Hi, Peg.
The option was there during Setup, but it's all too easy to just get in the
routine of pressing Enter at each new screen without reading them carefully.
You are right that the phrase "dual boot" never appears.
In WinXP Setup, you should have the option to Upgrade from Win2K or to Clean
Install WinXP. (It's been a couple of years since I did this, so my memory
may not be exact, but this is the general pattern.) If you don't Upgrade,
then WinXP Setup installs WinXP alongside Win2K (or Win9x/ME or whatever was
there before) and creates the dual boot menu automatically.
It sounds like you might have installed WinXP into the same volume (primary
partition or logical drive in an extended partition) as Win2K. No matter
how many copies of Windows you install, and whether they are all the same
version or mixed and matched (WinNT4/2K/XP/2K3, etc., plus possibly ONE
instance of Win9x/ME), they all use the same "system partition" (almost
always Drive C
. However, EACH creates its OWN "boot folder"; the name of
this folder defaults to \Windows, except for WinNT4 and Win2K, which default
to WinNT - and except that an Upgrade inherits the name of the prior boot
folder. (Which is why my WinXP boot folder is \WinNT, since I upgraded from
Win2K.) Since no two folders in the same volume can have the same name, if
WinXP is installed into a volume that already has a boot folder, a new name
must be assigned during Setup.
Microsoft (and nearly every other Windows expert) strongly recommends that
you do not install two copies of Windows (same or different version) into
the same volume. In your case, it appears that WinXP was installed into the
same volume as Win2K, creating the new \WIN (XP) boot folder alongside
Win2K's \WINNT boot folder. This situation is not good and is almost
certain to cause confusion at some point.
First solve your Win2K endless ChkDsk loop problem so that you can choose
Win2K from the dual boot menu and boot into Win2K. (One way to solve the
ChkDsk problem might be to boot into WinXP and run ChkDsk from there, using
the options to repair any errors it finds.) Then, from Win2K, delete the
\Win (XP) folder in its entirety (all the files and sub-folders probably
total well over 1 GB). That should put you back to where you were before
running WinXP Setup, except that you will have later-version "system files"
on C:\, which is not a problem.
Then, boot from the WinXP CD-ROM again. Watch the screens carefully and be
sure you are telling it to Upgrade Win2K to WinXP. It should put WinXP into
the same \WinNT boot folder that Win2K has been using, leaving you with only
the one boot folder. It should also "migrate" your existing applications
into the WinXP Registry. Next time you reboot, the boot process will see
that you have only a single OS installed and it will simply boot to WinXP
without presenting a dual boot menu.
The key to all this is solving your endless-ChkDsk loop so that you can boot
into Win2K. Why don't you post a new message focusing on that question.
After that is resolved, you can delete WinXP and reinstall it.
RC
