Many times have I heard the users lament that their Boot.ini is corrupt and lo’ they can not boot. Be at peace my fretful citizens, your solution is at hand.

To repair Boot.ini you’ll need two things, the first is your Windows XP CD (Or your Vendor OS Recovery CD), the second thing is the instructions below.

First put the XP CD in your CD drive and reboot, during the reboot press whatever key lets you choose the boot device. On a Dell that’s the F12 key, on some other manufacturers you will have to change the boot order in the BIOS and on yet others you will have to do nothing as it will boot from the CD by default.

When you see “Press any key to boot from CD” press a key. Now wait for the XP installer to finish loading up and you will be presented with the option to press R to Repair.

Press R.

The result will be a black screen with some text in it, this is the Recovery Console.

Type fixboot

Your system will do a few things and then return you to the Recovery Console.

Type bootcfg /rebuild

Again the system will go about its business. Once you are returned to the Recovery Console remove the XP Cd and reboot your PC. Everything should boot normally now and your worries should be over. If that doesn’t happen and you still can’t boot then click the Petition button at the top of the page and send me the details. I’ll happily fix your issue and write it up.

As always please

Recently I’ve started to see more inquiries regarding mixed XP and Vista networks. These two operating systems, though from the same vendor, don’t play well together. There are a few steps you can take to force these rowdy siblings to play nice.
The first thing is to make sure that all of your machines are on the same workgroup. The default workgroup name changed between XP and Vista so if you are trying this with the default settings it’s not going to work very well. To change your workgroup XP you rightclick on My Computer, choose Properties, Click the Computer Name tab, then click Change. Enter the desired workgroup othere and then reboot. Things will go more smoothly if you change the XP workgroup to “workgroup” to match the Vista default.
The second key is to install the Layer Topology Discovery Responder on your XP box which is how Vista finds XP machines. Once you have that installed your XP machine should show up on the Vista network map.
There are still a few more things you’ll have to do though. You’ll need to set the network location to Private. You can do that by clicking the Start button, clicking Control Panel, clicking Network and Internet, and then clicking Network and Sharing Center.
Next click Customize, now under Set Network Location, next to Location type, click Private, click Next, and then click Close.
And last but not least you’ll have to make sure you have user credentials on both machines. Create a user on the Vista machine with the same login and password you are using on the XP machine, then do the same for the Vista user on the XP machine.
Now enable whatever file and printer sharing you would like and enjoy.

As always, if you found this helpful donate to The Empire, feel free to leave comments and questions if you have any trouble.