I'm trying to salvage my old laptop but up until now I've been to lazy to figure out how to fix it. When I try to start it up it says "Invalid boot.ini" and then when I use the recovery disc it just hangs at the part where it says "Warning! You're about to blah blah. Y/N" Can I just replace my hard drive and work this out?

I'll delete this thread when I have an answer. Thanks.

reinstall windows

or dl partition magic and use their boot utility. windows's sucks

If you have a copy of the Windows CD, throw that in and boot from the CD. When it gets to the point where it asks if you want to Repair. Say yes to that, when you get to the cmd prompt. type 'CHKDSK' (without quotation marks). This should scan the harddrive to see if there are any errors in the system files. If there are, the CD will replace those files so you can actually boot back into Windows.

Good luck, hope that helps.

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All I have is the recovery DVD that has all that windows shit on it already.

The problem lies in the fact that I can't even get my computer to turn on, period. It won't finish the process of the recovery DVD without stopping and it won't get anywhere past the "invalid boot.ini" shit without it.

Fail.

get a cheap external hard drive, hook it up to another computer, copy its system drive to it, hook that up to the laptop, go to the bios & set it to boot from the external drive (only usb might work), start up windows from there, then format/recover/whatever the original one from windows once it's up off of the external one. i think.

quote:

Originally posted by inconspicuous get a cheap external hard drive, hook it up to another computer, copy its system drive to it, hook that up to the laptop, go to the bios & set it to boot from the external drive (only usb might work), start up windows from there, then format/recover/whatever the original one from windows once it's up off of the external one. i think.

How do I "go to the bios" ?

make a new file on your c:\ called boot.ini

put the contents of this in it

code:


[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="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

How do I write a new boot file if I can't even turn the fucking thing on?

quote:

Originally posted by UWM How do I "go to the bios" ?

when you turn your computer on

Slam F2, Delete, F12, F10.
Or look for where it says setup and slam the key its telling you (its usually the one above)

quote:

Originally posted by UWM How do I write a new boot file if I can't even turn the fucking thing on?

two ways.

edit boot.ini

or

if you have another computer, create it on there and use a usb key to copy the file over.

quote:

Originally posted by r5a if you have another computer, create it on there and use a usb key to copy the file over.

Killer. So just write that file in a text program and save it as a .ini?

I'm sorry, I'm really retarded about computers.

quote:

Originally posted by UWM Killer. So just write that file in a text program and save it as a .ini? I'm sorry, I'm really retarded about computers.

its cool bro. everyone learns shit eventually. ive been in your situation many times before.

but yea you got it. let me read over this thread to make sure.