Thanks for the help but nothing worked. So I
tried restoring the boot drive and restoring the
2nd drive in multi-boot with Drive Image.

The funny thing was that before I tried this
when I typed boot.ini at the command prompt
to edit boot.ini it had different values than
when I typed msconfig and went to the boot.ini
tab ... weird

I still don't know which one was valid or if one
was reading from the drive(0) and the other from
drive(1)

Now it's broken again. This time the partitions
on the drive that holds the second XP installation
is unreadable. There are 4 partitions instead of 2
and none of them are formatted, two aren't allocated
or something like that.

What ng should I go to, to get help about partitions
and especially partition magic? Thanks.

"cat rancher" <goodidea1950SPAM-(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:fn3ze.7714$Eo.4966@fed1read04...
: Thanks for the help but nothing worked. So I
: tried restoring the boot drive and restoring the
: 2nd drive in multi-boot with Drive Image.
:
: The funny thing was that before I tried this
: when I typed boot.ini at the command prompt
: to edit boot.ini it had different values than
: when I typed msconfig and went to the boot.ini
: tab ... weird
:
: I still don't know which one was valid or if one
: was reading from the drive(0) and the other from
: drive(1)
:
:
:

The problem I didn't understand was that I got a different
set of parameters for boot.ini and the boot.ini tab in msconfig ...
There is a box in msconfig that reads "use original boot.ini"
and another that reads "use modified boot.ini". By accident
I noticed this and realized that's how I was getting the missing
HAL.DLL message. The modified boot.ini was incorrect and
although the boot.ini was correct and showed correctly, XP
was booting from the modified boot.ini.

I'm kind of proud, until the next f-up I make. : -)


"cat rancher" <goodidea1950SPAM-(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:ajgAe.8200$Eo.6297@fed1read04...
:
: Now it's broken again. This time the partitions
: on the drive that holds the second XP installation
: is unreadable. There are 4 partitions instead of 2
: and none of them are formatted, two aren't allocated
: or something like that.
:
: What ng should I go to, to get help about partitions
: and especially partition magic? Thanks.
:
: "cat rancher" <goodidea1950SPAM-(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
: news:fn3ze.7714$Eo.4966@fed1read04...
:: Thanks for the help but nothing worked. So I
:: tried restoring the boot drive and restoring the
:: 2nd drive in multi-boot with Drive Image.
::
:: The funny thing was that before I tried this
:: when I typed boot.ini at the command prompt
:: to edit boot.ini it had different values than
:: when I typed msconfig and went to the boot.ini
:: tab ... weird
::
:: I still don't know which one was valid or if one
:: was reading from the drive(0) and the other from
:: drive(1)
::
::
::
:
: