Dual Os Booting Problem

[dos_attack_ph]

hi..my apologies if this topic was discussed already but i tried searching here but i found none. as i was "googling" ii bump in to this forums searching for answers so im kinda new here.

i got a dual OS running on my single hard drive. windows98se on primary partition(FAT32) and winxp sp2 on extended partition(NTFS). i've been using this type for about a year now and its working just fine. i used to let the kids use win98 and i'm the only one that uses the xp. but since kids mess the win98 really bad yesterday i was forced to format c: and replace the existing win98se with a fresh copy of win98se. i used to just RE-INSTALL win98se everytime kids mess with it and it's just fine but this time it didn't solve the errors so i decided to do a clean install (format c: and install a fresh win98se) for the first time. now the problem begins...THE OS CHOICES ARE GONE! it boots directly to win98se and bypasses the xp. i cant log on to xp anymore and all my imporatnt files are there.

i bump into a site where it says all i have to do is go to recovery console and execute fixboot, copy ntldr and ntdetect, bootcfg /rebuild, input identifier and edit the boot.ini file and im back to normal. to my surprised it worked! OS choices are back and i was able to log-on to xp and save some files but when i tried getting in to win98..it's the one screwed now. i cant get in after choosing win98 in the OS choices. it says I/O Error with some lines below that looks like this - multi(0)blahblahbla/windows/bootsect.dos

are there any ways on how i can get back the two OS running again smoothly like before? thanks for reading and thank you in advance!

[soldier1st]

the reason you can't boot into xp is that the MBR entry for xp is gone and it only has the 98 MBR which does not support ntfs partitions like xp so you will need to do an xp repair and it will replace 98's boot record with xp's MBR and add 98 back and allow to boot from both again,if you don't want to do it then use system commander and it will allow you to boot to both again.

[jaclaz]

@soldier1st

No, if you read the post, dos_attack_ph already got XP booting properly, the prob is in the bootsect.dos file.

@dos_attack_ph

I may be wrong, but there is no one step solution (there would have been one if you had your primary partition FAT16, through bootpart:

www.winimage.com/bootpart/)

There are workarounds, with various degrees of complexity:

most simple thing would be to use the one depicted here:

http://ebcd.pcministry.com/example_en.html

search on the page for

"You've installed Windows 98 and Windows 2000 on single PC" (without quotes)

please post if you are confident with an hex editor, there are other ways.

jaclaz

[dos_attack_ph]

thanks to the both of u for reading and giving your thoughts on this. they are very much appreciated!

i got it all running back again smoothly! the two OS are stable now again!

soldier1st: i did what u said as a last option...same result - choices are there but still cant boot with win98. but it gave me the idea. thanks dude!

jaclaz: i have noticed that bootsect.dos so i tried "googling" for it and it gave me the idea of what to do. thanks bro!

solution:

1) since win98 is screwed i tried RE-INSTALLING win98se..so now it only boots to win98.

2) since it just boots 98 i tried REPAIRING xp with a slipstreamed SP2 cd courtesy of google.

3) w00t! i'm back and running smooth again!

thank you for the ideas guys..i'm sure i'll hang around here often now.

cheers!

DOS