boot.ini empty

chunter

Here's one for you..
XP Laptop.
Major virus took down file structure.
Windows rebuilt it ok but it's left me with an empty boot.ini.

Normally I'd just do a repair, but the Xp disk is not even giving me that option.

Tried system restore. didn't solve the problem.

Any alternatives to a clean install?

[Deleted User]

Assuming that Windows is installed on the first partition, edit your boot.ini file so that it contains this:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP" /fastdetect

If that doesn't work, try changing the partition number (in both places) to 2, then 3, then 4. One of those numbers will work.

All this assumes that you only have a normal laptop with one hard drive and not a particularly large one with 2 hard drives and possibly RAID.

busenbust

Although the boot.ini is empty does everything else in the OS work OK?

busenbust

...and provided the machine is now virus and malware free, do any of the recovery options in this thread help?

-TangleFoot-

tentonine wrote: »

Edit: after viewing the post on the forum, there appear to be some extra space (e.g. WINDOW S instead of WINDOWS). Those spaces shouldn't be there and they do not appear when I edit the message.

If the forum mangles your text, use

tags to preserve spacing.[QUOTE]HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Hardware Profiles\Current[/QUOTE][code]HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Hardware Profiles\Current

[Deleted User]

If the forum mangles your text, use [code] tags to preserve spacing.

Thanks - that's very useful.

chunter

In the end it was either the graphics driver or Avira which had been corrupted.
Took off both and it stopped stalling.
Stuck SP3 on it and it's playing ball now.

boot.ini still empty and giving me a dos error "boot.ini corrupted" at boot,
but it's booting up ok.
i'll stick tentonline's stuff in it tomorrow.

I'm surprised XP doesn't keep a backup of it somewhere.

[Deleted User]

I think the reason there is no backup is that it is essentially the same on all computers and easy to reconstruct. It can be reconstructed with the command line utility bootcfg, but it is generally easier just to type it in manually.

-TangleFoot-

tentonine wrote: »

It can be reconstructed with the command line utility bootcfg, but it is generally easier just to type it in manually.

I suspect one would be less likely to make a mistake if one were to use the utility...