Cannot restore dual boot WinXP Pro/WinXP Pro 64bit

I had a perfectly-functioning triple boot configuratiion with Xandros 4.1 Pro, Windows XP Pro, and Xandros XP Pro 64 bit. I used the LILO boot loader of Xandros. Without going into details, Acronis OSS and True Image are essentially useless on this home-built PC based on the ASUS P5B Wi-Fi motherboard.

My problems started when I got a virus on the XP Pro partition (the first partition on disk 1). I could not eliminate the virus.

My solution was to wipe the XP partiton and reinstall XP Pro, then reconfigure the dual boot between XP Pro and XP Pro 64 bit.

For whatever reason, I was not able to restore the Xandros boot loader. I installed Acronis OSS to see if that would allow me to start Xandros. It did not, and for some reason listed multiple instances of Linux installs on my machine.

Uninstalling Acronis OSS left me with a computer that only booted XP (the 32 bit version). Attempts to recover the dual boot between 32 and 64 bit Windows using the usual recovery console options would not work this time. I was unable to access the boot.ini file on the XP 64 bit partition. I did see that there was a bootwiz folder, presumably related to Acronis OSS.

By reinstalling OSS I could once again get to the 64 bit Windows, but on startup, