Edit boot.ini

[DarkLogan]

I have read that it is possible to edit the boot.ini using Knoppix. I have tried to do so but with no luck. I changed the permissions to write actually they were all ready set like that but when i go to edit the ini file it says i have no permission to edit and therfore it wont change. I got a nasty trojan and it changed my boot.ini so now it wont boot into windows it just gives me the fatal error screen. NTFS is the format on my windows machine. Please help me with this thanx. BTW im no good at linux but knoppix is loaded on my windows mahine.

[Harry Kuhman]

If the file is on a NTFS formatted partition then I suggest that you do not edit anything on the partition with Knoppix. Knoppix can read NTFS just fine but writing is unsafe and may corrupt the entire partition.

[kirol]

Logan: i've used ntfs-3g several times exactly for that same purpose: fixing/overwriting a single file (boot.ini, xxx.dll...) on a windows NTFS partition with no data corruption. ntfs-3g is a mature and AFAICT safe project.

Unfortunately, knoppix wouldn't be my first choice nowadays as its SW is not very current; specifically the latest official (5.1) cdrom had a version of ntfs-3g that pre-dates their 1.0 release, and 5.3 knoppix is only available on DVD format which is overkill for the simple purpose of rescue live-cd (there's a Japanese cdrom remaster, though). My recommendation would be to use sidux instead, if you've got the bandwidth to download another ISO image.

I'd also suggest not to boot to graphical mode - setting the partition to R/W this way defaults to the older, unsafe ntfs driver (not ntfs-3g ).

Assuming your C: unit corresponds to the first partition from your first (sata/SCSI) disk:

# mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /media/sda1
# cp /media/sda1/boot.ini /media/sda1/boot.bak
# mcedit /media/sda1/boot.ini
# umount /media/sda1

should do

Harry: I've hesitated explaining the above in a FAQ before, but the lack of a recent CD release of knoppix (ideally defaulting to ntfs-3g instead of ntfs) makes the explanation messy and I feel embarrassed to advocate another live cd on the knoppix forum; what is your opinion?

[Harry Kuhman]

...Harry: I've hesitated explaining the above in a FAQ before, but the lack of a recent CD release of knoppix (ideally defaulting to ntfs-3g instead of ntfs) makes the explanation messy and I feel embarrassed to advocate another live cd on the knoppix forum; what is your opinion?

We don't discourage advocating a better solution for people here when one exists. This board had a lot of discussion of Kantonix when that was still supported. We still have a section for other Live CDs. And I myself encourage installing Debian or another suitable distro rather than Knoppix when the issue of installing comes up.

As you point out, the last CD version had a release of ntfs-3g that was older than the 1.0 release That's certainly a deal breaker for me. Also, not using ntfs-3g by default is a situation that is going to cause many new users to skip steps and end up trying to write with the older drivers and corrupt the disk that they are trying to save. One should not assume that all new users will get all of the information. Many will be like DarkLogan here and start their story with "I have read that it is possible to edit the boot.ini using Knoppix. I have tried to do so but ..." and then go on to explain how they corrupted the data, never mentioning ntfs-3g So I personally much prefer to tell users to recover files by reading ntfs with Knoppix and transferring the files across a network. (And I couldn't talk anyone through changing the driver anyway.)


I'm not completely convinced that ntfs-3g is safe. Personally I've felt that many of the corruption problems may be related to gifts that Microsoft is doing to screw Linux users, and that they can change the rules at ant time by their "security updates". So even if you have a version of Linux that seems to be able to write to NTFS and hasn't corrupted anything yet, that might not be true in the future.

If this seems overly paranoid, let me say that I came to these forums years ago trying to resolve a different Knoppix problem. I had downloaded and burnt a Knoppix 3.1 CD and was using it fine. I got a new HP notebook, and when I tried Knoppix on it, it again worked fine. I ran both Windows and Knoppix on the notebook for about a month, knowing not to write to the ntfs partition, and all was well. But I had been cautious when I first got the notebook and didn't rush to install the XP security updates. One day I did install them and everything seemed to go fine. Or so it seemed... The next time that I ran Knoppix, it could no longer set up the NIC by DHCP! And I couldn't set it up manually either!

