Windows XP Boot Menu

DO this on the Win2000 installation

HOW TO: Change the System/Boot Drive Letter in Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;223188

http://www.jsiinc.com/subh/tip3900/rh3920.htm

"3920 » How do I perform an in-place upgrade of Windows 2000?

If a repair does NOT cause your computer to operate normally, you may wish to try an in-place upgrade, a last resort before reinstalling. The in-place upgrade takes the same time as a reinstall.

To perform an in-place upgrade:

1. Boot the CD-ROM (or boot disks).

2. Press Enter to install a copy of Windows 2000.

3. Accept the License Agreement.

4. If setup does NOT detect a your installation, an in-place upgrade is NOT possible.

5. When prompted to repair the existing installation, press R. Setup will perform an in-place upgrade"
-------------------

http://www.jsiinc.com/SUBJ/tip4500/rh4508.htm

"4508 » What does a Windows 2000 in-place upgrade change and not change?

I described performing an in-place upgrade in tip 3920 » How do I perform an in-place upgrade of Windows 2000?

When you perform an in-place upgrade:

1. Service Packs, hotfixes, and IE upgrades are rolled back.

2. Default registry values are restored.

3. Default permissions are reapplied.

4. COM and WFP are reregistered.

5. Plug and Play devices and the HAL are re-enumerated.

6. Drive letters are changed based upon the current drive and partitions. See Q2324048 - How Windows 2000 Assigns, Reserves, and Stores Drive Letters.

The following is NOT changed:

1. Installed components and programs.

2. Passwords.

3. Third-party registry entries.

4. The computer's role.

NOTE: If you upgraded your computer from Windows NT 4.0, profiles were stored at %SystemRoot%\Profiles. The in-place upgrade creates a \Documents and Settings folder and changes the registry profile to point to it. To fix the problem, use the Registry Editor to navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList. For each user, there will be a SID sub-key and a Value Name of ProfileImagePath. Change the string value to point to %SystemRoot%\Profiles\<UserName>."

And then this for XP

Repair
How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade (Reinstallation) of Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315341

Visual aid to the above procedure
http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm
Click on How To Run a Repair Install

You May Lose Data or Program Settings After Reinstalling, Repairing, or Upgrading Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;312369

Data Loss May Occur After Reinstalling, Repairing, or Upgrading Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;312368

If you have been using a third party boot manager then use it to configure the boot loader or unload that boot manager.

And if that don't work,  You can try and boot from the Win2000 CD.  Go to the Recovery Command Console and log on to the Win 2000 Drive.  Run Fix Boot and Fix MBR.  Its been awhile, but I think that is what worked for me in with the same situation you are having.  I think your Win2K MBR is still looking for it on the Win2K partition when XP was installed, It placed it on its Partition.

Nothing to write more if CO posts here :)

Thanking You

dthomson86,

Before I recommend anything I will need additional information about your configuration or atleast some clarification.

How many hard drives do you have?  Are you using 1 hard drive with 2 partitions or do you have 2 hard drives with  partition each?

My assumptions from the symptoms you have described is that you have 1 hard drive with 2 partitions. 1 partition had Windows 2000 and the other partition had Windows 98.  The active partition which is the boot partition was set to Windows 2000 giving you your Windows 2000 boot menu.

My guess is you had Windows 98 first by itself on partition 1 which was set to active.  When you installed Windows 2000 it saw that you had Windows 98 on the first partition and you were installing Windows 2000 on a second partition. After Windows 2000 was installed it changed the active partition to 2.  When you installed Windows XP on partition 1 it simply did not search the other partitions or even figure out which partition was active.  I would guess that XP's logic is if you're installing on partition 1 then it simply does a new install and sets 1 as the active partition.

To check this theory out and you have not tried any of the above recovery technics.  Use fdisk and change the active partition from 1 to 2.  This should show you your Windows 2000 boot menu with the Windows 98 entry.  Selecting Windows 2000 should boot you up just fine.

Do you have a copy of the boot.ini file from your Windows 2000?  Please post if you do.

Post your current XP boot.ini file commenting what you have put in to add the Windows 2000 to it.

Let me know if this is your scenario.

