Absolutely not. Don't touch that stuff.


Yes, absolutely. Otherwise you're wasting your time. I assumed you'd already installed sp 2. If you haven't you should install it, restart, and see if the problem persists. They may have fixed that issue in the meantime. You should install sp 2 no matter what however, you need the security features it offers.


Yes, it will.

Check for spyware and viruses
After you update to SP 2, and fix whatever needs to be fixed, you should follow the procedures in this spyware - antivirus thread to clean our your machine. It's very likely your machine is also heavily infected from the sound of your questions.
Back to top

Been to busy to try yet.

'Just wanted to give you some background.

I tried xp sp1 & sp2 in the past. Both bolcked me out of win2000. I was able to uninstall both sp's with no problem. So I've been running without service packs for quite some time. But now I want to utilize my USB2.0 ports for external drives, etc., which xp doesn't support without adding a sp.

I do have comcast's spyware & security program installed, which seems to be working fine. Do you feel xp's sp2 security is better or can I run them both without conflict when I do the download?

One other thing, I'm not real up on zip files. When I open this ntldr download, will it automatically install to the correct place/drive, or do I need to instruct it where to go?

Thanks again for all your help.

Bill
Back to top

PS: Comcast's spyware, security, and anti virus is by McAfee. (Recent version, don't have the ver# available.)
Back to top

ROTFLOL... [roll on the floor laughing out loud]. All you know is that comcast's garbage reports that it finds nothing. That means nothing. All antispyware products and antivirus products will do what they can do, and if they fail, they won't tell you that they failed. That's why you have to use more than one, each fails in different places.

Follow the antivirus / spyware tips in this thread, run all the different av and spyware scanners, especially adaware and spybot, plus avg and antivir, and then you'll see just how good or bad the comcast stuff is. If it's mcafee based, or norton, it's going to be mediocre at best.


I have to use the term 'better' advisedly. Yes, SP 2 is significantly 'better' than pre sp 2 XPs. That's not unlike saying that having a bullet in the stomach is better than having a bullet in the head. It's harder to install spyware with XP SP 2, but sp 2 is not by any means 'good'. A large number of holes have been exploited since its release, those weren't supposed to exist.


You need to learn how to run your computer, various free zipping utilities exist, plus I think now XP has a built in unzipping tool. Not sure about that, I never use XP so I can't say for sure, but I think it has it.

zip is simply file compression. You have to unzip a zipped file to use it. A file is a file, I don't know how else to put it. There is no significant difference between say a .doc word file and an ntldr file, they are both files that do nothing until a program asks for them to do something.

I can't really make this any more clear, sorry, you need to learn what a file is, a file is a file, it's a blob of data that some program or other uses. Files don't do anything by themselves, they are just data, so you have to do exactly what I told you to do, above.

I'd recommend learning a little bit more about computers before going much further, computer stuff doesn't get much simpler than files and zipped files, so if those are mysteries to you dual booting might be something you should avoid until you get some idea of what these machines actually do.

Of course, as long as you use any microsoft product to access the web, internet explorer, outlook, outlook express, you are VERY high risk. There is nothing you can do to fix that, that's why we never use MS products for anything internet related.
Back to top

Hi
I had the same issue of Win2K not booting (missing or corrupt: \winnt\system32\config\system file).
I follwed the advice regarding replacement of the NTLDR file. The download version 23/08/01 did not work. However the version I had in C:\i386 worked fine (26/07/00). But now XP won't boot.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

Kevin
Back to top

Thank you so much for this thread that fixed my problem.

Now my only question is this, is there any ntldr that could support booting windows 2000 sp4 and windows xp sp2 ?

(at this time I have to switch the ntldr regarding what I want to boot)
Back to top

Sorry, wish I could help, but I've moved to using Debian Linux since I put this thread up, partly because I just got sick of this Microsoft stuff, it got old.

I don't know if there is a fix for SP 2 problems, I found my fix by just not using windows any more, but that won't help you unfortunately.
Back to top