Partition Magic problems

[minduka]

Hi

I had to format my hard drive and I lost winME, which was where I used Partition Magic. I had a dual boot OS with winXP and now that i installed win98se, winXP doesn't appear in the list of Boot Magic, it says it's int he partition Log-2. What does that mean? I tried booting from that, but it doesn't work. It just says "Win XP Pro" loading... and nothing happens. Any suggestions as to what to do? Thanks

[John Prophet]

somehow it is a boot record thing

as we all know when you do dual boot you are supposed to install the w98 or winME FIRST and then the XP second...that way the ME wont overwrite the XP boot record...which is what happened to you in this case.

I am not SURE how to fix it.

what if you just booted to the xp cd and reinstalled xp over the top of itself without formatting....seems that might fix the problem..because it will see the ME stuff there and it will hopefully setup the dual boot portion again.

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or possibly someone else may know how to fix it..maybe it is just some editing of the boot.ini file or whatever file is used by "boot magic"

[minduka]

Thanks for your reply, hopefully some one will have other suggestions that are more convenient than reinstalling it agian.

[Underclocked]

You could do a reinstall of XP and choose repair during the install process. Hopefully the OS will find itself. The repair install may impact installed upgrades but I would think little else.

[dystopialives]

would it be possible to use xp boot diskettes use the repair console to fdisk /mbr, or would that just let xp boot and forget 98

[nomaxim]

minduka, I take it that you did not use Partition Magic's 'Rescue Diskette' feature?

I'd try Underclocked's idea, it might work.

I'd also suggest that you brush up on Partition Magic, try the tutorial and/or documention sections. PM is able to handle dual OS's using the PQ to boot tool. However you must load the OS's in order, earlyist to latest.

[minduka]

Thanks, I'll just reinstall xp then. I'll let you know if it works

[John Prophet]

if starting completely over is an option...then you can just put two partitions on the drive.....and install windows ME FIRST...then install XP and XP will automatically setup the dual boot..without having to use "boot magic" at all

[VHockey86]

would simply going into the recovery console on the XP CD and running "fixboot" do the trick? NEver tried it myself but ive heard of the command

[minduka]

thanks, i got it working by installing it over again. Does winXP not boot in FAT32?