Hey, I am having problems with my pc notebook. When I switch on it say invalid boot.ini file and then shuts down. The only way that I can open it is in safe mode. I do not have the original CD as the notebook was given to me and thought it would be useful for my studies. I do have a windows 98 cd which I would be quite happy to use on the notebook but I cannot install it as it tells me its uncompatible. How do I solve the problem as I have spent hours trying to figure it out. Another website told me to uninstall 2000 and I thought I had but it doesnt appear that I have and now I dont know if the situation is worse. Can anybody help me... I am not very good at this...... Thanks

How did you try to uninstall 2K?

Hard to say if it is damaged beyond repair but without the CD the only chance would be the 4 floppy boot disks that might get you to the Recovery Console.

http://www.bootdisk.com/

There you could try:

1. fixboot then fixmbr

2 copy or expand the original ntldr and the ntdetect.com files to the c:
then run bootcfg /add to put your system in the boot.ini file you just erased with fixboot and fixmbr.


2K needs 3 files to boot properly. 1. ntldr to start the process and point to the second file boot.ini which contains your operating systems id and location on your boot sector, and thirdly you need ntdetect.com to allow the system root to be "found" and begin loading itself... These three files need to be native to the C:\ drive or your root directory on your boot sector for Windows 2k. If you boot off of c:\ but load windows on D:\ then make sure you put these files on C:\ not D:\

Create the below boot.ini file on the floppy diskette drive.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microso ft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

Copy the NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM files from another computer using the same Operating System. Both of these files are located in the root directory of the primary hard disk drive. For example, C:\NTLDR and C:\NTDETECT.COM should be the locations of these files on many computers.


Once these files have been copied to a floppy diskette reboot the computer and copy the NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM files to the root directory of the primary hard disk drive. Below is an example of what commonly should be performed from the A:\> drive.

copy ntldr c:
copy ntdetect.com c:

After the above two files have been copied, remove the floppy diskette and reboot the computer.
____________________________________________

If you want to install 98 then first format the hard drive:

How to Use the Fdisk Tool and the Format Tool to Partition or Repartition a Hard Disk

Free FDISK Tool