporarily with Ubuntu), the R&R generated CD's and HD and don't find the "missing" file in the directory in any. What do I do next?

Blue ThinkVantage button doesn't bring up R&R selection anymore either. I can reinstall XP Pro but I was hoping I could do something to restore programs, files, and ThinkPad utility programs.

Many thanks in advance.

[ozzymud]

You are either missing/or have a bad NTLDR or NTDETECT.COM, OR your BOOT.INI does not have the right info in it. The MiniNT is only accessed IF one of those 3 items is missing/wrong.

Using your linux boot cd, mount the windows partition, and post the contents of your boot.ini, also the date & filesize of ntldr and ntdetect.com

For XP SP2 (you didn't mention what you run):
ntdetect.com - 47,564 bytes 8/4/04 5:00am
ntldr - 250,032 bytes 8/4/04 5:00am

*my* boot.ini (yours is probably different)

Code: Select all

[boot loader]
timeout=2
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Winders XP" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT /USEPMTIMER
C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Recovery Console" /CMDCONS

It's possible you can boot the XP CD, run the console repair session, and use "fixboot c:" to fix this.

PS: after you get a good XP system again, note the "Recovery Console" in my boot.ini, handy to have installed. It eliminates the need for the CD in the previous statement.