Win XP Pro boot up problems 1

[RodAllen]

Yesterday had a dual boot system running Win 98 Me and XP Pro with no problems. Used Norton Utilities last night, windoctor and speed disk. This morning fired up to be greeted with no system disk insert disk and press any key etc. Started computer with 98 Me boot disk and used Sys C: to transfer system files to hard drive. Could then boot into Me. Me partition more or less okay but in checking in PM version 7 the XP partition (plus a data and updates partition) gone - just unallocated space! I have all data backed up to a an external hard drive. I had a up to date image file of the XP partition so transferred that back into the unallocated space. So now C is primary active and FAT 32 were Me resides. Then D is logical extended Fat 32 were XP resides. Still no dual boot menu although boot.ini shows XP. Installed PM boot magic and manually added XP to boot menu. rebooted and switched to XP and pressed enter. Non system disk - insert system disk etc and press enter and something similar. Have I lost some Xp system files - not familar with XP - can any help?
Thanks in advance

 

[linney]

I am not familiar with a dual boot system but came across this in the knowledge base. Have a look at it and see if it helps.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q310359

Copy and paste all of link.

 

[RodAllen]

Thanks for the help. As I cannot start XP I cannot repair the situation. Does anyone know how to boot from XP CD and use the recovery console to repair/replace start up files?

 

[RSA]

Norton is a nightmare, unless it is the very latest version, I would not trust it on an XP machine. Having said that, I would not trust it at all. If your XP partition is NTFS, ME won't see it anyway. Have you tried a repair from the XP CD?

 

[RodAllen]

Latest Norton version bought especially for XP!
XP partition is FAT 32
Have not tried a repair for CD as when I tried not sure which commands to try to repair - concerned that I would lose my Me partition!

But any help with the repair console commands would be gratefully received.

 

[linney]

Details of commands can be found here.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q314058

(copy and paste whole link)


Also in Help and Support Program if you have access to XP.

 

[Bellum]

sounds like your boot loader MBR is messed up. there is a dos command to clear it then to enter stuf into it BUt I can't remember it. I had simular problems with lilo (linux bootloader) I used partition magic in xp to change somethign and it messed up my bootloader.

 

[Enkrypted]

What you can do is get into the OS that does load, open Partition Magic, and set the partition you want to install XP on as the active one<this will hide all other partitions>. Then upon reboot, insert the XP Boot disks and then reinstall XP<make sure you install it on NTFS, it runs more stable>. After installation...configure your Boot Magic program and that should resolved your problem... Enkrypted
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[marcus1234]

Create a floppy disk with boot.ini, nbootdd.sys, ntdetect.com and ntlrd. In boot.ini point the setting towards your XP partition. If the OS is still there this will boot it.