Dual Boot problem

[mcvpjd3]

HI, hopefully someone can nswer this for me. I have PC that dual booted between W2K and XP (seperate partitions W2K on C: and XP on F, I've had to rebuild the W2K side, so now I've lost the boot record for XP and no longer get the choice of OS, can anyone tell me how to solve this?

Thanks Patrick

 

[TheGoodRev]

The solution is to boot-up on the working Win2k partition, and put in the XP CD-ROM. I forget where on the CDROM, but you can grab the missing files, boot.ini, ntldr & ntdetect and copy them onto the root of your XP Partition.

They will over-ride the win2k versions of these files, and it will all work fine. You can check the file dates for yourself, to see that Win2k has (in its wisdom) copied over the Xp boot files.

On another note, this problem seems to crop up every few days on the forum, is there any point writing up a FAQ for this? As in does anybody read the FAQ's? Theres not many listed up there. which I thought might be significant.

 

[cdogg]

Isn't the boot.ini file only needed on the primary (boot) partition? There's probably already one on the Win2K partition that tells the OS where XP is.

I think what you need to do at this point is boot to the XP CD and run the repair option. It will scan the hard drive, should detect Win2K, and offer to repair files. During this repair process, it should re-write the boot sector so that XP can become visible again.

In other words, it's more than just files. The boot sector must be re-written to show that another OS exists.
ck_blk@yahoo.com

 

[TheGoodRev]

The fact that the XP partition isnt working, is evidence that it is the Active partition. If it wasnt, Win2000 would not have copied over its boot files when it was installed.

Recopying the files from the XP-CDROM is what the MS Knowledge Base recommends. As for booting off the XP-CDROM, I know it didnt work for me, but then mine is the Upgrade version, I had to manually repair the damage Win2k did.

The problem was not that it didnt know XP existed (its there on the dual boot screen), the problem was that its copying over the boot-up files, NTLDR and NTDETECT, with older versions, and the computer just has a spack when it finds this out, instant blue screen.

 

[cdogg]

GoodRev,

I think wrong versions of boot-up files is a possibility. However, if Win2K was installed before XP, then XP will leave Win2K as the primary or BOOT partition during the install. Then, it places a boot.ini along with other files that designate its location on the hard drive. If these files become corrupted, the best way is to have the repair utility on the CD rebuild them (that is if you can get the repair utility to run).

There are two main factors involved in dual-booting: Boot-up files and the Boot Sector. Simply fixing one won't necessarily fix the other. As far as I know, the only way you can repair the boot sector is to run the repair utility or re-run XP setup (the latter not being preferred). The only other option is to use a 3rd-party app like BootMagic to bypass the boot sector...

Of course, it's only a suggestion. I've never been in a Dual-Boot WinNT environment. My system at home has Win98SE and Win2K. After reinstalling Win98SE, I was forced to run the Win2K repair utility.
ck_blk@yahoo.com

 

[darranagl]

I have had the same problem.

You need to put the XP NTDETECT.COM and NTLDR files onto the root of your boot partition (C drive). Leave the BOOT.INI file, it is only a pointer file and should still be correct even after a reinstall.

The Win2k NTDETECT and NTLDR files don't know about XP (because it was make before XP lived). The XP NTDETECT and NTLDR do know about Win2k.

There is a couple of fixes:

Easiest: Boot off your XP CD, take the R (Repair) option from the menu. Go into the Recovery Console and use the FIXBOOT command. This is like doing a SYS on a DOS/Win9x box.

Harder: Boot into the Recovery Console for XP again. Copy the NTDETECT.COM and NTLDR from the XP partition in the WINNT\SYSTEM32\REPAIR folder (this folder is there by default) to the boot partition root (C Drive)
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