'Logging off' screen during boot process in XP

[videobruce]

This is a long story, so I will leave off most of it.

Details:
XP Pro w/sp3,
two bootable drives, both partitioned w/ the 1st partition active,
both active partitions have XP installed,

Something got corrupted between the two active partitions. No idea how as I took precautions to prevent this, but apparently not enough. I tried to restore the image of the 2nd drive, but when I did so, I got this 'logging off' dialog box during the boot process. The process stops there, but after 2 minutes it goes into a 'loop', flashing two other dialog boxes (can't read because they are too brief) every few seconds. I then tried the image from the 1st drive, but I got the same thing.

Any ideas what is happening and what to do about it other that start all over?

 

[SimMike2]

Try toggling between each drive by changing the boot order in your BIOS.

If I am going to have two active OS installs on different hard drives, I usually disconnect the other drive when I install to one drive, and visa-versa for the other drive install. This way the installs are completely independent, and you don't have some funky boot loader that invariably gets corrupted and trashes one or both installs. To change from one OS to the other, I change the boot priority of the hard drives when the computer starts.

 

[videobruce]

I have run into trouble years ago with what you have said. This time, both drives were virgin, so I installed in the first drive and loaded my programs. Then I imaged that and copied it to the other drive. All seemed ok untill I discovered a program got installed in the other drive even though it showed in 'C'.

I use to change the boot order with older MB's (including this) with a 4PDT toggle switch connected to the drive in place of those jumpers.
Now, I'm using the Bios and changing which drive boots first. I'm wondering if that isn't the problem since the one drive is always the master and the other is the slave as far as the Bios is concerned no matter which boots first. :'(