As some of you know, the server has been offline for the last couple of days, and I warned of a potential server rollback by a couple of months. Well, here is what essentially happened:
DAY 1
Just the other day, I was going to try something that seemed like a cool idea - Multiple Operating Systems (aka. Multiboot). This allows the use of multiple operating systems on a single computer or hard drive. I was planning on having Windows 7, Windows XP, and the Windows 10 Demo (available on MS's own website). So I created 2 empty partitions for the two operating systems. At first, a change was needed in the BIOS to allow the windows XP installer to load, as it caused a BSOD when loading the installer otherwise. After installing Windows XP, all seemed well. However, when I tried to reboot (expecting it to prompt me to choose an operating system) it simply went into XP automatically. This is where everything went to hell.
I attempted to set the C:\ partition to be Active, and it warned me that, if the partition did not have system files, it could prevent booting. The partition DID have system files (or so i thought) so I set it to active. After rebooting, I got this: "BOOTMGR is missing. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart.". From there I attempted to take the drive out, but one of the two screws holding it in place was stripped badly, preventing me from removing the drive. I then attempted to try and boot off of my Xbox 360 Hard Drive (formatted with Windows 7 and could not be hooked into my own Xbox 360 anymore) by setting it in BIOS. It began to boot, however a BSOD flashed onscreen about 80-90% through. So that was a bust.
DAY 2
I was eventually able to remove the screw from the computer, which is now unused. I put in the old hard drive and booted Windows 7. I used a mess of weak cables to connect the drive to the computer, it said that no partitions existed. I decided that it wasn't getting enough power. So I bought a 35$ kit to connect the drive to the computer. This connected the computer, but the drive still read as empty. I had a scan going, but the computer rebooted to update mid-scan.
DAY 3 - END (Day of this topic's posting)
I again performed the scan, which found a whopping 0 files. After this, I decided to go back to the beginning of it all - the Windows XP Install CD. I fired it up, and lone behold, all the supposedly 'lost' partitions were FULLY INTACT. So after overwriting the existing XP install, I changed a file called boot.ini and was able to see the Operating System Selection Menu (MultiBoot). Windows 7 would not load, saying that "ntoskrnl is missing or corrupted. Please re-install a copy of this file". I attributed this to the fact that Windows 7 was not the newest installed OS, so it had a different format than the XP version. So I installed a clean copy of Windows 7 on the partition set aside for Windows 10, and this fixed the issue. I removed the Windows 10 partition, set Windows 7 to load by default, and now we have concluded the HDD/XP/MultiBoot/OS crisis.
The server is now online, and no data has been lost. And remember kiddies, know what the hell you're doing if you wish to have multiple operating systems on a single computer. Or you can install them on separate hard drives. Just look it up on google. And go by the Microsoft.com tutorials, they WARN you correctly. That is all the news for today. Something is in the works, expect an announcement within the next week.