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[gheebhow Profile]

Hi all,

This is my first post on this forum, and I'm hoping you can help. I've looked through the topics on here already, and there's a lot of excellent advice out there, but it doesn't quite match the problem I've got...

I've got a dual boot Vista/XP machine, which has happily been running both for some time on separate partitions. Today, out of the blue, it came up with a "bootmgr not found" error, so I re-booted from the Vista disc and used start up auto repair to fix it. Rather than return things to how they were, it removed references to XP and added as a new OS the boot files from my Vista recovery partition. I tried following the dual boot trouble shooting guide on this forum, but there was no sign of boot.ini, ntldr and ntdetect in the XP partition, despite unhiding hidden and OS files. So I copied ntldr and ntdetect from my XP boot disc - and using DualBootPro, it looks like there is a useable boot.ini file somewhere because legacy editor comes up with the following:

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

I used DualBootPro to remove the recovery OS and add in XP, with a reference to the XP boot drive. But when I choose XP when booting, all that happens is that the PC reboots. Have I missed something? I did wonder whether the following from bcdedit might have something to do with it but I suspect not - the partitions for the Vista boot manager & loader are different (which I could live with if I could get XP to boot)

Windows boot manager
identifier {bootmgr}
device partition=\device\HarddiskVolume1
path \bootmgr
description Windows boot manager
default {current}
displayorder {current}
{ntldr}
timeout 30
resume no

Windows Boot Loader
identifier {current}
device partition=c:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Windows Vista (TM) Home Premium (recovered)
osdevice partition=c:
systemroot \windows
resumeobject {89dbf038-43b2-11df-a991-806e6f6e6963}

Windows legacy OS loader
identifier {ntldr}
device partition=d:
path \ntldr
description Windows XP

Hope you can help - and thanks for reading this far!

[gheebhow Profile]

Hello again,

Should I take from the responses (!) that my best bet is probably to re-install XP? I guess the silence suggests that there's no obvious answer? Unless I've committed a forum faux pas and no one's talking to me!

TTFN

[NT50 Profile]

SORRY for the delay.

Can you please provide us with a snapshot of your disk manager. We need to see the partitioning of your hard drive so we can look inot your boot.ini.

Remember that Vista/Win7 uses bootmgr and the folder "Boot" (with contents) in order to boot. win XP uses the ntldr, NTDETECT, and boot.ini to boot. ntldr, NTDETECT and boot.ini have to be in the root of your syste/boot partition. boot.ini has to point to the correct partition/disk in order to boot.

[gheebhow Profile]

Thanks for that. Here's a screen grab:



XP is installed on D
Vista is installed on C
XP stuff (B) is a data partition - documents and whatnot
Vista recovery partition is on A

Cheers!

[NT50 Profile]

Check on drive B: and see if you can find the file bootmgr and a folder called "Boot". Your Diskmanger is saying the drive B: is your system drive. This need to be the location of "bootmgr" and folder "Boot" along with ntldr, NTDETECT, boot.ini. ntldr, NTDETECT and boot.ini are needed to boot XP.

From what your Disk Mangers says, your shoudl have rdisk(0) / partition(2) in order to boto XP also.

[gheebhow Profile]

Thanks NT50.

The folder boot is there on B, but the XP-related files were missing. When I copied over ntldr and NTDETECT (I still can't find any sign of a file called boot.ini) and rebooted I got the following errors:

Invalid boot.ini file
Booting from c:\windows

... followed by

Missing or corrupt
<windows root>\system 32\hal.dll

Would this be related to the missing boot.ini?? I could try opening the legacy editor in DualBootPro and then save it onto the B root as boot.ini. What do you think?

Cheers

[NT50 Profile]

Yes

You can create a boot.ini via notepad if need be.

Code: Select all

[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 Home Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect


[gheebhow Profile]

Bingo!

Thanks very much NT50, very much appreciated.

TTFN