Re: Off topic (Win2K stability)

["J. R. Fox" jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

{Warning: this reply is going to be rather long.}

"fenda@xxxxxx" wrote:

> I would like to comment the generally accepted stability of Win2K, now
> that I am using it with XyWrite after Service Pack 4.

That "stability" is greatly overrated, particularly in a multiboot
environment.
I've been having a lot of problems lately, which have brought my system down
for
as much as a week at a time, with the backup system that's still under
construction too
unfinished to be very useful. The application of SP4 nearly trashed
everything,
leaving only DOS still bootable. At the moment, of my two W2K boot
partitions,
one was totally hosed, and, after wiping it clean (a last resort, because
there was
nothing left to do that I knew of) the two-week old partition image I
restored in
its place went back on successfully, but something in the SAM component was
apparently trashed, my Password is rejected, and I'm locked out. I have
some
Linux-based NT-Password cracking utility I pulled off the Net, but about 40+

pages of docs and FAQ to read through, before I can find out if it works.
They
warn that it probably will *not* work for XP, *or later Service Packs of
W2K,
because of improvements MS made to logon security. My other (Maintenance)
W2K partition is crippled -- it can no longer install or de-install
anything, which
makes it almost useless, although I can at least do a few things over there
like
burn a cd. That one will have to be wiped too, and the backup image for it
is
over a year old.

To top this all off, SP4 wiped out Boot Manager for OS/2, and damaged the
Master Boot Record. Without these two, none of the (vastly more important
to
me) OS/2 partitions were bootable. I have had to re-do the NT boot loader
several times, and each time I do it kills Boot Mgr. again. What a mess !
Reading
this, you might think this is an overly complicated system, but everything
lived
together in harmony for a year and a half (up until SP4), and for over four
years
before that when I had the wretched NT-4 prior to W2K.

The only good thing about all this is I'm learning where some of the
treacherous
trap doors are, and things you _shouldn't_ do . . . all of it the hard
way. Maybe
some of what I've been discovering can be of help to you.

> yesterday, Win2K (SP4) refused to start
> claiming that "ntoskrnl.exe" was damaged or not found.

That probably amounts to a fatal error, *if* it's not what I'm about to tell
you. I
think that every time I've seen this has been a case where the NT Boot
Loader
(specifically, the plain text BOOT.INI component -- one of 6 relevant files)
has
gotten screwed up. For some reason, attempts to repair a problem with a W2K
boot
partition -- no matter whether you try to do this via SETUP on the boot
disks or
W2K install cd, *or* via the **totally useless** and laughably named
"Recovery
Console" -- seems to revise BOOT.INI so that it no longer points at the
correct
partition(s). My W2K partitions are #s 10 & 14. I had to attempt a lot of
repairs
(which weren't terribly successful anyway), and kept finding after each
attempt
that BOOT.INI now mysteriously pointed to partitions 9 & 13. Well, there
ain't
anything there that a) belongs to Win-32, or b) happens to be bootable, so,
naturally, it wasn't EVER going to boot ! When I edited BOOT.INI
appropriately
-- and remember, this is a System | Hidden file, so you can't even see it
without
something like ZTree, and you have to temporarily remove those file
attributes to
edit it -- I got past that particular error, and on to *other* serious error
conditions,
like lockouts or spontaneous hardware resets during the boot cycle. The
only thing
I haven't seen in quite a while is the overly familiar BSOD from NT-4 days,
with its
full screen of cryptic register dumps, and the truly helpful suggestion that
you call
your System Administrator.

> Then I attempted
> to start the recovery console and it apparently started but, curiously,
> without authentication and then I was unable to access the WINNT
> directoy and its subdirectories (access denied).

Yes, exactly. Have I ever seen a lot of that (!), and it's why I said what
I said.
Maybe R.H. or some other learned person can enlighten us here, but just what

point is there to the RC, if, when you go into it, all you ever get from it
is
Access Denied messages ? Same story with RC, even going at it *from another

W2K partition* -- so it can't simply be a matter of locked files. I also
found
that you cannot see critical directories that you need to see, even to take
a DIR,
even if you use the quotation marks trick. If you can't do that, you can
forget
about using the Uninstall stuff W2K has carefully placed there. ATTRIB
doesn't
work, _nothing_ works ! The only way you can try to back out of something
like
a service pack is to go into Safe Mode and try your luck at Add | Remove
Programs.
I had almost no success there either. (You'd probably have much better
chances in
Vegas.) The whole (expletive) structure of this thing is a labyrinth of
frustration,
designed by a sadist, to torture you psychologically as much as possible
before
you succumb !

> Probably the whole thing was related to my multiboot
> disk (Win98SE, WIN2K, Linux and data partitions living together).

Yes. When / If I ever get things fully repaired, I'm going to take
snapshots
of the MBR and all partition tables with DFSEE. That should make
restoring them _as they were_ possible, if disaster strikes again.
Unfortunately,
DFSEE is not yet easy to learn or use. There may be some comparable tools
out there that are. The days of the DOS era, when you could maintain
everything without being all that technically inclined, are long gone. It
takes
a great deal more ability know, if you're going to work with different
32-bit
OSes.

> spent a lot of time copying data to a different partition and fighting
> with different starting possibilities, installation disk, CD, attempts
> to restore the damaged file from Linux, etc. without any success. After
> hours of useless efforts, I solved the problem via my ERD

My ERDs were of very limited use throughout these problems.

There is one thing I'm hoping will make a big improvement. The pathetic
NT Boot Loader -- if you use it, as I have been doing -- just has to go.
A multiboot environment needs something that is far smarter and more
capable, and much more damage resistant. There are over a dozen of these
OS-switchers around, and they run the gamut from freeware to shareware
to commercial. I have just bought and am about to install the current
version
of System Commander, which runs about 80 bucks at retail in this country.
SC is likely one of -- if not *the -- best. I used an early version of it
years ago,
for a long time, with good results.

Hope this helps.

Jordan