Anyone know a good CD-bootable file editing tool for Win-XP-Home?

Greeting, group. I need to be able to edit a mis-configured
boot.ini file on a partition on a SATA disk. But because
the boot.ini file is wrong, the disk can't be booted, so I
can't use the programs on the disk to edit boot.ini.

SO, what I need is, a bootable CD with a program on it which
will allow me to edit the boot.ini file on the SATA disk.
Does anyone know of a CD I could acquire or make that would
have that ability?

I do have a Win-XP-Pro install disk with "repair console",
but I doubt it would work with a Win-XP-Home partition,
and even if it did, I don't think it allows file editing.

(In the meantime I'm running my computer from a bootable
Win-XP-Home partition on an old IDE disk. My new SATA disk
remains unusable. And no, I can't boot from IDE with the
SATA disk in the system, because this antique BIOS won't
allow booting from an IDE disk if a SATA disk is present.)


--
Cheers,
Robbie Hatley
Midway City, CA, USA
lonewolf (at) well (dot) com
http://www.well.com/user/lonewolf/

On 3/13/2013 3:04 PM, Robbie Hatley wrote:

Greeting, group. I need to be able to edit a mis-configured
boot.ini file on a partition on a SATA disk. But because
the boot.ini file is wrong, the disk can't be booted, so I
can't use the programs on the disk to edit boot.ini.

SO, what I need is, a bootable CD with a program on it which
will allow me to edit the boot.ini file on the SATA disk.
Does anyone know of a CD I could acquire or make that would
have that ability?

I do have a Win-XP-Pro install disk with "repair console",
but I doubt it would work with a Win-XP-Home partition,
and even if it did, I don't think it allows file editing.

(In the meantime I'm running my computer from a bootable
Win-XP-Home partition on an old IDE disk. My new SATA disk
remains unusable. And no, I can't boot from IDE with the
SATA disk in the system, because this antique BIOS won't
allow booting from an IDE disk if a SATA disk is present.)



If you have another Win (or DOS) PC that can read the disk, you can use
any text editor to fix the boot.ini file.
--
Cheers, Bob

On Wed, 13 Mar 2013 12:04:21 -0700, "Robbie Hatley"
wrote in article 87-
...

Greeting, group. I need to be able to edit a mis-configured
boot.ini file on a partition on a SATA disk. But because
the boot.ini file is wrong, the disk can't be booted, so I
can't use the programs on the disk to edit boot.ini.

SO, what I need is, a bootable CD with a program on it which
will allow me to edit the boot.ini file on the SATA disk.
Does anyone know of a CD I could acquire or make that would
have that ability?

I do have a Win-XP-Pro install disk with "repair console",
but I doubt it would work with a Win-XP-Home partition,
and even if it did, I don't think it allows file editing.

(In the meantime I'm running my computer from a bootable
Win-XP-Home partition on an old IDE disk. My new SATA disk
remains unusable. And no, I can't boot from IDE with the
SATA disk in the system, because this antique BIOS won't
allow booting from an IDE disk if a SATA disk is present.)

Try Hiren's boot CD - can also be set up on USB. It is my go-to boot
media for such tasks.

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/


--
Zaphod

"The best Bang since the Big One" - Eccentrica Gallumbits

On 3/13/2013 3:04 PM, Robbie Hatley wrote:

Greeting, group. I need to be able to edit a mis-configured
boot.ini file on a partition on a SATA disk. But because
the boot.ini file is wrong, the disk can't be booted, so I
can't use the programs on the disk to edit boot.ini.

SO, what I need is, a bootable CD with a program on it which
will allow me to edit the boot.ini file on the SATA disk.
Does anyone know of a CD I could acquire or make that would
have that ability?

I do have a Win-XP-Pro install disk with "repair console",
but I doubt it would work with a Win-XP-Home partition,
and even if it did, I don't think it allows file editing.

(In the meantime I'm running my computer from a bootable
Win-XP-Home partition on an old IDE disk. My new SATA disk
remains unusable. And no, I can't boot from IDE with the
SATA disk in the system, because this antique BIOS won't
allow booting from an IDE disk if a SATA disk is present.)




Robbie:

SATA disks and controllers are "hot pluggable":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#Hotplug

Boot from the IDE disk and let the old install of Windows start, then
just plug in the SATA disk and wait a minuet or so for Windows to
recognize the disk or open Disk Management and click Action -
Refresh. Once the disk is recognized you can use any tool in the olde
install of Windows to manipulate files on the SATA disk.

