Dual 98SE/XP boot problem when removing one of the hard drives.

[tontoman]

Having a weird quirk when moving one of the two hard drives from a dual boot machine. I had win98SE on the old 15GB HD and installed XP (I think, going from memory) by booting into 98, loading the XP CD and installing XP onto the new 120GB HD. After a reboot and the usual setup I had a dual boot machine with the OS prompt at the start for which OS you want to run.

Well moving the old HD to a second machine I found the original one could no longer boot from the 120GB XP HD. After playing around (checking bios, boot sequence etc.) the errors I've produced are 'no bootable disk found' 'HAL.dll corrupt or something' error and a 'press key to reboot' message (with no real error, just this message). So it seems it's not bootable.

But with the old 15GB 98SE HD on the new machine I STILL get the dual boot option at startup... even though the XP HD is not there !!? I can boot into 98 if I want btw.

So what's up? Is the dual boot code/option actually installed on the win98se HD... and is the XP HD not actually bootable? Is there any way to split these two HDs or do I have to do a fresh install of XP by directly booting off the CD?

Thanks
T.

 

[SNGX1275]

Yep, the boot information is contained on the HD that has 98 on it.

I'm not sure if this works or not, but it might. Try what Rick outlined in his Read: up at the top of the Windows forum. It may be able to help you get the XP to boot on its own.

You may also be able to do it by copying some files off that 98 drive over to the XP one. But I'll let someone that knows more than me about that attempt to help you there.

 

[tontoman]

Thanks for the confirmation, at least I know where I stand now .

There's always a catch somewhere when work with an OS is involved.

T.

 

[wkozey]

just rerun setup or recovery on the 120g xp drive that will make the partition active.
also on the windows 98 drive boot from a 98 startup floppy and type fdisk /mbr at the command prompt that will restore the boot sector and 98 shoulod boot with no dual boot prompt