dual-boot, installed Win2000 AFTER XP, can't see XP's file system

[ftrobaugh]

Greetings,

I have a P4 machine with three physical drives and a CD drive.

My primary drive is a 180 gig drive partitioned in to two logical drives.

Drive C: is 40 gigs.
Drive D: is 140 gigs.

On to drive C:, the first partition, I installed Windows 2000, and
on to drive D:, the second partition, I installed Win XP.

The two other physical drives were E: and F: and the CD drive was G:.

When things worked well, I looked at the drives with the Computer Management tool under Administrative Tools, I saw that Partition C: was, I believe, listed as active, and I do not remember if it was specified as the “Boot Drive” or the “System Drive.”

I had a dual-boot setup. After the usual MoBo checks, I got the option, via boot.ini, to boot to either Win2k or WinXP.

Recently while in XP, I changed some security settings relating to drive C: making drive C: inaccessible to any non-administrator users who had logged into XP. The following problems arose since I made that change.


I was having problems with C: when I booted from it to W2k:

1) It would not make a swap file even though the paging file under the “Performance Options” tab had long been customized to be 3000 MB.

2) It was finicky about reading and writing other files.

I worked from the assumption that for some reason there was a security setting that was not allowing me to write to drive C: when trying to boot into W2k. When I booted to WinXP on the D: partition I had no trouble using C:

3) When I tried to reinstall W2k, the install process gave me an unending series of error messages reporting that setup could not find file yada.yada, and then I was asked if I wanted to quit or continue.

So the next time I tried to reinstall W2k, I reformatted the C: partition. I DID NOT reformat the D: partition.

W2k installed fine, but now I cannot read the D: partition. When I go to Computer Management under Administrative Tools and select Disk Management, I see my two partitions and both of them are listed as healthy. But while C: has NTFS listed in the File System column, D: has nothing listed in the File System column (it should say NTFS).

Also, C: is specified as “System Drive,” and none of the four logical drives are listed as “Boot Drive.” Drive E:, the second physical drive, is the only drive listed as “active.”

That is my current situation. Disk Management says that partition D: is empty, but that is because it W2k does not recognize that there is a file system on D:.

Is there a way to get the MoBo and W2k to recognize the NTFS on partition D: without me having to send the drive off to a data recovery service.

Thanks for any informed suggestions.

Frank

[Confused]

When you had the dual boot system the boot loader was installed on the C drive. Format wiped it out. With that gone there isn't a record to point it to D in order to see or boot XP.

You might try physically changing the D drive to C and see if it will boot XP. If so you could back up your data.
Chas

[ftrobaugh]

Thanks.

I understand some of the reasons I can't BOOT to XP, but I do not know why W2k doesn't recognize the file system on D:

ted

[ftrobaugh]

UPDATE:

If I make the physical disk with the C: and D: partitions a secondary drive in a new machine, I can read the D: partition just fine. However, because of security settings in D:s version of XP, I cannot access My Documents from this new machine's install of XP.

So now I have two questions:

1) How can I make the install of XP in partion D: bootable?
2) If I cannot answer 1) above, how do I alter the security settings so that I can access My Documents?

F

[GaryRouth]

Have you tried booting from your Windows XP CD, and either running a repair install, or using the Recovery Console tool "fixboot"? That should yield your dual boot menu again.
. . . Gary

[ftrobaugh]

Thanks for the response.

I cannot repair the XP installation on D:, because the Recovery Console only recognizes the W2k installation on C:. It does not see the XP installation.

Regarding the "fixboot" tool. I guess you would call me a power user (i.e. I know enough to get me into trouble but not enough to get me out), and the "fixboot" options scare me a bit. So I ask for your clarification.

When I have the two-partition drive on the primary channel of the primary IDE bus, I CANNOT see the second partition. It is no longer called D:, and when I try to get a directory listing from the various drives on my system (using the Recovery Console after logging in to the W2k install on C the drive that I believe has the original XP install gives me "An error occured during directory enumeration."

If I put the two-partition drive on the the secondary IDE bus (and boot from a different drive), I CAN see both the first and the second partition and all my files are accessible.

Question:
1) Can I use fixboot on a partitioned drive on a secondary channel?
2) The idea of writing anything to the troubled partition scares me. Do I risk losing access to the partition entirely if I use fixboot?

Thanks

[GaryRouth]

Hmmm - I had this little bell ringing in my memory about a trick I'd read about a while back, and so I checked, and may have something that can be a quick repair. Here's an article from over at AnandTech's Operating System FAQs pages: http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.aspx?i=90

I wasn't clear in my original reply, sorry about that - I was referring to the XP recovery console, not the Win2k one. I was thinking that a repair begun from the XP CD would yield the XP bootloader once again (rather than the Win2k) - but I like Anandtech's idea even better, since it involves simply copying over the XP bootloader and XP's NTdetect from the XP CD (to the Win2k root) . Should be a much faster repair.

In answer to your fixboot questions: I'll have to check my XP/2k books for the details -to be entirely sure - & get back to you. My first guess would be that XP's fixboot would work - not sure about 2k's.
. . . Gary

[I'll be able to check back in tonight after a few interviews, and after my daughter's gymnastics class]