A Dual Boot question....

[gballard]

I currently have 2 physical hard drives in my machine. A 40 gig master and a 45 gig slave. The 40 gig is partitioned into a 4 gig C:\ drive and a 36 gig D:\ drive. The slave is partitioned as a 45 gig E:\ drive. I initially installed Windows XP Professional to the C:\ drive. Due to some problems with my Quick Cam under XP...I decided to install Windows 2000 Professional to the D:\ drive. Now I am having problems booting XP...in fact I can't boot it at all. I get an error saying a file is missing and it will not boot XP at all. I hit control-alt-delete and then choose to boot 2000 and can boot to it fine. Here is what my boot.ini has in it....


[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

I guess what I am asking is did I do this wrong? Is there an optimal way of doing this?...


Grant

 

[Speed4Ever]

The problem is, you installed W2K *After* you installed XP. You should never install an older OS after a newer in a dual-boot situation.

Is the missing file NTLDR?

 

[gothic]

I concur, but I think you'll find that 2000 installs files of the same name "NTLDR" and "NTDETECT" and a boot.ini which is only the NTDOS boot menu.

Install 2000 first and you shouldn't have any problems.

p.s. I wonder if Bootmagic or System Commander would do the trick???

 

[Speed4Ever]

I know that Bootmagic will, not sure if SystemCommander is compatible yet.

But he will still have to repair or reinstall XP to it working again.

 

[gballard]

OK....can I simply re-install XP back to my C:\ drive and it will work ok again? I am kind of in a pickle right now cause I am without the services of my A:\ drive. This comes into play because if I have to reinstall 2000 as well I will need to use the driver disk for my ATA100 card to load a driver for it and for some reason....my floppy drive is not working correctly. Windows 2000 is installed on my D:\ drive...so it shouldn't be affected if i reinstall XP to my C:\ drive...correct?

Grant

 

[Speed4Ever]

You can try doing a repair of XP. This may get things working again, and shouldnt effect W2K.

I cannot garauntee that it will work, but it should. Even if you format and reinstall, it should pick up on your W2K installation, and that will be that.

Of course, theres a chance that you've messed up the current installation to the point that things wont work out.

What happened to your A:\ drive?

 

[Lonman]

Speed, couldn't he run setup from win2k? By going to the i386 folder on the Cd and running winnt32.exe? It would recommend an upgrade, he can say no, and a little later in the installation he can choose the partition to put it on. It may even give him the option to repair the XP installation.

That will give you access to your A: drive too.

 

[gballard]

I have no idea what happened to my A:\...I put a disk in and it says its not formatted...on every floppy I try it says that...and I know for a fact that they are. As far as repairing the XP installation...will it let me do that without a repair disk? I was not able to make one cause my floppy drive crapped out on me. I replaced it with a working one and now that one has stopped working......What would you do if it was you?

Grant

 

[Lonman]

I'd do what i suggested. Run setup from 2k. Even if you can't install your ATA100 drivers right away, it will still install ok and you can upgrade them later. Chances are that XP will install them anyway.

As far as you A: drive is concerned, it's possible it gave up the ghost on you.

 

[Speed4Ever]

His XP drive is on C, and W2K is on D.

If he initiated an XP install in W2K, it would need to write files to the C drive. Now, he already has XP on that drive. He also has the bootfiles there. It would not be recommended that he install XP over XP without doing a repair-style installation, which AFAIK can only be initiated by a Boot CD-ROM installation, which can identify the XP, and offer to repair and lead him through it.

He also cannot format C, since again, his boot files are on C

AFAIK, a boot installation will pick up on W2K, and throw that into a dual boot loader, and theoretically everything should be okedoky. Of course, is this situation, dozens of things can go wrong, so theres no garuantee that it will work. But even if installation failed, he should still be able to access W2K.

Personally, I would backup W2K if possible before he does this. If not, he has two choices...

He can stay the way things are, or he can perform my method and take his chances.

I'm wondering why he cant just use W2K, since XP isnt exactly compatible with his needs right now. XP isnt all that more advanced than XP, its more geared to be a very good alternative to 9x. Dual-booting W2K and XP to me doesnt make much sense, but thats just my opinion, and I'm rambling...

 

[Speed4Ever]

It would recommend an upgrade, he can say no, and a little later in the installation he can choose the partition to put it on

It wont be able to format, because it has written files from its initiated install from W2K. I've tried something similiar to this one time, and it wouldnt let me format because of this.

 

[gballard]

XP finds the ATA100 card drivers just fine...its 2000 that needs the driver disk. So you are saying I just put in the XP cd and tell it not to upgrade and point it back to my C:\ drive and just let it overlay the stuff thats already there?

 

[Speed4Ever]

If you bootup with the XP CD, it should find the old XP install, and offer to repair it.

Like I said, theres no sure-fire way this will work 100%. If it doesnt offer to repair, or you think something funky is going on, you can always cancel before the actual installation starts with no ill-effects.

In fact, If you cant get a repair successfully, you should be able to format C and start all over, while still having access to W2K, if theres nothing important in XP. You have a bevy of choices doing a boot install versus a W2K initiated install.

Or, you could also wait til you buy a new floppy, and then reinstall the whole works, if thats not too inconvenient for you. You'd probably be better off starting from scratch, but I can understand if thats out of the question for you.

 

[Lonman]

I take that last post back. What i would do is start over. I'd Install Win2k on C: (you can still install your ATA100 drivers later if the floppy refuses to work), and then run XP installation from Win2k... That's the setup I have now, and that's what I did.

I've got 2k on a 2 gig partition as my "safety net" in case XP dies on my NTFS D: partition.

 

[gballard]

no i can start over with no problem...the only things I have on C:\ is windows XP and its needed files...I have all my apps on the E:\ drive. So I should boot off the XP cd and just follow the prompts basically? If i choose to delete the C:\ from within to setup...it will allow me to just re-create it right and then reinstall back into it?

Grant

 

[Speed4Ever]

Originally posted by gballard
no i can start over with no problem...the only things I have on C:\ is windows XP and its needed files...I have all my apps on the E:\ drive. So I should boot off the XP cd and just follow the prompts basically? If i choose to delete the C:\ from within to setup...it will allow me to just re-create it right and then reinstall back into it?

Grant

Right.

 

[Lonman]

that's the theory

 

[Speed4Ever]

Originally posted by Lonman
that's the theory

Right

That method should work good, in fact I recommend it overall.

The only reason I could reall think it would fail is if something really bad happened somewhere in this whole thing that would bork up the dual-boot scenario. So far, I think he's ok, but I havent seen everything thats been performed on his computer, so lets just call it a really good educated guess

 

[Lonman]

Yeah, I think you're right. The worse that can really happen is he'll lose ability to boot 2k. Then it's just a matter of ctrl+alt+format and do it in the correct order (2k then XP).

 

[gballard]

in response to loading my ATA100 card drivers later in 2K won't work because I got my hard drives hanging off the ATA100 card....and it won't find any hard drives to install to. So...just to recap so I have this straight....

I should boot off the XP cd and let it try to repair my installation which should in turn fix it to where I can boot either XP or 2000....correct?

I hate to sound like a total newbie here....I am just kind of new to XP is all.