Invalid System Disk woes after dual-booting WinMe and win2k

[Sentry24]

Well, the title just about says it all, i'll try to go into a bit more detail though:
I've had windows millenium for a long time now and finally decided that it would be worth getting Windows 2k as a replacement for various reasons. For a little while i decided that i'd both have Win2k and WinMe installed (on seperate hard drives)..

First of all, WinMe had been installed on drive D for quite some time, and drive C was to become the Win2k hd. So the installation went smoothly and all, i got everything setup, drivers, software, etc.

And then i though i'd switch over to WinMe to lookup something through a program i have installed on it, so i restarted my computer and the little OS selection screen popped up, and i chose the WinMe option, and to my horror, appeared:
"Invalid System Disk, replace blah blah blah...." as most of us have experienced at one time or another.

(keep in mind there is no diskette in and the floppy drive is working perfectly)

So when i press a key, it just pops me back to the OS selection screen.

Basically i don't know exactly what hapenned or how to resolve it... any suggestions would be appreciated. I can still access files to back them up through Win2k (right now it's on a FAT32 partition not NTFS) but theres some information i can only access through WinMe itself.

Could it be that the boot record/sector of my D drive (WinMe) was somehow overwritten or altered or deleted when i installed Win2k? Is there a way to somehow create a new one for WinMe without ruining it's current installation? Thanks!

 

[h0vic]

What are the contents of "C:\boot.ini" and "D:\boot.ini" if it exists?

 

[Sentry24]

The boot.ini on C: contains:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Microsoft Windows
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect



And not too surprisingly there isn't one on D:

 

[dbwillis]

Can you have 9x on D:\ and 2k on C:\? thought it had to be the other way around..just a thought

 

[h0vic]

Make a backup of that/change the file name.

Try using this for your boot.ini:

[boot loader]
timeout=30 (change this to whatever you want)
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS (you can use D:\ also)
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
D:\="Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition"

 

[Sentry24]

Well i tried changing the boot.ini as you suggested, now when i select the Windows Millenium in the OS boot selection list, it just locks up shortly (without going away from the boot selection) then restarts itself (the computer).

Any ideas what this could mean?


Also, i have a friend that has 9x on D: and 2k on C: and it works fine for him.

 

[h0vic]

Win2k messed up during installation as in your boot.ini, it states you only have 1 operating system, but it detects you have 2.

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Microsoft Windows <- this part is wierd

Try using your friends boot.ini.

Reinstalling WinMe will probably solve the problem also.

 

[Sentry24]

Ok ill give that a try, or else ill have to reinstall... thanks alot for the help and suggestions!