Windows XP Pro Installed On Top Of Windows 95...?

[muthabored]

Greetings:

My sister was given a PC running Windows 95 (Dell Dimension XPS 266 PII, 4GB HDD, 32MB RAM, etc.). Her boyfriend upgraded the RAM and installed Windows XP Pro without removing Windows 95. While booting her PC, she was given the dual boot option of either Windows XP Pro or Microsoft Windows (Windows 95, to be exact). Her HDD was partitioned into 3 drives: approx. 2 GB was on drive C: (containing the Windows 95 system files and some other apps, apparently belonging to the person who gave her the PC), drive D: was approximately 1.99GB (containing the Windows XP Pro system files and a few other apps) and drive E: was what was left of the drive, containing virtually nothing of importance. I purchased a new HDD (40GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus), formatted it using FAT32 (since the version of XP Pro on her HDD was under that file store) and attempted to use Maxtor's Drive Utilities to transfer the data on her D: partion (containing the XP Pro system files/few apps) to the new 40GB drive and it appeared to work but when I attempted to boot from the newly installed drive, I recieved, "No Operating System Found. Please insert OS disk and select any key to continue". I suspect it either has something to do with the Windows 95 install and the bootloader OR boot.ini file. In either case, I had to install XP Pro from scratch. Any ideas?

TIA...

 

[skiflyer]

Did you setup the MBR when you copied everything over? That's the most obvious culprit I can think of offhand. In general installing an OS is more complex than just copying over the files.

-Rob

 

[muthabored]

I see. Setting the MBR for XP Pro...do you mean configuring the boot.ini to point to a different partition other than the one it was originally pointing to on the old HDD?

 

[mrrhettf]

I wouldn't have installed XP on this old clunker (upgraded or not) because it just won't have enough power to run to OS'. I have a 40 GB HD, 256 MB RAM, brand new Dell laptop, and it has a hard time handling a 98 and XP. I would choose either XP or 95. Those two don't mix! You have ancient and new.

MrRhettF

http://www.geocities.com/mrrhettf/index.html

 

[muthabored]

mrrhettf:

Remember...her boyfriend installed WinXP Pro on top of Win95, not I. I told her that her PC would be better suited for Windows 2000 Pro AT BEST but she insisted on WinXP Pro. My installing WinXP Pro was a clean install onto the new 40GB HDD after I couldn't get the partition transfer from her old 4GB drive to work.

 

[mrrhettf]

Sorry, I guess I wasn't really referring to you personally. You were right about XP. You/They will discover that many problems will result in transferring data (especially Windows XP) from an ancient HD to a new HD. XP somehow weaves its way into the HD and when you transfer it doesn't come clean. I would reformat the new HD adn then clean install XP. Is the memory 256? If not, dump XP!!!

MrRhettF

http://www.geocities.com/mrrhettf/index.html

 

[muthabored]

That's exactly what I done. My question is if I transferred the entire contents of the XP Pro systems folder to the new HDD, what needs to be modified in terms of a file(s) that would tell the boot.ini where to load from or if this can even be done.

Thanks, mrrhettf

 

[mrrhettf]

See if any of these articles will answer a question or two:

http://www.bcpl.net/~dbryan/directboot.html

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/info/bootini.shtml

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tr...Net/prodtechnol/winntas/tips/techrep/boot.asp

http://www.geocities.com/mrrhettf/index.html

- my new site - and scroll to the bottom and select "NT/XP Boot Process and Troubleshooting" and it will bring up a PDF file.

MrRhettF

http://www.geocities.com/mrrhettf/index.html

 

[wolluf]

muthabored (I haven't read those links above).

The problem is straightforward - the boot sector for win95/XP is on the 95 partition. So, when you transferred the XP partition, it didn't have a boot sector - so won't boot!

You can remedy this reasonably quickly.

Copy boot.ini, ntldr & ntdetect.com from root of old 95 drive to root of new drive. If the new drive's going to be on its own, edit the boot.ini file to look like this:-

[boot loader]
timeout=1
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

Now, put new drive in machine on its own, and boot into XP recovery console (

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

Run fixboot (you can run fixmbr for good measure - but shouldn't need it). Machine should now boot XP.

 

[muthabored]

Wolluf:
This is the info that I seek. I'll try it out when I get home and let you know how it goes.

Thanks to all who replied