Windows XP Home Problem

[ComputerCop911]

Ok, I have screwed up my computer REALLY badly. Here is what I did. I borrowed my friends copy of PartitionMagic 8, and created an 8GB partition so I could install Win98 (the CD I have is first edition) so I could run some games that dont work in my WinXP Home.

I then set the new partition as the ACTIVE one, and installed Win98. But I made the mistake of forgetting to install BootMagic!! Now I can't boot up WinXP!!!

Also, now the newly-installed Win98 only boots in Safe Mode, and I cant use the CD-ROM or add my USB 128MB Memory Key in safe mode....I have received the following suggestions from other people:

1. Boot from WinXP CD (I dont HAVE WinXP cds...)

2. Use IBM Product Recovery CD (Lost it...IBM is sending new one)

3. Format the new partition, and the person said it will revert back to XP and erase the "activated" part, meaning the XP partition will be the active one again. I HAVE NOT TRIED THIS YET, because I am not in front of my machine at the moment.

Any suggestions on how to get XP back without losing my stuff????

I tried to run PartitionMagic, BootMagic, and FDisk from the Command Prompt...ALL THREE don't list the other partition. The 98 partition is FAT32, XP is NTFS.

HELP....PLEASE!



ComputerCop911
ASP/HTML Programmer

 

[xkjdhdg]

The thing is you must have Windows 98 loaded before you load Windows XP. You can try to edit the boot.ini file and see if it will boot to XP on C: unless it was overwritten. There should a copy of the old boot.ini file from XP. Since you don't have the XP disk it is going to be hard to fix. You can also try starting Partition Magic and tell it you want to install another OS give it the path to where you XP is load it will override everything in C:\ Also try bootmagic.
You really need to get the Windows XP disk.