XP and 98 dual boot problem after crash

[ptbenic]

My Dell computer was set up with an IBM 60gb 'C' drive with Win98se and an IBM 60gb 'D' drive with Win XP Home -- and with dual boot. Yesterday, the 'C' drive crashed, simple as that, a nice rotating noice -- neither the computer nor IBM's Disk Fitness Test floppy can recognize the disk, it is under warranty and everything was backed up.

I switched the 'D' drive to 'master' and tried to boot -- no luck. I then attached an old IBM 10gb drive, which had WIN 98se on it, as the 'c' drive and master, with the normal 'D' drive as the slave. I then booted from the XP CD, and tried to use 'fixboot' and 'bootcfg' to enable the dual boot with XP. No luck, the computer just boots to 'c' and Win98.

How do I restore the dual boot functionality? Do I have to reinstall XP? Nearly all of my programs are on 'D' drive with XP. That said, if I don't have to reload MS Office and the other programs,I have no trouble converting the XP D drive to C (master), and forgetting about Win98. Any suggestions would be most appreciated. Thx. Pat

 

[linney]

Do you have backups from your old crashed C drive boot loading files, namely Boot.ini, Bootsect.dos, Ntdtect.com, and Ntdlr ?

If so you should be able to load them onto your current C drive (in the root of the drive). Save the current C drive files somewhere safe rather than just overwriting them.

Then try rebooting.

 

[Thaya1088]

If your Dell came to you set up with two drives and the duel boot setup, did they also give you a 'Recovery' CD?

If so, have you tried it by chance to see if it can 'Recover' your former duel-boot setup using your spare drive?

 

[ptbenic]

Thanks for the tips. IT is an old dell so I put both hard disks in the computer. The old 10gb is what came with the computer. The 60gb that failed is only 9 months old -- a bit of a shock. As for the boot.ini, etc., yes, have come to learn that this would have been wise but I did not back up that part of the disk -- just the data files. I have a laptop with the same configuration, but XP is on D, a logical partition, no a physical one. Would the boot.ini, etc. work from it? Appreciate the ideas though. Chrs, Pat

 

[wolluf]

Your laptop boot.ini will bo ok with a small edit. It should look something like this:-

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
C:\="Microsoft Windows"

Edit it to look like something this:-

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
C:\="Microsoft Windows"

As Linney says you'll need ntldr, ntdetect.comm and bootsect.dos - the bootsect file is the vital one for dual boot (without that you'll need to reinstall XP to get to dual boot - or find a utility which can create a bootsect file (copy of win98 boot sector).

You said you're happy to drop the 98 - so here's how. Edit that boot.ini file to look like this:-

[boot loader]
timeout=30
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

Copy it, ntldr & ntdetect.com (both on XP install CD in \i386 if you need them) to root of XP drive. Then make it master and boot into recovery console and run fixboot command (you obviously know how to do that) on the XP drive (make sure you get drive letter right - its still likely to be D:, but you'll see when recovery console boots).

Reboot and it should boot into XP.

PS. Putting those 3 files (boot.ini, ntldr & ntdetect.com)onto a newly formatted floppy also gives you an XP boot disk when there are boot sector problems on hard drive. You can make it more generic by including options for partitions 1&2 on disks 1&2 - eg:-

[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="XP D1P1" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="XP D1P2" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="XP D2P1" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINDOWS="XP D2P2" /fastdetect

 

[ptbenic]

Thanks for the detailed tips. I tried them all. Somehow, nothing worked, even a third-party boot program. Thus, I just reloaded XP and resinstalled all the programs. What a pain! Guess the good news is that I did not lose any data. Thanks again for all your help. Pat