Bootskin-Error after formating

from Stardock Forums

Here's the story: I have 2 drives, 80gb main windows drive and a backup 160. The 80 got corrupt, so I installed a temp windows XP on the 160 twice, the first installation got messed. This was to attempt to recover the data. This failed so I formatted the 80, reinstalled windows but forgot to remove the 160 when doing so. Now my 160 is the c drive with all the system files (i deleted the windows from it and all boot information, except boot.ini, ntldr...) and my 80 the d drive with the windowsXP.


When I apply a bootskin it doesn't show up. I tried the default skins to test it, but nothing. It worked before, same system, windowsXP,  same updates (SP2), almost identical. My guess is that it is skinning the non-existent windows.


Can someone help me fix this or explain to me what is really going on?


Thanks 

btw Bootskin doesn't come up with any errors, and it indicates the active skin.

wincustomize
2,071 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top

I'm not completely following your situation but here are two things that can help clarify:

1. Start->Run diskmgmt.msc go fullscreen and take a screenshot (alt+printscrn), then upload to a file server (ie http://www.putfile.com/) and embed the image here with the image button.

2. Start->Run %systemdrive%\boot.ini and copy/paste the contents here.

Have you tried uninstalling BootSkin and reinstalling it? Doing this should resolve any issue with which Windows partition BootSkin might be trying to start from.

-Mike
[Stardock Support]

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

Here's the boot.ini text:




[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect




And here's the screenshot: http://venus.walagata.com/w/thenutoriuspinky/dskManage.JPG



I tried reinstalling and nothing, still the same problem. Hope this helps

WindowBlinds - Free yourself of the default settings, customize your desktop.
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top

So I've got this straight:

  • 160GB is the Primary Master and is set to C:
  • 80GB (BOOT) is the Primary Slave and is set to D:

I'd recommend doing one of the following:

  1. Copy any files you don't want to lose from the 80GB to the 160GB, set the 80GB to Master, the 160GB to Slave and perform a full restore on the 80GB.
  2. Perform an in-place install on the 160GB (don't format, but write over the existing installation)

I would recommend option 1, as it's usually better to have the Boot partition on a Master drive and mounted on C:. It's also better to have the smaller drive as your Boot partition (assuming it's a decent size) so if anything ever happened, you could just swap it out for the larger drive, and backup relatively easily, like you'd do in option 1. 

There's nothing wrong with having windows loaded onto both drives (an install only takes ~1.5gb), it's just better to have everything set up as I previously explained. You should only install Windows onto the Primary Master drive though. (This can change by swapping out harddrives).

Once you've performed either step, you should be able to uninstall any instance of Bootskin and reinstall it. At this point, you shouldn't have any problems.  I'm assuming Bootskin just got confused as to which windows partition it was applying the bootskin to.  This program is not supported and isn't 100% error proof.

(You might also want to obtain a copy of Drive Fitness Test (DFT) and run it on both your drives to make sure everything's stable)

-Mike
[Stardock Support]

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

Thanks alot, I am gonna try this over the weekend (school is crazy right now).


It wasn't the program's fault, it was more my fault for messing up the windows.