Then it should be easy. Use your second Windows XP computer and create
a startup floppy diskette for the non booting one.
To build the boot diskette do the following:
1- Format a floppy diskette with the Windows XP computer. Make sure
that you format the diskette with your Windows XP computer, if the
diskette was formated with a W9x computer the diskette will fail to boot
your Windows XP installation so don't skip this step.
2- Copy the files NTDETECT.COM and ntldr from the hard drive of the
working Windows XP computer to the floppy diskette. Those are hidden
system files, you may need to go in the Folder Options and change the
View settings to see the files. The files are in the root of the system
partition, that is usually C:\.
3- Create a Boot.ini file and copy it to the diskette. To create a
boot.ini file create a Notepad file and copy the
text between the == lines to the file and save it as boot.ini:
==================================================================
[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 01"
/noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP 02"
/noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP 11"
/noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP 12"
/noexecute=optin /fastdetect
===================================================================
Set your non working computer to boot to diskette first (in the BIOS)
and try booting with the diskette. The above boot.ini file will allow
you to try booting on 2 different partition on 2 different hard disks.
If you can boot the computer with the diskette you then only need to
start a Command Prompt and "decompress" ntldr, at the Command Prompt
issue the following commands;
cd\
attrib -c ntldr
John