I eventually found a way to use the notebook on the network again. But it involved a series of manual commands to reset the NIC and configure it. I quickly determined that nothing had happened to my CD. I even burnt a new disk from the same ISO (that still passed the md5 test) and it failed in the same way. As far as I was able to determine what happened, I believe that the Microsoft "security update" deliberately changed the eeprom configuration information on the hardware NIC and configured it in a way that kept the NIC from working. Interestingly enough, XP now ignored that configuration information stored in the NIC eeprom and so it worked fine. It was a couple of years before a version of Knoppix came out that I could boot without having to fool with the NIC settings.

Maybe Microsoft has lost interest in screwing XP users who want to move to Linux, and are focusing their effort on screwing Vista users. Maybe they are not doing anything at all to screw with Linux users who try to write to ntfs. But they could, and I don't trust them enough to believe that they wouldn't. This company has too much hatred for Linux and it's own customers, and there have been too many cases of ntfs writing that seemed to work in the past and then suddenly went horribly wrong for me to trust any data that I have on a ntfs partition to a belief that Microsoft would not deliberately screw it's users who dare to also use Linux.

So if you really believe that ntfs-3g is safe and that it's going to stay safe, it's not my place to tell you not to share your knowledge. But I urger you to make it clear in any wiki entry or any forum post that it's extremely critical to not use older versions and to not use default ntfs drivers. And I do expect that there will be people who you see posting in these forums who start their posts with "I'm a complete noob. I heard it was safe to write to a ntfs partition with Knoppix. Now I have this problem..."

[DarkLogan]

kirol thanx for the info. I have no clue as to where to start. I'm no good with linux. What i'm trying to do is use something to get inside windows like knoppix does and edit that boot.ini. After the windows startup screen I get the blue screen of death with the dreaded

Stop: c000021a {Fatal System Error}
The Session manager initialization system process terminated unexpectedly with a status of 0xc000026c (0×00000000 0×00000000).
The system has been shut down.

I looked at the boot.ini and it infact has code it shouldnt have. If you could walk me through the process of editing that file it would be much appreciated. I think windows would then boot the right way. Thanx for your assitance on this matter.

PS I tried this method http://healyourchurchwebsite.com/200...-with-knoppix/ but it does not do what the author said it would do. There is no found.000 folder. So that method will not work which is how i came across knoppix in the first place. But with that said knoppix is very nice. Something i would like to learn about

[kirol]

Logan, you haven't told us what version of knoppix you are using. The main point I was trying to convey is that it is possible to write to NTFS volumes, but under no circumstance should one just click the check box under the KDE GUI which allows you to alter the mount mode of an NTFS partition from "read-only" to "read/write", as under the cover this still uses the unsafe ntfs driver. I gave you pretty much all the commands that are needed, and suggested you start knoppix in text mode (hint: use "knoppix 2" from the boot prompt, perhaps with other cheatcodes you are using already, e.g "lang=xx" to select you keyboard driver). Alternatively, you should be able to use the commands I gave from either a root konsole or plain-text console(Ctrl-Alt-F1) as root, then revert to the GUI to browse and edit files but I strongly advise sticking to the text rescue mode. Rudimentary browsing is available from "mc" (a norton-commander look-alike, if you're old enough to have used that under DOS). The first step I suppose is to confirm that "sda1" is indeed you windows C: drive. Post the output of "fdisk -l" if you're unsure or the suggested commands don't work.

Finally if you've got a bootable XP cdrom, you should google for "XP recovery console". Provided your HD has no HW problem, this should also enable you to access your C: drive and edit your boot.ini file (as well as fix the boot loader if needed with commands such as fimbr and fixboot - but you should post on a windows forum about these.