dual boot nightmare: please help

[cdmazoff]

Friend has dual booting 98/xp home computer.

2 drives all FAT 32.

C and E partition on drive 1. D on drive 2. C is Win 98. Win XP is on D. D is slave. All on cable select.

Here's the problem. Upgraded Drive 1 to 100 GB drive. Did the cloning all nite. Used the Western Digital floppy.


Got message no operating system. So I did a sys c: from the win 98 boot disk and that will get me into Win98. But then D (the XP drive) becomes an "invalid boot disk".

Tried everything. Then I did a fixboot from the WinXP CD and that restored the Boot.ini. Bios recognizes all drives and partitions correctly. Explorer in either Win 98 or WinXP gives me access to all files

NOw I can boot into XP. I get the dual boot screen but when I click on previous system, I get an invalid boot disk message for the Win 98 drive.

So, can't access Win98, unless I copy sys files again and then I can't access XP

How can I get both to boot when I need them to boot?

CD

[BipolarBill]

Boot from the CD again and use the Recovery Console to FIXMBR.

[england001]

You do have a motherboard that will recognise a 100GB HDD dont` you ? If not, you now know where the problem lies.

[Midknyte]

if you're using ezbios, then make sure you are booting from the cd AFTER ezbios boots. I think this is what england was hinting at.

[cdmazoff]

Thanks Dude: but not using EZ Bios. New Board, new Bios. Bios has no problem with the drives.

Next????
CD

[mpc2]

Did you try FIXMBR as previously suggested???

[cdmazoff]

I ran FixMBR and got a warning message on the screen telling me that there was a "non-standard or invalid boot record" and that I might destroy existing partitions.

Since I did not have another 8 hours to copy with the WD clone program, I decided against it.

I have since obtained Ghost 2002 and Ghost 7.5. The lady has the computer back. I have told her that she should drop it off next week when she has time and I shall try ghosting it.

CD

[whiteangel]

i had a similar problem few weeks back

show me what your boot.ini file looks like. maybe i can help

[cdmazoff]

Hello Whiteangel.

The boot.ini looked like this. I no longer have the computer here

[boot loader]
timeout=1
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect/
c:\"Previous Operating System"

I can ask the individual to try to open it and send me the text. But she's a novice.

CD

[england001]

Doing a sys C: wrecks the boot loader and boot.in files. Go take a look here to see what you can do to rectify the matter:
http://search.microsoft.com/default....boot&siteid=us
I had same problem, and ended up doing reinstalls.
When I asked the question `does your motherboard support a 100GB drive that is exactly what I meant`. Even some new mobo`s do not support a hdd that big.

[cdmazoff]

Thanks England, but the MS page has nothing on XP. It has oodles on 2000 and NT.

Which one is closest to XP Home?

CD

[BipolarBill]

Win2000 is.

[cdmazoff]

Hi England. The Bios immediately recognizes the new drive as what it is supposed to be, ATA5, 100GB.

I also ran fixboot to repair the boot.ini

I'm going to try again in about a week with ghost 7.5

CD


QUOTE]Originally posted by england001
Doing a sys C: wrecks the boot loader and boot.in files. Go take a look here to see what you can do to rectify the matter:
http://search.microsoft.com/default....boot&siteid=us
I had same problem, and ended up doing reinstalls.
When I asked the question `does your motherboard support a 100GB drive that is exactly what I meant`. Even some new mobo`s do not support a hdd that big. [/QUOTE]

[obenton]

Just a thoughjt - make sure that bootsect.dos is on C:\ - win9x can't boot without it. Should be there, of course, but worth checking just to be sure.

[cdmazoff]

[Will do, dude. In fact, I used a utility from Doug's most excellent site http://www.dougknox.com/index.html to repair bootsect.dos.

All to no avail.

I shall try a reclone with Ghost

Thanks to everyone for all their help

CD



QUOTE]Originally posted by obenton
Just a thoughjt - make sure that bootsect.dos is on C:\ - win9x can't boot without it. Should be there, of course, but worth checking just to be sure. [/QUOTE]