How do I do an XP repair?

[Panama Red]

Somehow I managed to mess up my boot file, I think, my system won't go past the Asus splash screen. Just keeps recycling. Happened after I tried to explore an ME restore CD to copy a mouse driver for work on another system. Anyway, I got the XP to boot from the CD and pushed R for repair. But then I get to a dos screen and I get foggy. I tried chkdsk and it says my disk is ok, I tried fixboot too, but that didn't fix anything. My XP partition is normally "J". "C" is my 98se partition on a different drive. I disconnected the 98 drive when I tried the repair btw. I need someone that can talk me thru this cuz I'm a real rookie at dos. Thanx

[crjdriver]

When you boot with the xp cd do not choose repair from the first option [although a repair of the boot files can be done from there] choose install. Setup will detect your previous xp installation and offer to repair it for you. By doing the repair you will loose service packs, hot fixes, patches, etc. these will have to be reapplied. If you want to do the boot repair manually, post back and I will post instructions for repairing the boot sector. Note this is where you will use the repair console.

[doctorgonzo]

Something sounds strange.

Which OS is the primary one?

Did you try running fixmbr?

[Panama Red]

Thanx for the responses, guys. I think I'll try the CD repair, crj. I assume from your description I won't lose any of the other programs or files. Is that right? Or would I be in for less work over all if I did the dos command repair. I'm game if you are.

Doc, sorry to confuse you. I have 2 80Gb hdd's. The master cable position has the XP on it. The slave position has the 98se on it. Both set to cable select. I loaded each of them with only one hdd in the system at a time, the 98 was first. That's why it got the C designation. Both drives are partitioned with Partition Magic and only the 98 os is on FAT32. Both systems are totally independent of each other. Only share hardware, no software. Make sense? Didn't run fixmbr. Don't know what it is.

[crjdriver]

A repair install of xp should not cause you to loose anything other than what I posted above ie sps, hot fixes, etc. Just in case backup anything important.
If you want to repair the boot files manually here are the instructions. Are you able to boot into win9x? If not we need to repair win9x first then xp. Anyway here are the xp manual repair instructions.

Boot your computer with the Windows XP CD. When prompted to Setup or Repair, choose Repair. In the Recovery Console, enter the following commands:

FIXBOOT, answer Yes
CD \
ATTRIB -H NTLDR
ATTRIB -S NTLDR
ATTRIB -R NTLDR
ATTRIB -H NTDETECT.COM
ATTRIB -S NTDETECT.COM
ATTRIB -R NTDETECT.COM
COPY X:\I386\NTLDR C:\
COPY X:\I386\NTDETECT.COM C:\
In the last two commands, X is the letter of your CD drive.