Hello spike44. When you choose XP, does the system boot normally? If it does, the boot.ini file has an entry that needs to be removed. This added entry can be the result of installing different versions of an operating system. You can edit this boot.ini easily, but you must know exactly what to remove, or the system may not boot at all. Below is a link to Microsoft with the instructions on how to edit the boot.ini. Hope this help.
Hi there Thanks for your quick reply , yes it does start ok when I choose XP , Do you know what this , ONTRACK is ! , I will delete the line in the ini.file but I am not sure how much of the line to delete , the full line is ,
C:\=''Unidentified operating system on drive C.''
just a little bit more info the first line reads,
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=''Microsoft Windows XP Professional'' /noexecute=optin / fastdetect
Hello spike44, The line "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=''Microsoft Windows XP Professional'' /noexecute=optin / fastdetect" is part of the boot.ini file text.
If you go to the Microsoft link, you will find a sample of a generic boot.ini file. Most systems have this generic boot.ini file.
Since you advised the system boots normally after you press the XP version, I believe all you need to do is open the boot.ini file and edit the text to remove any entry that is not as the sample boot.ini file.
You may want to copy the original boot.ini file to another folder, not C:\, just in case you make a mistake. You can right click on the boot.ini file and choose the program to open this file, and choose Wordpad.
Since this file is just a text file, you can edit out the unwanted entry, save the file and reboot. If all is done properly, it should boot without any interaction from you.
The ONTRACK may be something left over from the drive when you received it from eBay, but this is just a guess.
Apparently the hard disk was originally initialized using OnTrack Disk Manager. Disk Manager modifies a hard drive's format with a small boot partition overlay that translates a drive's parameters to enable the drive to boot in systems whose BIOS does not support that hard drive's specifications as to Cylinders, Heads, Sectors. XP is apparently seeing Disk Manager's reserved boot area as an unknown operating system.
To properly edit your boot.ini file to remove the "unknown operating system" choice, I would recommend that you consult this Microsoft KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/289022
In simple terms, Disk Manager's boot info works similar to Dell's proprietary Master Boot Record that enables the CTRL F11 key sequence to access the Dell PC Restore partition.
If you knew which version of Ontrack's Disk Manager was used to format and partition the drive, you could boot up with an OnTrack Disk Manager disk and remove the Disk Manager overlay.
Hanspuppa
799 Posts
0
November 25th, 2008 11:00
Hello spike44. When you choose XP, does the system boot normally? If it does, the boot.ini file has an entry that needs to be removed. This added entry can be the result of installing different versions of an operating system. You can edit this boot.ini easily, but you must know exactly what to remove, or the system may not boot at all. Below is a link to Microsoft with the instructions on how to edit the boot.ini. Hope this help.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/289022
spike44
2 Intern
•
149 Posts
0
November 25th, 2008 11:00
Hi there Thanks for your quick reply , yes it does start ok when I choose XP , Do you know what this , ONTRACK is ! , I will delete the line in the ini.file but I am not sure how much of the line to delete , the full line is ,
C:\=''Unidentified operating system on drive C.''
just a little bit more info the first line reads,
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=''Microsoft Windows XP Professional'' /noexecute=optin / fastdetect
cheers
Hanspuppa
799 Posts
0
November 25th, 2008 13:00
Hello spike44, The line "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=''Microsoft Windows XP Professional'' /noexecute=optin / fastdetect" is part of the boot.ini file text.
If you go to the Microsoft link, you will find a sample of a generic boot.ini file. Most systems have this generic boot.ini file.
Since you advised the system boots normally after you press the XP version, I believe all you need to do is open the boot.ini file and edit the text to remove any entry that is not as the sample boot.ini file.
You may want to copy the original boot.ini file to another folder, not C:\, just in case you make a mistake. You can right click on the boot.ini file and choose the program to open this file, and choose Wordpad.
Since this file is just a text file, you can edit out the unwanted entry, save the file and reboot. If all is done properly, it should boot without any interaction from you.
The ONTRACK may be something left over from the drive when you received it from eBay, but this is just a guess.
Hope this helps
tgsmith
2.9K Posts
0
November 25th, 2008 20:00
Spike44,
Apparently the hard disk was originally initialized using OnTrack Disk Manager. Disk Manager modifies a hard drive's format with a small boot partition overlay that translates a drive's parameters to enable the drive to boot in systems whose BIOS does not support that hard drive's specifications as to Cylinders, Heads, Sectors. XP is apparently seeing Disk Manager's reserved boot area as an unknown operating system.
To properly edit your boot.ini file to remove the "unknown operating system" choice, I would recommend that you consult this Microsoft KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/289022
Additional information on OnTrack can be found here: http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/hard-drive-software/diskmanager.aspx
In simple terms, Disk Manager's boot info works similar to Dell's proprietary Master Boot Record that enables the CTRL F11 key sequence to access the Dell PC Restore partition.
If you knew which version of Ontrack's Disk Manager was used to format and partition the drive, you could boot up with an OnTrack Disk Manager disk and remove the Disk Manager overlay.
Hope this info helps.
Tony