Dual boot problems 2000/XP

[chip]

I have a laptop from my work that has Win 2000 Pro. I added a new partition and installed Win XP Pro. I used PartionMagic to partition the hard drive and also installed BootMagic. When installing XP it didn't recognize the format of the new partition (I used FAT32) so it had to reformat the new partition. No big deal.
I noticed when it boots up it doesn't use BootMagic. I guess it's a Microsoft boot menu that comes up. But instead of getting just 2 options it gave me 3: Win Xp, Win 2000 and Microsoft Windows. When I selected XP or 2000 things were good. When I selected the 3rd option it went into a Win 2000 install. I got worried because I didn't want to foul up my work stuff. I aborted the process.

Now when I boot now I get 4 options: Win XP, Win 2000, Previous Operating System on C:, and Win 2000 Installation/Upgrade. If I select Win 2000 it boots up fine. When I select XP I get an error that says "Win 2000 could not start up because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM"

I'm not sure what happened, but I have a feeling I may have corrupted something when stopping the attempted install.

Lots of questions: Anyone have any ideas what happened? Why I had that 3rd boot option? What I may have done by aborting the install that I didn't want? And most importantly what should I do to clean this up? Should I reformat the new XP partition and reinstall XP? Also what happened to BootMagic?

Thanks

[bonzai]

Since nothing seems wrong with your 2000, let's leave that intact. I think we should redo the XP clean and fresh. But before you do, let's clean out the file, c:\boot.ini. This is the file that deals with the boot menu that you see. I am assuming that your 2000 is on your c:\. Now when you edit boot.ini, since you claimed that you saw 4 items in the boot menu, under the [operating systems] section, you should see 4 items, 1 item on each line. Delete the 3 lines that don't pertain to the windows 2000. Under the [boot loader] section, you will see an entry that specifies the default OS to boot into. This entry should point to the 2000 location. Save and exit.

Now we can forget about BootMagic. I am not familiar with it, but it is completely unecessary and is just throwing an extra something that will make things complicated. Windows XP's boot loader does just fine. reboot into XP's installation CD and go on with the installation process. As you proceed in the beginning, you will be allowed to delete your old XP partition, format it, and begin a fresh install there. Just don't be deleting your 2000 partition. Everything else should be pretty automatic, you won't have to do anything else after the setup if complete.

[mike breck]

When you installed XP it overwrote BootMagic on the MBR; so that's why the XP Boot Loader was coming up.

It does sound as though you aborted a W2K install to the partition with XP - hence the problem trying to start XP.

I agree with bonzai about editing the boot.ini and then wiping the XP partition and reinstalling XP.

In fact, I might have been tempted to run a repair installation on W2K before reinstalling XP, just to make sure that W2K is in perfect shape.

However, that probably isn't necessary.

Good luck.

P.S. What size was the FAT32 partition you tried to install XP to?

[chip]

Thanks Bonzai and Mike. I'll take the suggested approach. The FAT32 partition is about 9 GB.

[chip]

Oh boy, now I'm screwed! I wiped the 2nd partition clean and cleaned up boot.ini and with just W2k on it everything was cool. I reinstalled XP and got into XP just fine. Then I tried to get into w2k and got this error:

"Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
(windows root)\system32\hal.dll"

I researched that and found it's also related to the boot.ini file. See this article My boot.ini had the same problem described in the article where it referenced a 3rd partition.

I was able to get into XP to edit boot.ini and changed the 3 to a 2. Now I get the same hal.dll error when trying to boot from either OS. This laptop won't boot from the cd drive (which is what Microsoft recommends) even though the bios has Multi-bay as the first boot device See this article .

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[bonzai]

Just wondering how you were able to re-install XP if you were never able to reboot into the CD. Or is this a problem that just suddenly surfaced right after the hal.dll problem.

Since you are still able to post on this site, I am guessing that you have an extra computer handy. I have no problem e-mailing you the winXP version of the HAL.dll file to you, since I am on XP myself. That way you don't have to go through that finding the file on the CD and file extraction process. But you will have to figure out how to boot into the CD again so that you can actually access the XP partition under a shell so that you can copy the file from floppy to the hard drive.

You will still have to go through that file extraction process for win2000 though, since I don't have that version on hand.

[chip]

When I installed XP I was in Win 2000 so it didn't need to boot from the CD. I've never used this laptop before so I don't know whether this was a new problem or not.

I also have XP on another computer and I was able to copy the hal.dll but it still didn't work. I deleted the 2nd partition using my PartitionMagic rescue disks and merged the 2 partitions then modified the boot.ini via DOS. I then got a copy of hal.dll from another 2000 pc (a desktop). After that it wouldn't boot at all. Not sure if there's a difference between hal.dll on the desktop and the laptop.

I'm going to have the laptop reimaged at work. I'd still like to dual boot to keep home stuff separate from work. I'm not quite sure what started this problem so I don't repeat it. I'm wondering if the BootMagic was partly responsible.

Thanks for the help and suggestions.

[bonzai]

In the beginngin, you had win2000 on your primary partition. What you wanted to do was install XP on the second partition. To do that, you should boot into the CD and install from there. Installing through win2000 up and running is incorrect and will definitely mess things up.

[chip]

Thanks Bonzai. Excuse the ignorance, but just to be sure, will booting from the disk still let me install on the 2nd partition without affecting the w2k?

[bonzai]

Correct, installing winXP on the 2nd partition by booting into the CD will not affect the win2k on the primary partition at all.

[mike breck]

What make and model of laptop is it?

If the laptop isn't able to boot from the CD-Rom, then you might be better downloading the XP setup floppy bootdisks.

http://support.microsoft.com/default...;en-us;Q310994

[chip]

Thanks Mike. It's a Compaq Armada E500 and I had the Win 2000 partition reimaged at work so I'm starting from where I started a few days ago, with a working OS on a single partition. I am able to boot from the CD now which is what I'm going to do in a few minutes after creating a 2nd partition. Hopefully things go smoother this time. I'm definitely learning things and I thank you all on this forum. This is a great place!