Hi.
I am having a problem with my Boss's girlfriend's computer. I work as a yacht captain and in this trade you get asked to do all sorts of things. This time it's "Can you fix her computer?"

I am fairly sure it's a boot.ini error because of the following:

1) Initially, the computer was not reading a boot-ini at all
2) I downloaded a standard boot-ini file from bootdisk.com and put that on an external drive
3) Now I have got it to boot from that drive, I am getting boot error messages, all (I think) because the boot.ini file I am using is not configured for my setup, which is unusual.
4) This makes me think that the original boot.ini file is corrupt, but that the new one need re-configuring

The setup:

1) Her laptop is an Asus Eee - it has no built-in or external floppy or cd drives
2) It's running WinXPHome Edition.
3) My laptop is a Toshiba Satellite Pro running Windows Vista.

To try to boot her computer, I have copied the new boot.in file to my external hard drive, then plugged the drive into her computer and used the boot sequence configuration to boot from this drive first. By doing this I have got a little further, in that I am now getting boot error messages where there were none before.

Basically, I need to know how to edit the new boot.ini file correctly to avoid these messages.

There is no copy of Windows on the external hard drive, just a load of files.

Could you help me by showing me the correct configuration?

What I'm using is:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windo ws XP" /fastdetect

But I am guessing this is for a standard, simple setup. What I need is for the computer to look for the boot.ini file on the external drive, then go back to its own internal hard drive to continue booting up Windows.

Many thanks,

Roger Harris.

Hello there.

Use a 4 gig Flash Drive.

1. The PC has to support booting from a USB flash drive. There may be anywhere from 1-3 items to change in the BIOS to make this possible assuming your BIOS supports it. Some bios's may refer to your flash drive as a USB floppy or USB zip.
2. The USB flash drive must support booting from it in general.
3. The flash drive must contain the boot/system files.
4. The flash drive must have bootsector area. This is done with special utilities.



This how to make a Flash Drive bootable:

Boot Windows XP from a USB flash drive - Operating Systems