Dual boot XP from separate hard drives

[djsumme]

Hi there
i was wondering if anyone could help me with this problem
i have 2 hard drives, one with xp media center and one with xp pro on
i am able to boot either os normally, however, i want to format the drive with media center on to use a storage. i unplugged this hard drive from the motherboard to check that i could still boot xp pro from the other hard drive. when i turned the pc on it detected the drives, and then a black screen with a white flashing line appeared. i changed the boot sequence and the message NTLDR is missing , press CTRL, ALT + DEL to restart.
Basically I want to be able to only boot this one system without having to keep the other os on the other hard rive
your help would be much appreciated!
thanks
james

 

[Po`Girl]

From HERE

First you must reboot the system from your xp cdrom.

Then when prompted select the option to enter the recovery console.

Select the installation to be repaired followed by the administrator password.

Type Fixboot and answer yes to the prompt.

Then type in the following commands and leave all spaces eactly as they appear here.

CD \
ATTRIB -H NTLDR
ATTRIB -S NTLDR
ATTRIB -R NTLDR
ATTRIB -H NTDETECT.COM
ATTRIB -S NTDETECT.COM
ATTRIB -R NTDETECT.COM
COPY X:\I386\NTLDR C:\ ( X IS THE LETTER OF YOUR CDROM )
COPY X:\I386\NTDETECT.COM C:\ ( X IS THE LETTER OF YOUR CDROM )

Afterwards reboot

 

[Poppa Bear]

Dual boot quick fix

I recently had the same problem. In my first thread entitled "Dual Hard Drives", pcaceit provided a way of fixing this problem.

Quite by accident I discovered a quicker easier way. I have just posted a new thread entitled: Shortcut to safely remove dual boot..

I had originally formatted the HD I wanted to use as storeage, and lost the boot files. I had to reinstall a bare bones copy of XP on the formatted HD, and copy the boot files onto the OS I wanted to keep.

This worked, but the easier way was to simply delete the partition on the hard drive I wanted to keep as storeage, as opposed to simply formatting it. As explained in my recent thread, XP auto created new boot files on the OS I wanted to keep.

Can't guarantee it will work in your case as I was using XP Home on both hard drives, whereas you're using two different Windows installations. Good luck.

 

[kimsland]

Can't guarantee it will work in your case ... Good luck.

Thread started 04-03-2007

I'd say it's fixed

Or he's very patient



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