Problem - Dual boot PC keeps restarting and won't boot.

[Holtzclaw]

Hi all,

After being away from this forum for a while I'm now in great need of some help, so I'm back!

I have a dual boot machine with XP64, and XP, with XP64 being the primary OS. And before anyone mentions I've installed them the wrong way round, yes i know!
Anyway, all was Ok until I installed some drivers for my camera on XP, and used google picasa to load some pics. The machine blue screened, and ever since then when i select XP from the list of OS'es from the multiboot OS menu, it keeps restarting. I can't get any further than this screen - I don't even see the windows loading screen. I've tried all options like safe mode, last know good configuration etc, but none make a difference. The drive is accessible from the XP64 OS which boots fine, so at least I know the disc is ok, but it just won't boot.

I've read about doing a "repair" install of XP, so I tried that. However, the instructions I found on the web describe how you are presented with a screen that detects your current installation and asks if you would like to perform a repair, or fresh install. I cannot see this screen. Following the steps, the setup procedure asks which partition I would like to install windows to instead, so I select the correct partition, then I see this message:


"You chose to install windows XP in a partition that contains another operating system. Installing windows Xp on this partition might cause the other operating system to function improperly. To contiue, setup using this partition, press C. To select a different partition, press ESC."

I dare not continue further for fear of overwriting the disc, as I haven't backed up my data yet.



So, can anyone help?

The two main questions I have are;

1. Is there anyway to fix the OS without performing a "repair" or new installation?
2. How come I can't see the repair option during setup?


Many thanks in advance.

[Boon72]

install bcedit and you can change the settings for the boot

[Holtzclaw]

Hi Boon, thanks for your reply.

I can't seem to find much info on this program, and what I can find talks about a program BCDEDIT.exe, and it's use with Vista (which I don't have) Is this the same program? Can you provide more info, e.g. where I can get this from.

As side-thought, would it be worth me trying to use the fixboot option from the recovery console?

Cheers.

[Boon72]

yeah thats the program
have you looked in your boot.ini file to see what it says?

it should have 2 lines in it one for each windows version

[Holtzclaw]

Hi Boon,

This is the contents of my boot.ini

[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" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional x64 Edition" /fastdetect /usepmtimer


Anything look out of the ordinary to you? As mentioned earlier, XP64 works fine.

[Holtzclaw]

Success!!

Well... sort of. I've got it back up and running by creating a floppy boot disk (haven't used these in ages!)w ith the same boot.ini and nt files and this gave me an error which before I didn't see:

windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

Did a bit of poking around on the net and came up with a solution that instructed me to replace this file with the one from the WINDOWS\REPAIR folder, and restart... and roberts yer mothers brother!!

It booted, but various things have changed, for example, I have not network adapters set up, therefore no internet connection, resolution is way to large, it even said I didn't have service pack 2... which I did. So I'm trying to figure a way of sorting this out without having to reinstall everything again. Any suggestions?

Cheers.