[anteatereater]

Hi,
I installed Windows in this order in two separate HDs: XP first, then Windows 7, which is the recommended way to do it (old first, then new). Unfortunately, upon installing Windows 7, I haven't been able to get back into XP. When I change the BIOS to boot from the XP hard drive, it tells me NTLDR is missing and to restart with CTRL+ALT+DEL. I got a license to DualbootPro thinking that it would diagnose and solve this.

Conventional wisdom suggests that I use the repair option on my Windows CD. Unfortunately I tried that and it did not work. I go through the steps, press R for repair, led to a new screen where I select the windows I want to repair, choose it, then type in my admin password and it stops at C:\Windows\ command prompt where it does nothing. I think it's because I'm on SP3 and the CD is wayyy back in the days of SP1 when I first bought it. Upon digging around in the SP1 CD anyway to find the NTLDR file, I got it in the i386 folder and copied it to the root folder of my XP hard drive. That didn't solve the booting.

So how can I fix the booting without reformatting the XP? Can I just copy NTLDR, boot.ini and ndetect.com from any computer?

[yeshuas]

Are both HD the same type, e.g. are they both IDE or SATA or a mixture of the two.

Were both HD plugged in during both installs of the OSes

Locate these 3 files NTLDR; NTDETECT.com and boot.ini and let us know where they are (you may have to go to folder options and uncheck the box "Hide protected operating system files" and also place a check in "Show hidden files, folders, and drives")

If you can post an image of your "Disk Management screen and copy paste your boot.ini file here that would also help.

here is a guide link on how to post an image; how-to-post-an-image-at-pronetworks-t112572.html?hilit=how to post an image#p713685

[anteatereater]

Are both HD the same type, e.g. are they both IDE or SATA or a mixture of the two.

Were both HD plugged in during both installs of the OSes

Both HDs are SATA and were plugged in for both installs of the OSes.

Locate these 3 files NTLDR; NTDETECT.com and boot.ini and let us know where they are (you may have to go to folder options and uncheck the box "Hide protected operating system files" and also place a check in "Show hidden files, folders, and drives")

I found NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM in D:\WINDOWS\ServicePackFiles\i386
I found boot.ini.backup in D:\WINDOWS\pss

I'm guessing those are all SP3 files because they are different in size from the ones I tried on the CD.

If you can post an image of your "Disk Management screen and copy paste your boot.ini file here that would also help.

C:\ is my Windows 7 Drive, which is partioned with a Storage section E:\
D:\ is my Windows XP Drive

Code: Select all

[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" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect


This is from a backup file which looks like it has the old information before I formatted one drive to install Windows 7.

[yeshuas]

Change boot.ini file to look like this, getting rid of the bottom line as it isn't needed

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

once you have changed boot.ini file to the above, move all three file to the root directory of the C:\ drive

[anteatereater]

edited, copied to C:\ (not D?), rebooted, selected XP and 3 messages popped up in a black DOS screen about hardware configuration not being right, etc.

[yeshuas]

Copy them also to the root directory of your D:\ drive and see if that helps

[anteatereater]

ahh it works now! i copied it to both root directories but i had to change the 2 in your code to a 1 so it could correspond to the numbers in the disk manager!

[yeshuas]

ahhhhhhhhhhh my mistake, duhhhhhhhhhhh the second HD is 1 not 2 drive numbers start with 0 then 1 then 2 etc sorry I was tired.

Glad you got it working !!!!!!!!!!!!!!