Until last week I was running Windows 98SE and WinXP Home as a dual boot setup on my Athlon 2200XP machine. Having decided I no longer needed 98, i migrated any useful files to a seperate hard drive.
The original Win98 installation was on the C drive, and Win XP on my E drive.
I have completely formatted the C drive and now can no longer boot into XP successfully.
Is it possible for me to regain access to the XP installation somehow? Or are things more serious... :confused:
Iain
Start the computer from the XP CD, and use the repair options there.
I have completely formatted the C drive and now can no longer boot into XP successfully.
That's because XP, even though actually installed on E:, wrote boot information to the root directory of your C: drive. Now that you've formatted C:, that information no longer exists.
As Catweazle said, boot into the rescue console from the XP cd. Once at the rescue console's command prompt, issue the following command:
FIXBOOT C:
That should write/restore the appropriate boot info.
That's because XP, even though actually installed on E:, wrote boot information to the root directory of your C: drive. Now that you've formatted C:, that information no longer exists.
As Catweazle said, boot into the rescue console from the XP cd. Once at the rescue console's command prompt, issue the following command:
FIXBOOT C:
That should write/restore the appropriate boot info.
Thanks for that...I have isolated the E drive from the others, put it on the Primary Master bus, and attempted to go down the Repair route. unfortunately, when asked for the ADMINISTRATOR PASSWORD the machine wont recognise it, or any of the other possible ones I might have used!! So not much further really guys!
:sad:
did you try it with not typing in a password
did you try it with not typing in a password
I have done now, and ENTER without any password just cancels the repair attempt and reboots AGAIN !
We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.