John

--
\\\||///
------------------o000----(o)(o)----000o----------------
----------------------------()--------------------------
'' Madness takes its toll - Please have exact change. ''

John Dulak - 40.4888ºN,79.899ºW - http://tinyurl.com/3lvoh2n

Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote in
:

On Wed, 13 Mar 2013 12:04:21 -0700, "Robbie Hatley"
wrote in article 87-
...

Greeting, group. I need to be able to edit a mis-configured
boot.ini file on a partition on a SATA disk. But because
the boot.ini file is wrong, the disk can't be booted, so I
can't use the programs on the disk to edit boot.ini.

SO, what I need is, a bootable CD with a program on it which
will allow me to edit the boot.ini file on the SATA disk.
Does anyone know of a CD I could acquire or make that would
have that ability?

I do have a Win-XP-Pro install disk with "repair console", but I
doubt it would work with a Win-XP-Home partition, and even if it
did, I don't think it allows file editing.

(In the meantime I'm running my computer from a bootable
Win-XP-Home partition on an old IDE disk. My new SATA disk
remains unusable. And no, I can't boot from IDE with the
SATA disk in the system, because this antique BIOS won't allow
booting from an IDE disk if a SATA disk is present.)

Try Hiren's boot CD - can also be set up on USB. It is my go-to
boot media for such tasks.

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/



I'll second that.
It's my go-to boot disk as well.

-- John

Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:
On Wed, 13 Mar 2013 12:04:21 -0700, "Robbie Hatley"
wrote in article 87-
...

Greeting, group. I need to be able to edit a mis-configured
boot.ini file on a partition on a SATA disk. But because
the boot.ini file is wrong, the disk can't be booted, so I
can't use the programs on the disk to edit boot.ini.

SO, what I need is, a bootable CD with a program on it which
will allow me to edit the boot.ini file on the SATA disk.
Does anyone know of a CD I could acquire or make that would
have that ability?

I do have a Win-XP-Pro install disk with "repair console",
but I doubt it would work with a Win-XP-Home partition,
and even if it did, I don't think it allows file editing.

(In the meantime I'm running my computer from a bootable
Win-XP-Home partition on an old IDE disk. My new SATA disk
remains unusable. And no, I can't boot from IDE with the
SATA disk in the system, because this antique BIOS won't
allow booting from an IDE disk if a SATA disk is present.)

Try Hiren's boot CD - can also be set up on USB. It is my go-to boot
media for such tasks.

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/


--
Zaphod

But I think the BartPE one is a bit "simpler" or more fundamental (once you
get it set up), since for one thing, it has a lot less extra utility
programs on it, that you probably won't need. (Or so it seemed to me, at
least when I read this).

But maybe I missed something in the comparisons...

On 2013-03-13 1:18 PM, Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:

Try Hiren's boot CD - can also be set up on USB. It is my go-to boot
media for such tasks.

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

Cool! Thanks for the recommendation and the link! I'll check that out
in a day or too.


--
Cheers,
Robbie Hatley
Midway City, CA, USA
lonewolf (at) well (dot) com
http://www.well.com/user/lonewolf/

On 2013-03-13 12:43 PM, Bob Willard wrote:

If you have another Win (or DOS) PC that can read the disk,
you can use any text editor to fix the boot.ini file.

Nope, I don't have another PC. And as I've found, not every
PC can do this kind of thing, only PCs with flexible,
well-designed BIOS.

Also, actual MSDOS wouldn't work for a number of reasons
(cylinder boundaries, disk size, file system (NTFS), etc).
Would need to be XP, Vista, or 7.

So thanks for the tip, but not currently workable in my case.


--
Cheers,
Robbie Hatley
Midway City, CA, USA
lonewolf (at) well (dot) com
http://www.well.com/user/lonewolf/

On 2013-03-13 2:26 PM, John Dulak wrote:

SATA disks and controllers are "hot pluggable":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#Hotplug
Boot from the IDE disk and let the old install of Windows start,
then just plug in the SATA disk and wait a minuet or so
for Windows to recognize the disk or open Disk Management and
click Action - Refresh. Once the disk is recognized you
can use any tool in the olde install of Windows to manipulate
files on the SATA disk.

Fascinating idea! Lemme try that...

:::tries it:::

Alas, no, didn't work. Disk manager refused to see the hot-plugged
SATA disk for whatever reason. I'm guessing it's because when I
fire up the system with the SATA disk unplugged, my BIOS gives me
the error message "SATA disk 0 not found. Strike F1 to continue
or F2 to run setup." Apparently if I hit F1, it disables SATA
port 0, figuring the attached device is missing or broken
(not taking hot plugability into account). It's a very old BIOS
and full of dumb engineering mistakes. Oh well.

