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I see many posts regarding installation/booting problems. I have old Toshiba laptop that used to run NT 4.0 workstation, but the system got corrupted and does not boot up anymore.
I wanted to re-install/fix the system, but the trick is that it has swappable FDD/CD-ROM, which no option to boot from CD. As I was trying to use NT floppies it stops when not finding CD-ROM drive. How can I go around this problem and have working (though old & slow) machine????
Thanks a lot. Would that require completely wiping out the harddrive?? I was trying to avoid it, but running out of options.
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Probably loose everything, though maybe it will give you a repair option, did you per chance create the Emergency Repair Disks (ERD)?
If the drive is 2GB FAT 16 then forget the FDISK part, just SYS C: will overwrite the NT Boot Loader, though you may be able to repair this??
If it is FAT16 beyond 2GB size or NTFS you are stuck as MSDOS does not recognise either
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Whoa! rogerashley bad advice.
Do NOT sys c: !!!! This will replace the boot loader files of NT and you will be DEAD IN THE WATER. Do not wipe the drive or you will lose all the drivers for your laptop [unless you have them on cd]
Proper ADVICE is to Fdisk /mbr IF you think the master boot record has been damaged.
You should be able to go to bootdisk.com and download a NT boot disk. Boot the boot disk and see if you can mount NT. If so copy the contents of the diskette to the root of c: and see if you can boot from the hard drive.
Once you can boot you want to have the cdrom loaded and copy the NT cdroms i386 folder to the hard drive. Then you can reinstall doing a "repair" from the hard drive. No floppy or cdrom required.
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"wanderer" if you read all the posting you will see that he can only mount the floppy OR cd drive.
If you sys the hard drive it will wipe the hard boot loader, but when you have setup MSDOS to boot with CD support you can then repair the boot loader from the options menu when you run the install as above.
The difficulty is to get the CD I386 folder onto the hard drive when current installed NT4 will not boot and the CD is not recognised by BIOS as a bootable device.
NT4 has three Boot Diskette set and also requires the CD.I do appreciate that there may be hacked software but I am going the M$ route thankyou
If "k_on" you want to try a boot disk look at the following, which I have never used myself:
NT4 Small Business Boot Disk
http://support.buympc.com/downloads/boot.html
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If you do have a FAT16 formated under 2GB C: partition then when you run the NT4 install as above you should a Repair option to repair the Boot Loader you have destroyed by MSDOS SYS C:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/153762/EN_US
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rogerashley what you suggest the second time around is very similiar to what I am suggesting. You suggest doing it via dos, I suggest it via NT.
I would suggest doing a repair of a NT OS from NT will have better results then a repair via DOS.
What I am suggesting IS THE MS RECOMMENDED WAY OF REPAIRING and considering the circumstances of no floppy and cdrom drive at the same time.
A NT boot disk is one that you create when you have NT up and running. See here
http://www.computerhope.com/boot.htm#06You can download a NT boot diskette image from here
http://www.svrops.com/svrops/dwnlddisk.htmI would NOT suggest using SBS setup disks to accomplish this. Even the 3 NT setup disks are better but you don't need those if you use the one I suggest.
The trick here is to get NT to mount in the first place. You can even come up in safe mode and copy the i386 folder to the hd to do the repair.
Again you want to get a NT boot disk to mount the present install of NT. Once the boot disk is known to work you can copy the files from the boot disk to the hard drive and then boot the same way but from the drive. This will allow you to have NT cdrom support and copy the i386 folder so you can run repair.
Otherwise if the OS is so shot you can't mount it then go ahead and wipe the disk and start fresh with MSDOS as rogerashley suggests. Only big issue I see here is you don't have the toshiba NT drivers. If you can't find them on the web for your laptop this method will preclude any possiblity of recovery. You will have a piece of hardware that might work for 95/98 but again you will have to find the drivers.
Otherwise you have a good doorstop or boat anchor.
Hence my suggestion to preserve the present install.
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