Dual boot problem

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

That's what I said two posts ago.

I think I can follow Pegasus way to recreate a boot.ini file. But for ntldr
and ntdetect I will be copying from WinXP CD. Right?

"Pegasus (MVP)" replied:

"Timothy Daniels" asked:
[........] there frequently
appears the problem about single-booting an OS that had
previously been part of a dual-boot where the load files
(i.e. boot.ini, ntldr, and ntdetect.com) were in the partition
containing the removed OS. More specifically, the load
files and OS #1 were in what the poster calls the "C:"
drive, and OS #2 resides in the "D:" drive, and he wants
to boot OS #2 without the "C:" drive present. So the
problem then arises about providing the load files for the
"D:" drive. If ntldr and ntdetect.com could simply be copied
over from the "C:" drive, would they work on the "D:" drive?

Yes, they would, and it's what I should have said in the
first place. Thanks for pointing it out.

Whew! Thanks. That question has been echoing
around the WindowsXP newsgroups for more than a
year without an answer until now.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Timothy Daniels]

I think I can follow Pegasus way to recreate a boot.ini file.
But for ntldr and ntdetect I will be copying from WinXP CD.
Right?

That's one way to get copies of ntldr and ntdetect.com if
you can't just copy them from the C: drive. You can even copy
over the boot.ini file and make a couple minor changes using
Notepad as the editor, and it should also work. The changes
would be to remove the 2nd entry under the [operating systems]
line (since it will no longer be a dual-boot system) and to set
the default timeout to 0 (i.e. no delay). Since the D: drive will
presumably be at the head of the BIOS's hard drive boot order
(by virtue of the removal of the C: drive), the "rdisk()" argument
value can be kept as 0, and assuming that the partition no. of
the partition containing the OS on D: is the same as the partition
no. of the partition containing the OS on C:, the "partition()"
argument can remain the same as well.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Guest]

Why I can't find boot.ini in my other PC that are running on WinXP only?

I think I can follow Pegasus way to recreate a boot.ini file.
But for ntldr and ntdetect I will be copying from WinXP CD.
Right?

That's one way to get copies of ntldr and ntdetect.com if
you can't just copy them from the C: drive. You can even copy
over the boot.ini file and make a couple minor changes using
Notepad as the editor, and it should also work. The changes
would be to remove the 2nd entry under the [operating systems]
line (since it will no longer be a dual-boot system) and to set
the default timeout to 0 (i.e. no delay). Since the D: drive will
presumably be at the head of the BIOS's hard drive boot order
(by virtue of the removal of the C: drive), the "rdisk()" argument
value can be kept as 0, and assuming that the partition no. of
the partition containing the OS on D: is the same as the partition
no. of the partition containing the OS on C:, the "partition()"
argument can remain the same as well.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Guest]

Sorry I didn't quite get what you mean. What do you mean by 'copy over the
boot.ini file'? Does it mean that I don't need ntldr and ntdetect? Please
explain.
Thanks.

I think I can follow Pegasus way to recreate a boot.ini file.
But for ntldr and ntdetect I will be copying from WinXP CD.
Right?

That's one way to get copies of ntldr and ntdetect.com if
you can't just copy them from the C: drive. You can even copy
over the boot.ini file and make a couple minor changes using
Notepad as the editor, and it should also work. The changes
would be to remove the 2nd entry under the [operating systems]
line (since it will no longer be a dual-boot system) and to set
the default timeout to 0 (i.e. no delay). Since the D: drive will
presumably be at the head of the BIOS's hard drive boot order
(by virtue of the removal of the C: drive), the "rdisk()" argument
value can be kept as 0, and assuming that the partition no. of
the partition containing the OS on D: is the same as the partition
no. of the partition containing the OS on C:, the "partition()"
argument can remain the same as well.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Several replies ago Timothy Daniels wrote:
===========
What utility would supply the ntldr and ntdetect.com
files (needed along with boot.ini for booting the OS)?
===========
I thought this makes it abundantly clear that three files
are needed for a successful boot:
boot.ini
ntldr
ntdetect.com

Sorry I didn't quite get what you mean. What do you mean by 'copy over the
boot.ini file'? Does it mean that I don't need ntldr and ntdetect? Please
explain.
Thanks.

I think I can follow Pegasus way to recreate a boot.ini file.
But for ntldr and ntdetect I will be copying from WinXP CD.
Right?

That's one way to get copies of ntldr and ntdetect.com if
you can't just copy them from the C: drive. You can even copy
over the boot.ini file and make a couple minor changes using
Notepad as the editor, and it should also work. The changes
would be to remove the 2nd entry under the [operating systems]
line (since it will no longer be a dual-boot system) and to set
the default timeout to 0 (i.e. no delay). Since the D: drive will
presumably be at the head of the BIOS's hard drive boot order
(by virtue of the removal of the C: drive), the "rdisk()" argument
value can be kept as 0, and assuming that the partition no. of
the partition containing the OS on D: is the same as the partition
no. of the partition containing the OS on C:, the "partition()"
argument can remain the same as well.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Why I can't find boot.ini in my other PC that are running
on WinXP only?

You probably have your system files hidden. To "unhide"
them, go to the Control Panel, dbl-click Folder Options,
select the View tab, under "Hidden files and folders", check
"Show hidden files and folders", and then click the "OK"
button. The boot.ini file should appear at C:\boot.ini .

*TimDaniels*

 

[Guest]

I did as you said but still can't find the file. I use the search command
still cannot find.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

I did as you said but still can't find the file. I use the search
command still cannot find.

I'm sorry, I don't recall what the hard drive on the "other PC"
contained. If it does not have boot.ini, it probably doesn't
have ntldr and ntdetect.com as well. If you don't have a
hard drive to copy them from, use the Repair Console on
you Windows XP installation CD as Pegasus explained.

My thought was that the hard drive which was removed
had those files and when that hard drive was removed,
the 2nd hard drive couldn't boot the OS that it contained.
So my suggestion was to temporarily re-connect that hard
drive in order to copy the 3 boot files over to the 2nd hard
drive, then to touch-up the boot.ini file so it would correctly
direct the mono-boot loading of the OS on the 2nd hard drive
when the 1st hard drive was again removed.

By the way, the question/response cycle goes much faster
in these microsoft.public.* newsgroups than in other
newsgroups, and if you wait a couple days between
postings, your thread gets deleted by people who read
the newsgroup, and you get forgotten. Perhaps it would
help to re-post your question in a new thread and then
standby to respond to answers. Good luck.

*TimDaniels*