Thanks for all your comments,
As far as the configeration of my system its kinda a mess. I have Windows XP on  the master harddrive this drive has one partition occupying the entire drive. I have a second harddrive with two partitions on it. The primary partition on this drive has Windows 2000 on it, and the second partition is used for data. I can boot into Windows 2000, but I have to change the system boot device when I am booting up (pressing F8 While its doing the memory check).
With regards to CrazyOne's post, I do have a third party boot manager that I had installed prior to going to a Duel operating system platform, not realising that Windows 2000 has its own built in manager. I cannot seem  be able to get rid of it, and cannot re-install it because it requires a FAT/FAT32ile system to be intalled, and I have sence converted to NTFS. It is an annoyance because each time the system boots it displays the message "Cannot find (I forget the file name) Press any key to boot to the active partition."
I think my problem originated when I did a clean install of Windows XP, wiping my master drive clean and booting from the Windows Xp CD. For some reason it didnt detect my Windows 2000 OS, and I had to manually enter it in the boot.ini.
I have a second computer where I had both Windows XP and 2000 on the same partition on the same drive, and the boot menu works fine. Just so you dont think im crazy for installing both to the same partition, I did this just to make sure Windows XP would work with my software.

I hope this helps
Thanks
Dustin

dthomson86:
I have almost the exact same problem as you.
Primary master harddrive is one partition, Win98. Secondary master HD, 2 partitions. In my case: partition1 is data (fat32) and p2 is Win2k (NTFS). Duel boot worked fine, not using any 3rd party boot loader.
I just replaced primary drive because it's acting up and did install of XP Pro (1 partition- NTFS). Had to edit the boot.ini file since it didn't
add any lines for the Win2K system. XP will boot fine, but try Win2000 and get the "...error system file missing or corrupt..". I have tried a Win2000 CD Repar with no success.
When I unplug the new XP drive and plug in the old Win98 drive every thing is fine.. can boot into either.
confusing... the only difference I can see is going from Fat32 to NTFS on primary master... but that shouldn't have any effect. Boot.ini is redirecting to the proper
drive/partition/directory it just doesn't like the System file. I thought maybe a version conflict between XP and Win2K boot files, but other people
can get it to work with a different drive configuration... so that doesn't make sense either.
If you get it working it, please let me know how you did it.

cheers
Andrew

dthomson86,

I have the F8 boot device option from the BIOS as well.  This is a handy feature in that the hard drive you select becomes C:  The problem with trying to use Windows Boot through boot.ini is that it identifies the drive through the hardware idenification. So controller, drive and partition the drive does not get changed.  Your Windows XP will be C: and your 2000 partition will need to be some other letter.  So if your registry has something set for C:\WINNT then these files will be on the drive with Windows XP.

This is not going to be easy to fix.  I would use the F8 option it's a much simpler and better way to boot.

manta357,

Please post your boot.ini file.  I presume it's on the Windows 98 hard drive.  Also a file listing of C:\ on the Windows 98 hard drive.

This is what I've discovered. If I put a copy the NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM from the Win2K install onto the C:\ (primary, master, with XP) then I can boot into 2000 without making any changes to boot.ini -but cannot boot XP. I get system file missing/corrupt error.
If I just replace NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM with the XP version, I can boot XP fine, but get the missing/corrupt systm file error when trying to boot into Win2000.

the boot.ini file with XP/Win2k
[boot loader]
timeout=15
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000"

boot.ini with Win98/Win2k
[boot loader]
timeout=20
default=C:\
[operating systems]
C:\="Microsoft Windows"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

I can post the Win98 c:\ file listing if still want to see it, but I'll need to reinstall the drive.. it's disconnected right (acting up when it gets warm).

Here's file listing Directory of C:\  from the XP drive

06/21/03  02:49p                     0 AUTOEXEC.BAT
06/21/03  02:49p                     0 CONFIG.SYS
06/24/03  05:59p                   261 boot.ini
06/21/03  02:49p                     0 IO.SYS
06/21/03  02:49p                     0 MSDOS.SYS
01/31/03  08:16p                34,724 NTDETECT.COM
01/31/03  08:16p                34,724 NTDETECT.COM.win2K
08/29/02  08:00a                47,580 NTDETECT.COM.XP
01/31/03  08:16p               214,432 ntldr
01/31/03  08:16p               214,432 ntldr.win2k
08/29/02  08:00a               233,632 ntldr.XP

the .XP and .win2K versions are just backup copies I placed there. As you can see from the filesizes, I'm in Win2K right now.

In regards to Amazing Tech's comments,
Is there any way to check what my registry values are set at. I am quite familiar with regedit, but I have no idea where to look. Also, in windows XP, using msconfig you can check the values you have put in boot.ini, It seems to check out fine. Under the boot options you can have windows show the files that it loads when it boots up, It does load files before it gets to the system hive, so I'm not sure if it is a registry issue, unless of course, the registry doesnt take effect until system is loaded. Any suggestions?
Thanks
Dustin

No comment has been added lately, so it's time to clean up this TA.
I will leave a recommendation in the Cleanup topic area that this question is to:

Points split between manta357 and AmazingTech

Please leave any comments here within the next seven days.

PLEASE DO NOT ACCEPT THIS COMMENT AS AN ANSWER!

Paul
EE Cleanup Volunteer