How to recover my dual boot capability?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jim
  • Start date Start date
J

Jim

I'm dual booting XP Pro on HD1 and Windows Server 2003 on HD2. I recently
had to do a clean reinstall of XP and now I can no longer dual boot into
Windows Server 2003. The OS is still on the second HD but I have no way to
boot to it. I prefer not to do a reinstall if there is a way around this
problem.

Suggestions appreciated.
 
Replace the files Ntldr and Ntdetect.com on the System partition with
the ones from the Server 2003 cd. When you reinstalled Windows XP it
replaced the Server 2003 version of these shared files with the Windows
XP versions, the XP versions of these files is not fully aware of the
Server 2003 startup functions, the Server 2003 versions are fully aware
of the Windows XP startup functions. In addition to that you will have
to make sure that the boot.ini file contains a proper ARC path to the
Server 2003 installation, a basic boot.ini file would look something
like this:

[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" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Server 2003
Standard Server" /fastdetect


Note the different rdisk values (0 or 1) for different hard disks, hard
disk ordinal numbers start at 0, your first hard disk is rdisk(0) and
the second one is rdisk(1). Partition numbering always starts at number
1. See here for more boot.ini information:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/323427/en-us
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307061/en-us
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/289022/en-us

John
 
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