well, my first time I really need help from some experienced windows users... I wouldn't have imagined that I'd ever ask anything in here, but time has come
OK, I'm having a problem (suprise suprise )
My problem is as follows:
I installed win2k some days ago, on a extended partition. Everything worked well. I then configured the NT boot manager to boot linux too. Still everything worked well. Now, I booted into win2k once, let it run for about 1 day, then shutted down and went back into linux for about 1 day. When I rebooted after that, to get into windows, I got my suprise: Win2k won't boot anymore.
I select Windows 2000 in the boot menu, it starts loading. Then I get that colored loading screen (the one with the big win2k logo and the small loading indicator on the bottom). It still loads, until the bar is full. As soon as the bar is full, and it tries to load the GUI, it gives me a bluescreen for a _really_ short time (you can hardly see it, don't even try to read what's written there). I rebooted again with the win2k disk in the drive, and tried to recover the install. The recover console on the CD gives me access to the drive, and I tried all I could, still nothing working. Then I tried the automated recovery, which failed to find the win2k install (it found it some days ago). After that the recover console still finds it, but the automated recover fails all the time.
Please, help me out of this. I don't need windows as my primary OS, but it's good to have for testing things, especially when trying to write portable code. Please, help me
[addsig]

nice to hear that. ms windows scandisks up again . i fixed that with reinstalling everything. good luck [addsig]

I don't wanna re-install, because I installed all those damned SPs, drivers, loads of programs etc.. There must be a solution to fix this. I don't wanna spend another 2 days getting everything in order in that stupid win2k install.
[addsig]

MS probably wrote code to check for Linux OS and won't let you use it. It wouldn't surprise me. I don't know much about the NT side of the Force but have you tried booting to safe mode? [addsig]

booting in safe mode..... hmmmm... that's a neat idea!! Will try it later and give you report
[addsig]

I would be wondering what you were doing in linux for that day, many things you could have done in linux could have stuffed windows up.
Few things, install it on the primary partition, and linux on secondary, use fat32 not ntfs, and dont run any partition, boot managers etc in linux.
(-:
I think you will have to reinstall, mabye try backin up the registry and restoring it after you reinstall, this might help most programs work again.

where's the registry in win2k? :/
and, after using linux for a few times, win2k still worked, and the boot manager also doesn't have a prob. I didn't even touch the win2k partition from linux.
Well, in other words, win2k kinda self-destructed.... I install windows, and think that it ain't as bad anymore, and then this... well, just the usual windows stuff? :/
[addsig]

Yeah, backing up the registry and restoring it does work (I've done it). There are one or two files that you may need to manually extract but it will still work. To get to the registry editor goto run on the Start menu (I hope that's still there) and type in regedit. To back it up goto Export Registry File in the File menu, make sure All is selected in the Export Range, give it a name and it's backed up. To restore find your file back and double-click it. Since you can't boot to Windows though, unless you can get to safe mode, there is another way. In the Windows root foler (i.e WinNT) there are two files that ARE the registry, system.dat and user.dat, that you can copy to someplace else and copy back later. The files are hidden and I'm not usre how Linux handles hidden files, but that gives you a couple ways to do that. I hope that helps you. Good luck.

ok, thx, I'll try it all this weeken (maybe a bit earilier) and post a little report and how things went
let's just hope I can boot into safe mode
let's just see how stuff turns out
thx to all who helped for now
[addsig]

Linux doesnt hide fat32 windows hidden files, i would ultimatly think its mostly based on something you did in linux.
As its always the user, not the OS. well in M$'s case.
(-;

as said before, I didn't touch that damned thing
I installed SP1... but that's all I did....
[addsig]

Speaking from past experience, the only problem I've ever had with Windows 2000 were related to hardware problems. That quick blue screen you get after booting is probably Windows 2000 panicing about something he doesn't like.

