Merged partition with partition magic, now OS won't boot

[rpf717rpf]

I'm running a dual boot system, the primary OS I use is XP pro sp2. I was running a little low on space on the partition that it is installed on. I had some extra room on an adjacent partition, so I used partition magic to move some to my XP pro partition. It stated it would need to restart, and it did. Now when it boots, I still get the "which OS would you like to boot" option, and when I click on XP Pro, I get the following error message:

Failed due to problem with "<windows root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe" Please repair or replace it

Something like that

Anyhow, I've verified that that file hasn't been deleted or anything, by booting up the other OS and checking that directory.

Any idea how I can salvage myself out of this one? I don't really care about the partition change anymore, just being able to boot up the OS.

Thanks in advance

 

[amdskip]

Short answer: no, backup the data and reinstall xp

 

[Slikkster]

Not sure I agree with the above (yet, anyway). There's a chance that the only thing that's messed up now is your "boot.ini" file. Boot.ini tells XP what partition to look for when booting. You've changed your drive, partition-wise. Boot.ini may need to be updated to reflect that.

Take a look at this Microsoft Support page, and follow the instructions with respect to "bootcfg /rebuild". Even though the error isn't the same, it might help.

Short of that, rather than totally wiping XP, try a repair install instead. Here's the best way that keeps all your programs/settings. follow the instructions!

http://www.informationweek.com/windows/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=189400897

 

[rpf717rpf]

That article on the repari install looks money!

I'll give your suggestions a try and see how it goes. Thanks for the help

 

[Pirotech]

The best decision is the Windows repair install. But it's strongly recommended to back up data when changing something in system partitions or the OS. So you'd better to back up first of all as amdskip said. If you can't do it manually, use any third-party software like Acronis True Image or Ghost. Or there are free data migrating utilities from the HDD manufacturer.

 

[Slikkster]

Again, I'd go with the easy fix first. If it's simply an easy boot.ini fix that could be accomplished by running bootcfg /rebuild from recovery console, there's no reason for the repair install. If that doesn't work, then I would go with the non-destructive repair install I linked above.