windows xp booting probs

[68falcon]

ok, heres the prob, i had a mulitboot harddrive with server 2000, server 2003, and then xp. i used partition magic to delete server 2000, and 2003, and extended the xp partition to the whole hard drive. when i rebooted i got "ntldr is missing" i understand this know cause i deleted the first partition(one of the servers), i repaired it using the cd and copied ntldr and ntdetect, then i rebooted, and invalid boot.ini, it only flashed up and then went away, tried to load xp then it stops, i used repair again and rebuilt boot.ini then rebooted, when it did it gets to the screen that has windows xp over to the sided and sits there and does nothing. what do i do know, reformatting is not an option. it doesnt make it to the login screen but past the scrolling bars at the begining, its pro with sp2

 

[Smilin]

Boot to recovery console and run:

map arc

then:

type boot.ini


Compare the output of the two. While you are there, run a chkdsk /p.

Does the computer fail to boot in safe mode as well?
When you are repairing are you doing a fast repair or an inplace upgrade (start setup then hit 'r' when the previous OS are detected)?

If an inplace upgrade or one of the above doesn't fix you then you are well on your way to a parallel install to save your data before a reload. If you get to a logon screen there is a good chance you'll have a logon prompt loop due to a shifte drive letter and hosed up mountedevices registry key.

Be careful with partition havoc in the future.