While booting an XP, I noticed error message with boot.ini but it boot up successfully. On examining the file I noticed there is only one line in it, timeout=0. So, I replace it with a standard boot.ini file from another computer with the same partitioning. However, I can no longer boot up the system, this time the error is corrupted hal.dll even though I do have any device connected to the system. Recovery console is not installed.
I boot up Knoppix to try and follow instructions I found to edit boot.ini back to original form. In brief, I use captive NTFS, untick read-only for the drive but I still cannot save the file after editing. Can Knoppix be used for this purpose, since Windows recovery console actually requires admin password.
Ming
