Windows XP Loader Error 3

webkido

Junior Member
May 2, 2001
2
0
0
I set up a dual boot between win2k and xp on seperate drives. Everything worked beautifully until today. Xp still starts up fine but when I try to load Windows 2000 I get the following error: "Load Error 3." Please contact your WinXP (strangely not windows 2000) support person. I went into the recovery console and did a fixboot. That didn't work so I did a fixmbr. No good. Then the emergency recovery process from the win2k cd. That didn't work either. I also checked the Microsoft knowledge base. No help there. Do any of you guys know how to fix this? I'm screwed since I can't get into win2k. I have tons of programs installed and there is know way I want to reinstall everything.
Your help is greatly appreciated.

Here is my specs:
AMD 1.33ghz @ 1470mhz
msi k7t266 mobo with 10c bios
512 mb 266mhz ddr ram
30 gb ibm deskstar drive
d-link lan card
Soundblaster Live Value (without any problems)
 

Frost

Senior member
Jan 26, 2001
269
0
0
Did you try at defualt clock speed? Sounds odd, but I know I had some serious problems with win2k when overclocked.
 

webkido

Junior Member
May 2, 2001
2
0
0
Yes I did. I'm not overclocking my pci bus either. Just my multiplier is adjusted. I did try it at 10x133 and I have the same problem.
I know winxp has it's boot loader files on my win2k partition. I looked at the "last modified" date and nothing has changed between now and when my system was working just fine. The weird thing is that is will start booting win2k, but when the windows 2000 splash screen is supposed to come up (the one with the blue progress bar)that's when I get the error message. That leads me to believe that this is not an issue with the boot record since it starts the booting process just fine. Unfortunately, I can't figure out what else is causing this problem.

Here is my boot.ini file. As you can see I have two hard drives. Win2k is C: (primary master), other drive is secondary master.
[boot loader]
timeout=2
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP" /fastdetect
C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Recovery Console" /cmdcons