Hopefully not of topic but help with dual booting

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bill_gates_mom

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Hopefully this isnt to off topic but I couldnt think of another board to put this under. Here is my problem I had windows 98 I installed XP, I was dual booting fine for a while then somehow my windows 98 startup files got erased or something, I fixed it with the windows 98 boot disk (by copying the system files again) and it worked but now I cant get into windows XP, so I could at least get the startup menu to give me a choice in an OS. I hope this made sense. Bottom line I cant get into XP, the menu where you get to choose an OS disappeared and I think I can get it back but I need to get into XP first. Im new at XP so I dont know how I would do this. Both OS's are on seprate volumes and such but now it just goes straight into windwos 98. How do I get back into XP? How do I get the OS choice screen during boot up again? Thanks for any help.
 
heh

1st of all get rid of win98.. why use both of em when one OS is more than enough???

You should get the OS selection menu by pressing F8 during bootup.. ! My suggestion is that u make a full new clean install of Windows XP---


LightWave
 
Right so you've lost access to your boot menu, where you would normally choose 98 or XP right?

OK, on your next bootup, go into your BIOS and set the boot device to your CD-ROM drive..wait...follow me, it will work!..

Put your XP CD into the drive and reboot.

The XP Installation process should start and you will have the option to REPAIR or REINSTALL XP, choose Repair, and the missing boot files will be restored.
 
Yeah it looks like I might have to do that, although heres what I did so far:

I made a bootable floppy which does work, so I can get into XP now; but when I go to System Properties---Advanced--Startup and Recovery, it correctly displays XP as the default OS, and 98 as the other. So I save the boot.ini to the primary volume and it still doesnt work though it goes staright to 98. Like I said though it does work with the bootable floppy. I even tried copying those files but that had no effect. Oh well I guess Ill try the repair I just hate doing that because it takes so long. If anyone knows what file I have to configure or what settings t mess with before I do this let me know. Thanks.
 
Chances are that it's not in any file but in the acctual boot sector of you harddisk. You could try (big long shot here, not sure at all):
Press F8 and select Administrative Console (or something, console anyway, Repair Console?). When it's loaded run FIXBOOT.
 
I found out the problem. Since I dual boot 98 and XP the boot info is in the primary partition where 98 resides. Well I decided to defrag using Norton Utilities and it moved boot files around and "pointers" to other files that it needed to boot XP do not update so they keep looking in the same sector. I had to go in and change the file and physically move it back to the sector it was at. It wasn't to difficult but it really sucked in all the time it took to finally figure this out. It works fine now, so the lesson be careful with 3rd party defragging programs they will (if you let them) move stuff they are not supposed to. Thanks though for thoe who tried helping.
 

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Also Hi EP and people. I found this place again while looking through a oooollllllldddd backup. I have filled over 10TB and was looking at my collection of antiques. Any bids on the 500Mhz Win 95 fix?
Any of the SP crew still out there?
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