Multi-boot : I lost Windows XP

From: Paul Kraemer (PaulKraemer_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 12/30/04 

Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 07:49:05 -0800

Hi,

I have a PC on which I use v-com's System Commander for a multi-boot setup.
A week or so ago, I used System Commander to move a Win2k partition on my
hard drive so that I could add a new primary partition before it on which to
run MS DOS 6.22. This gave me some trouble because it changed the drive
letter of the partition on which I was running Windows 2000, but I was able
to fix it with the help of Dave Patrick on this forum. Anyway, I had this
system working with four primary partitions. Partition 0 had a diagnostic
utility that came from Dell when I bought my PC, partition 1 had Windows
2000, partition 2 had Windows XP, and partion 3 had MS-DOS 6.22. (These are
the partition numbers as reported by System commander, but the order of these
partitions in terms of their location on the hard drive is as follows: Dell
Utility (0), DOS (3), Win2k (1), WinXP(2)).

This was working, but then I got greedy and tried to replace DOS with
Windows 98 by doing the following...

1. I used system commander to increase the size of the DOS partition from
500 MB to 2GB. To do this, I had to move the Win2k parition by 1500MB to
make room.

2. I booted to Windows 2000 and reformated the DOS position as FAT32 (it
was originally FAT16)

3. I disabled System Commander and marked this blank 2GB partition as
active. I rebooted and got a message that there was no OS. I then booted
off the Windows 98 cd and installed Windows 98 to this partition.

4. Windows 98 installed ok. Next, I made the Windows XP partition active
with the intention of booting into Windows XP and re-enabling System
Commander. This didn't work. All I get is a black screen with a blinking
cursor at the upper left corner.

If I boot to Windows 2000 and look at the WinXP partition, it looks like
everything is still there. I just can't boot to it. I'm tempted to boot to
the Windows XP cd and attempt a repair, but I am afraid that this will screw
up my other OS's. If anyone could suggest the best way for me to go about
trying to fix this mess, I would appreciate it.

Thanks,
Paul 

-- 
Paul Kraemer

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