Hi Bill,
I've been thru this many times. IN short, you may or may not be able to
recover, depending if you can change the partition letters.

W2k uses the mbr and its last registry settings to make some decission as to
allow login. I guess its a security measure, but a pain for anyone moving
partitions around.

First thing to try is this:
Boot up with a dos disc and run FDISK /MBR.
Then run chkdsk on all the hdd.

With DI, if you have not changed the partitions other than what it did
(deleted and replaced), this may work.
But you say NG did the same, so you probably changed partitions.


If you can get the same partition scheme (drive letters) and have W2k on the
same partition as its source, you might be able to boot in.
The other way, according to MS, is to go to the registry via a network
connection and run regedit.
The HKEY_MACHINE/System/Mounted Devices/ then find your partition and change
it back to the sources letter.  The reason you must use regedit is because
you can't change the letter of the partition you are currently using.


I did not try this, but if you have 2 other good running W2k o/s on this
hdd, you can login to one and maybe just regedit what you want it to have
(make a copy first and save the good WINNT directory, including a reg
backup) and then copy that directory to the other partition that won't
login. Then edit the registry.
My experience is that all the links are pointing to the old letter and
problems occur with some software.
It would be great if you can get some 3rd party software to edit a registry
form outside that o/s.

Another way would be to use NG's Image editor to only replace the WINNT
partition. I know DI can do this, NG I've had trouble doing. You need to get
ready to do a low of disc swaping around for DI.

Let me know how it comes out. If I can look back on my notes and find out
anything else, I'll write.

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