BootMagic: corrupt installation

[Bjoern Saentis]

Hello,

Yet another problem with Boot Magic. I want to have two XP
installation SP2 (one for myself and one to replicate clients' one)
based on NTFS. Stupid me, at some point, I deleted the FAT partition
containing Boot Magic; since then, I cannot use or re-install
BootMagic.

The message says "Setup cannot find the location of where BootMagic
was originally installed. Make sure the volume BootMagic is installed
on is visible, and is assigned the same drive letter as at the time of
install. Setup will now exit." From other news I learned I should
overwrite the MBR. I did so from the Recovery Console with fixmbr,
even continued with fixboot. However, with me it does not work! The
same error message! Where else is that information telling BootMagic
about a previous installation?

Related or not, I had a problem with the InstallShield. Another
installation claimed it to be corrupted, and I installed a hotfix from
Microsoft. That fix solved the other problem, but didn't help with
BootMagic.

I thought of cleaning the registry, but that is new to me, and I don't
know which entries to delete.

Restoring the system doesn't work either as all the restore points are
gone. Don't know how I managed that, though.

Now, I am running out of ideas. Any help appreciated.

Thanks,
Bjoern

 

[Peter]

I had a similar problem a while back and had to ask Symantec for help with
the BM error. The solution was very lengthy but you might want to go their
website and ask for help.

 

[johnf]

AFAIK, Bootmagic is not designed to work with XP.
I ran my PC for yonks with 2 x XP OS drives & my PC generated its own boot
option screen from within boot.ini.
As a matter of fact I tucked the boot.ini away.

timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional (#1)" /fastdetect

 

[saentis]

John,

It claims to work with XP, though.

As I understand the process, you now bootstrap your second installation
via the MBR *and* the first one instead of booting directly to your
second one. Right now, I am doing the same thing, but BT Broadband (for
those living in the UK) just doesn't work for anyone but admin on the
second XP installation -- it seems to read something from the first
installation which users are not supposed to access! It's getting
interesting.

Thanks,
Bjoern

 

[johnf]

Go for it.
If it doesn't work, copy boot.ini to the Desktop as a backup, then modify
the original with Notepad with my copy & save changes & see if that works.
Probably you have to go through the hard work of modifying boot.ini on every
PC.
Oh, well, if you have a memory stick & a USB port on every machine, it
shouldn't take too long.