Discovery of an Unusual recovery !

[maxXPsoft]

BSOD on a Windows NT 4.0 with my boot.ini

BSOD on a Windows NT Workstation 4.0

Discovery of an Unusual recovery I have never seen before and haven't ever seen on the Web

Discovered this last night at work after I crashed my NT 4.0 Workstation.

My job gives me semi-Admin User privleges. They also run that Novell virii also out there so I'm not sure what went wrong.

I edited the registry deleting the OS2, Posix entries here:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, "SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\SubSystems

Reason? I'm tired of getting those EA DATA. SF files when I transfer files to a floppy to copy to laptop. They are undeletable except by format. Read that doing that would stop it.

Rebooted

BSOD Critical Stop Error (yada yada yada)

Panicked at that point cause I know NT don't have recovery console and very limited options. We keep none of our files on the PC's out there only the programs. On that PC we have a bunch of software though and I have no access to the CDs at night. Uh Oh

I went to a Windows 2000 Pro PC which was nearby and formatted a floppy with plain DOS and added files from what I read from one site.

Consisting of, Boot.ini, Bootsect.dos, Ntdetect.com, ntldr

My Boot.ini on my webpage above

Booted the NT machine and after selecting the Default in boot.ini it popped up

"Windows 2000 Press F8 to bring up boot options menu or whatever it say's there" can't remember exactly

Anyone ever worked on NT Machines know's that's not an option. Holy Cow!!!

I pressed F8

Gave me the Full selectable Menu like you see in 2000, and XP What???? Thats not an option in NT

I selected "Last Known Good Configuration" and the thing booted right into NT. Holy Cow, this stuff don't come with NT

I know that the ntldr for Windows 2000 gave me those options but the best part is I was able to get in there and restore what I had done. Rebooted without floppy and it work's again...

I have never ever seen this info on the Web and thought I'd share it with some Admins and anyone needing it. Had I been thinking at the time and I almost did go to another NT station to create this floppy and probably would have never recovered it that night. You do need to know what the person done so you can undo but least when you get in there you have the option of recovering stuff may otherwise have been lost. This may work with XP's files but on my system I don't have the Bootsect.dos

BTW, - I did experiment and copied same files from the NT PC and did not have those options on reboot. I redone my floppy so I have it ready in case this ever happen's again.

If this helps just 1 person then it was well worth typing all this and sharing the Power of Knowledge

[javagreen]

This will definitely help, wont go waste.....cheers mate

[jaclaz]

To clear things up a bit:

The boot process of ANY NT based OS (NT/2K/XP/2003)

Relies on three files:

BOOT.INI

NTLDR

NTDETECT.COM

(some scsi based machines will need a fourth file, NTBOOTDD.SYS)

All files of successive versions work on previous ones, i.e 2K version will boot NT, 2003 version will boot XP, 2k and NT.

Find info on the making of the boot diskette here:

http://www.xxcopy.com/xxcopy33.htm

There are some FREEWARE utilities to help you deal with the BOOT.INI editing, and much more:

BOOTPART

http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm

EDITBINI

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/utilities.html

Windows Boot.INI C.U. (from GUI)

http://www.dx21.com/SOFTWARE/Dx21/ViewItem...I=2&SI=2&OID=14

For the arcpath syntax used in boot.ini, see my post here:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=25365

The boot.ini switches differ from release to release, a most complete guide is found here:

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/info/bootini.shtml

jaclaz

[MadGutts]

Very useful... Thanks guys!

[maxXPsoft]

jaclaz

(some scsi based machines will need a fourth file, NTBOOTDD.SYS)

Thanks cause I need that since the 2000 machine is Scsi. I'll add it to my bootdisk.

Point is I didn't need all that other stuff, this worked and got me out of a jam. Those extra options aren't normally on an NT machine. My Admin would have been severely PO'd at me. I am just wondering how it booted with Last Known Good Configuration - I didn't know NT would have that stored.