Fixed

[Tash]

Had a working XP system. Used Partition Magic to divide my 160gb drive in half, then made a 6gb and a 500mb partition for Linux and Linux swap file. I installed Linux into the 6gb part, and allowed Linux (LIBRANET) to set up a boot manager. Next time I tried to boot to XP (SP2), the XP boot screen that says Windows XP and the thing that goes back and forth came up for the 15-20 seconds it usually does, but when it was ready to put the screen to choose a user and sign-in, it blue screened, and re-boots.

I tried to boot from a floppy with FDISK /mbr and all it did was get rid of the boot manager, and boot directly to XP, but the same problem exists. If I try to reinstall XP booting from the CD, when it comes to set up partions, XP calls the partition something like "OS/2 boot man" and will not install into the partition. Any ideas on how to repair this? I don't want to lose all my programs and data. I also tried mounting the drive as a secondary drive to another disk with XP and the drive shows up on Device Manager, but not in "My Computer"

 

[Navid]

Can you give more info on the exact location of your XP partition.
Is it now the forth partition?
Where is its initial boundary with respect to the begining of the physical drive?

Your XP partitin must start not after 8GB from the begining of the hard drive.
http://www.bitzenbytes.com/101/r116-MSpartition.htm

Also, there is a file called boot.ini on the root drive, for XP, that should have the right partitoin number for where the windows folder is. You may have changed the partitin number without fixing this file.

Another thing that is important is the drive letters. If the drive letter of the drive with windows folder on it changes, XP will have problems too.

Can you explain exactly what you did and the order of the partitions before and after?

 

[Tash]

Ok, I had been running XP in one C: partition (NTFS) that covered the entire 160gb drive. When I got finished with Partition Magic these are the partitions in order

1) Win XP 80gb
2) 500mb Linux swap file
3) 6gb Linux
4) remaining unallocated

I might have 2 and 3 switched, I'm not sure. But Windows is first on the drive.

The Linux/Libranet boot manager, which looks like it's the OS/2 boot manager, I think is making the partition look like OS/2 HPFS instead of NTFS.

 

[Navid]

OK, that is good.

Did you try fdisk /MBR from the floppy?
I am not sure if it is supposed to work if your XP is on an NTFS file system.
You may want to try it from the XP CD as described on this link.
http://www.ntfs.com/mbr-damaged.htm

Edit:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/.../home/using/productdoc/en/bootcons_fixmbr.asp

 

[Tash]

yea - its fixed. I used partition magic on the drive from another system and it fixed the partition.

Thanks everyone!