Duel boot problems with XP

[manners]

Hello.

I have a 98se/XP Pro machine that duel boots. its worked fine for weeks with no problems, then when i turn it on yesterday it fails to load any of the OS's when i choose them from the XP bootloader. if i choose xp the machine freezes, if i choose 98 i get an error informing me of a IOError for the BOOTSECT.DOS file. I have tried the XP recovery console to fix the bootloader and this does nothing. I've used the 98 boot disk and the SYS command and whilst it starts to load 98 it crashes informing me that certain drivers (VXD's) that are mentioned in the registy/system.ini file no longer exist. Is there a virus that causes these problems? Any help trying to fix it would be apprieciated

 

[wolluf]

Is there really no more history than you turning it on yesterday and having the problems? (You didn't add/remove any hardware/software, have a major crash or a virus before this? Or any other unusual behaviour?)

If you've run sys (presumably sys C, you'll no longer have a dual boot (as you will have overwritten the XP boot sector with 98 one). You can create a floppy that will boot your XP - copy ntldr, ntdetect.com & boot.ini from root of C: to newly formatted floppy. See if this has any more success booting XP. You could always try a repair reinstall of XP -

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307654

Is the bootsect.dos file still there in the root of C:?
Will 98 boot in Safe Mode?

You can download a 'rescue disk' (actually a fair number of floppies nowadays) from various anti-virus software sites, which will boot PC and run virus check (most don't have access to ntfs - so if XP is on ntfs filestore, it will only be able to check 98 partition & boot sectors). I think some AV install CDs are bootable and will also do this (if you have one - I always download mine from net, so don't know about this).

 

[manners]

The only real problem that occured before the crash was that when printing, the PC said "Could not communicate with device on USB001". No software added/removed and the same for hardware.

There is no bootsect.dos file in the root of the C: drive, I repaired XP and booted into that. I'm gonna grab all the important stuff off the 98 partition and then wipe it virus scan it from XP. Thanks for the reply