Good try, though! Thanks for your effort!

Looks like I'll have to use the boot CD route, though.




--
Cheers,
Robbie Hatley
Midway City, CA, USA
lonewolf (at) well (dot) com
http://www.well.com/user/lonewolf/

Robbie Hatley wrote:

On 2013-03-13 2:26 PM, John Dulak wrote:

SATA disks and controllers are "hot pluggable":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#Hotplug
Boot from the IDE disk and let the old install of Windows start,
then just plug in the SATA disk and wait a minuet or so
for Windows to recognize the disk or open Disk Management and
click Action - Refresh. Once the disk is recognized you
can use any tool in the olde install of Windows to manipulate
files on the SATA disk.

Fascinating idea! Lemme try that...

:::tries it:::

Alas, no, didn't work. Disk manager refused to see the hot-plugged
SATA disk for whatever reason. I'm guessing it's because when I
fire up the system with the SATA disk unplugged, my BIOS gives me
the error message "SATA disk 0 not found. Strike F1 to continue
or F2 to run setup." Apparently if I hit F1, it disables SATA
port 0, figuring the attached device is missing or broken
(not taking hot plugability into account). It's a very old BIOS
and full of dumb engineering mistakes. Oh well.

Good try, though! Thanks for your effort!

Looks like I'll have to use the boot CD route, though.

Hot plug is most likely to be supported under AHCI mode.
Your system might be too old for that.

There were some SATA chips, perhaps SIL3112 for example,
where hot-plug was supported by their standard driver.
But for most of the rest, the route now is via AHCI mode.

The fact that your BIOS describes the disks as "C:",
I haven't seen that since my S370 system. That's my last
system that referred to disks that way. That computer
now would be roughly 14 years old. (It's actually a
Slot 1, with a Slocket converter to take an S370.)

Paul

In ,
Robbie Hatley typed:
On 2013-03-13 12:43 PM, Bob Willard wrote:

If you have another Win (or DOS) PC that can read the
disk, you can use any text editor to fix the boot.ini
file.

Nope, I don't have another PC. And as I've found, not
every PC can do this kind of thing, only PCs with
flexible, well-designed BIOS.

Also, actual MSDOS wouldn't work for a number of reasons
(cylinder boundaries, disk size, file system (NTFS), etc).
Would need to be XP, Vista, or 7.

So thanks for the tip, but not currently workable in my
case.

All you need to do is find boot.ini on your boot drive and edit it with any
text edtor. Be careful to keep the .ini TLD.

(2nd attempt. 1st try I hit "reply" instead of "followup" in TB.
So Zaphod Beeblebrox gets 2 copies. That's fine, 1 for each head.)


On 2013-03-13 1:18 PM, Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:

Try Hiren's boot CD - can also be set up on USB. It is my go-to boot
media for such tasks.
http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

I just downloaded and unzipped that.

HOLY CRAP!!!
I just about had an orgasm from reading the file HBCD.txt!
I had no idea that so much functionality could be crammed onto one CD!
I feel empowered to rape & pillage or heal & repair any HD at will.
This amount of power must be what a god feels like.

About to burn this to CD and try it out.


--
Cheers,
Robbie Hatley
Midway City, CA, USA
lonewolf (at) well (dot) com
http://www.well.com/user/lonewolf/

On Thu, 21 Mar 2013 02:17:47 -0700, "Robbie Hatley"
wrote in article
...

(2nd attempt. 1st try I hit "reply" instead of "followup" in TB.
So Zaphod Beeblebrox gets 2 copies. That's fine, 1 for each head.)


On 2013-03-13 1:18 PM, Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:

Try Hiren's boot CD - can also be set up on USB. It is my go-to boot
media for such tasks.
http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

I just downloaded and unzipped that.

HOLY CRAP!!!
I just about had an orgasm from reading the file HBCD.txt!
I had no idea that so much functionality could be crammed onto one CD!
I feel empowered to rape & pillage or heal & repair any HD at will.
This amount of power must be what a god feels like.

About to burn this to CD and try it out.

Get ready to like it even more - it drops you into an environment that
is almost equivalent to running XP. There are some differences, and a
few things that would run in XP won't run in Hiren's environment, but
man, it sure comes close.

It is even more fun on a USB drive since you can update the AV
definitions etc. without having to burn a new CD. And with today's
large USB drives, it leaves plenty of space for everything else you
need to store on one.

--
Zaphod

"The best Bang since the Big One" - Eccentrica Gallumbits