I really do appreciate the help RC. Unfortunately time was of the essense
to get the laptop working again and in this case while it is a pain to fully
format and reinstall everything, there truly was nothing that couldn't be
replaced on that laptop. So I decided to use Sony's solution and totally
reformat & install through their system restore disks. Really this solved a
couple problems because I could get the system back to a single drive non
partitioned out and I could gut alot of useless programs that had been
accumulated yet were not easily identified. In my case I was somewhat lucky
because I hadn't stored anything valuable on the laptop that could not be
reinstalled.

Thanks again,

Z
"R. C. White" wrote in message
...
Hi, Zattack.

I've waited a couple of days hoping someone would jump in with the tip for
setting a volume Active when you can't boot WinXP.

It's easy to do from WinXP Disk Management - but if you can't boot, that
doesn't help. :( I'm pretty sure it can be done from the Recovery
Console, but I can't find it in the instructions in the WinXP Resource
Kit.
(You might try FixMBR and FixBoot, but I'm not sure they would do this.)

I've often recommended that WinXP users "throw away the Win9x/ME boot
disk,
or at least hide it so that you'll never be tempted to use it again" - but
that diskette may be the best solution to your problem. Boot into MS-DOS.
Don't expect to read any NTFS partitions with it, but FDISK creates and
deletes partitions without regard to their formatting. So, boot to MS-DOS
and run FDISK to change the Active partition on your hard drive. I've not
actually done this in a while, but it should work for you.

Please post back and let us know what results you get with this.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX

Microsoft Windows MVP

"Zattack" wrote in message
...
Setting the new partition to active may have indeed been what I did,
however
since I cannot boot up to see that I just don't know. What would I need
to
do to even investigate if the pointers are not going to the correct boot
drive?

Z


"R. C. White" wrote in message
...
Hi, Zattack.

I've snipped most of the thread so far so that we can concentrate on
your
latest post.

"Zattack" wrote in message
...

Thanks to everyone so far who have posted. I probably have not
explained
the situation as well as could have. Basically the laptop was setup
with
a
partitioned 14 gig drive. Just over 5 allocated as the primary drive
c
and
less than 9 to an extended drive d. Problem is that everything,
programs,
files, windows updates, etc were all going to drive c and it was
maxed
out
on space.

Not an unusual situation at all. Many of us have wished for more space
in
Drive C:.

In an attempt on my part to try and find a solution so that the
drive
D
could be used more appropriately I ran across the disk management
utility.
My goal was to try and clear drive d and somehow merge it back with
c,
which
I now know takes at least a separate piece of software such as
Partition
Magic. I didn't have anything like that so what I naively did was
unallocate drive d. Then I reallocated it as a primary partition and
formatted it while still in disk management.

Unnecessary, because WinXP doesn't care whether any volume is primary
or
logical EXCEPT that the System Partition (almost always Drive C must
be
a
primary partition. The Boot Volume (where the \Windows folder, with
its
gigabytes of files, resides) may be Drive C: or any other volume on any
HD
in your computer. In your case, it apparently was Drive C:. As I
said,
this step was unnecessary and probably did no good, but it did no harm,
either.

If you are familiar with the
disk management utility it has a little window that displays the
drives
with
color codes and allows you to click on the drive you want to work
with
and
such. Once drive d had formatted it was the same color as drive c,
listed
itself as a primary drive but still showed it with 9 gig of space as
a
separate drive from that of drive c (also still listed as a primary
drive.

OK. Situation normal.

After exiting the utility I was able to work on a word doc and jump
on
the
internet.

OK.

I closed down and upon reboot recieved the error message.

NOT OK!

Now it's time for a lesson in the boot process, but I'm pressed time
for
today.

Some essential points: The few System Files (NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM and
Boot.ini) must be in the Root of the System Partition: the Active
partition
on the first HD, almost always Drive C:. The boot sector of the System
Partition load C:\NTLDR, which uses C:\Boot.ini to find the Boot Volume
and
load WinXP from there and start it. The error message you saw says
that
the
boot process cannot find an operating system in what it thinks is the
System
Partition. It's getting lost on its way to Drive C:. :(

It's not a Windows problem, strictly speaking. It's a hardware/BIOS
problem. The boot process can't find ANY operating system. Not WinXP,
not
Win9x, not even MS-DOS. Most likely, it's looking in the wrong place.
Now
you have to find out where it's looking and direct it back to your
Drive
C:.

I am
fairly confident that the c drive is still intact since just shutting
it
down should not have erased anything and since as Colin stated
windows
shouldn't allow you to delete its active drive while you are working
in
it...

Agreed. Whatever caused the problem, this wasn't it.

So my conclusion appears to be similar to yours, RC, that somehow the
partition format process I did screwed up the pointer for when I boot
the
system. Without the ability to even reach a dos prompt or navigate
outside
windows I don't even know how to fix the pointer problem or begin to
research it because Sony did not sell the Windows XP software, it
built
it
into the recovery disk as far I understand it. The Sony recovery
disk
has
only two options upon inserting it and rebooting: Format drive C and
begin
new install or format all drives and begin install...

Does Fixboot provide a solution to this and if so is a new copy of
WinXp
the
only option? I will most likely start a new thread if I ever get the
system
to boot correctly to fix the partitioned allocations but until then I
want
to at least try to recovery the system as it was...


Hey, I just thought of something! When you used Disk Management to
create
and format the primary partition that became Drive D:, did you "Mark
Partition as Active"? Each HD can have only ONE Active (bootable)
partition
at any one time. If you marked D: as Active, C: would have had to have
lost
that designation. The next time you booted, the system would have
looked
for NTLDR, etc., on Drive D:, the active partition. Not finding them
there,
it would have given you that "no operating system" message and died -
just
what you saw. I have to run now, but I'll bet that's the answer.

Sorry to leave you at this point, but I have to run. I'll check back
when
I
have time tomorrow.

RC