My "old" c:drive decided to go south but I had it backed up. The original OS install had been
working flawlessly and I had installed a generous amount of progs/utilities etc., and collected a great deal of email (Thunderbird) and bookmarks (Firefox). I had kept the
system regularly defragged, maintained (RegCure), and protected (AVG, SPyBoot, Trojan
Hunter). Trouble started when I attempted to install SP3. A blue screen rapidly flashed,
not long enough to read it, and that was that. Booting stopped. Install CD could not repair.
Concluded a new HDD was needed, so I got one and installed it. I have a dual Opteron
244 on a TYAN Thunder K8WE S2895, with 4 SATA onboard adaptors (0-3) connecting to 3 (non raid-ed) SATA drives including "old" c:. The thought occurred to me to get a Seagate 500GB SATA drive (same make as the 2 remaining ones on one of which the c: backup was stored) and that to save time re-installing all progs (and updates) and also recuperating all other stuff from "old c:") I might do a clean install of XP Pro on the first
partition and restore the "old c:" on the second one. In other words have both, the new and the old XP installation available in a dual boot config.I would then back up the new install (slender because practically just the root stuff) This would give me a very efficient way to get into the system if problems occurred, as opposed to go into Install CD, etc., etc., I edited the Booit.init as follows
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional 2" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
Alas, the "old C:" (now on second partition of new HDD as "New Volume H:" does not boot,
pointing to a "corrupt ntoskernl.exe" file with the advice to re-install it. I looked at the
System32 folder of te "old c:" drive and the file was missing(?) so I made a copy of the one
of the new XP install and pasted it. To no avail. So I looked at the Boot.init file n the restored "old c:" and got this:
[boot loader]
timeout=20
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
;C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons
Puzzled by the reference to "Recovery Console" /cmdcons", could this be a left-over from
the attempt to repair the "old C:"? I left it untouched.
Thinking the partition might need changing I altered it to "2",b ut that didn't help either.
My questions is: does the boot file of the restore c: XP play a part, or is it redundant?
What am I doing wrong and is there something else I could try to successfully bring up the "old c:" stuff as a second boot up option. It would make everything so simple :-).
I explored you very excellent site for similar occurrences but didn't find one. A lot of good
info on dual booting W2K/XP, even WIN98/XP, etc., but not on "dual XP". Help would be
much appreciated as the time saved is precious.