I'm pretty sure the problem is related to something Linux did. Windows 2000 doesn't like the power management features of my BIOS (they are apparently too old or incorrect) so I had to shut down ACPI in order to install Windows 2000. If you ACPI (or APM) functions works in Linux and if after that you boot in Windows, it might be enough to fsck him up and panic.

This is probably not your problem but I suggest you investigate your Linux and see what he could be messing up with that could fsck up another OS.

I think KaGez's computer is new enough not to have problems with power management. It probably is, as sacah mentioned, the fact that Windows is on the secondary pratition. I think you can move the partitions around without losing data with a utility such as Partition Magic. I'm not sure how that would effect the boot manager, but I'm sure you could go in and change the boot.ini file and avoid problems there. But then Windows would be looking for programs on the D drive (assuming it's D) and there would a whole platoon of problems there. Even restoring a backed up registry after reinstall would start this problem. I think sacah is right, a repartition and reinstall is in order. I hope you can get it working without having to take such drastic measures, ecause I've been there myself. :-P (Yes, I disabled smilies. A happy face with it's tounge stuck out doesn't convey the proper message) [addsig]

Now, if you typed your smilies around the right way like d-: you wouldnt have a problem with havin the smily phaser changing it to a stupid image that ruins the exact lame ascii effects its come to represent.
(-;

hmmm... I also don't think that it's a Hardware problem, because it run fine for about a week. I changed nothing in the BIOS, so there should be nothing fscking up the Hardware. I also didn't even move/remove/replace/insert a new card, so hardware problems will probably be not a choice.
I'll try to boot into safe mode later this evening.
[addsig]

Well, just trashed my Win98 install some hours ago and installed Win2k over it, on a primary partition Everything works up to now (ok, the last install also worked for about 4 days ). NT BootLoader loads linux happily, so I think I'm happy now
I still gotta set everything up in that new Win2k. I couldn't use the old regisrty (or better, I didn't try ), because the drive letters changed. Before I had win2k on D:, now it's on C:. But well, life is a pain
[addsig]

Glad you got things working. As for me, I'm going to be pounding away at my keyboard trying to get Linux working. I really want to see what it's like. [addsig]

as far as I've seen in the linux forum you've got it running already
hm.... still gotta install VC++ in windows.... later maybe ...
[addsig]

I posted that early yesterday morning, probably somtime in the middle of the night for you. I'm happy I got it working though. [addsig]

btw, how are you getting along with it, and what distro do you have installed now?
[addsig]

Things started out ugly and then I got Tetris . No really. I have the BasicLinux distro, based on slackware which I am going to get sometime in the near future. I really wanted to get gentoo, but it was kind of a large download. As I said earlier I need to get a newer version of XWin, preferably one from their site. [addsig]

first time on linux and a slackware derivant? :/ I'd suggest you to use some RH based distro for starters. Way easier, and you don't have to care about little things until you find them and play with them
[addsig]

Well, this one could be booted off of a Fat16\32 partitiion, which made it easy for me since I don't have a floppy. I was also looking for something small in size. I'll probably get Mandrake as soon as I have the cash to do so. I just hope it'll run on a monitor that only supports 640x480. [addsig]

Mandrake is cool, but I think you should wait till the next release or Mdk. 9.0 is in fact awsome, but since KDE3 and GNOME2 are still very new they're still poorly working on mdk9.0. You've gotta do a lot of handwork to get everything going. I'd suggest you to wait for the next release. GNOME2 and KDE3 will be more stable and bug-free then now, and probably it's better preconfigured than now.
[addsig]

Yeah, but will it run on as old of a compter as mine? [addsig]

gnome2 is way faster than the old gnome, but kde3 is way slower than the old one. Gnome2 will also run on old comps, kde3 maybe not.
But, I think we're in the wrong forum
[addsig]

My computer isn't that old considering. Maybe we should move this to my thread in the Linux forum. [addsig]

well, since there's already a topic in the linux forum, we could continue there
[addsig]