Editing BOOT.INI from Linux

nomind · Apprentice Joined: 03 Feb 2005 Posts: 270

Hello,

I've got a major problem on my hands. It started when I tried to install Windows XP Professional on my computer, which already had Gentoo and Windows XP Home SP2. Being the moron that I am, I forgot to write down the serial number for the WinXP Pro install, and was stuck halfway through the install process with not a clue on what to enter as a number. Hence I had to reboot. What ended up happening is that the installer modified my existing XP Home boot.ini file so that the incomplete XP Pro installation is now the default OS. But here's the worst part about it: the timeout is set to 1 second! I can't even select my XP Home option! So I'm trying to edit the boot.ini file from Gentoo. I really have to change just one number (from 2 to 1), but my main concern is that I heard Captive-NTFS doesn't work with XP SP2. Any ideas on how I can restore my original boot.ini file?

Thank you very much.

i92guboj · Posted: Tue Apr 26, 2005 11:43 pm Post subject:

You need to boot from your gentoo partition. I you cant boot from the livecd and then reinstall grub. Anyway, you dont need to write down a windows serial number if you have the original license in front of your eyes, do you? :wink:

nomind · Apprentice Joined: 03 Feb 2005 Posts: 270

Err....umm...ah...I lost my Product Key

... yeah, that's exactly what happened.
I managed to get the problem resolved with my super-fast reflexes; I booted into XP Home within the 1 second window, and edited my boot.ini from there.
Thanks a ton for the reply though.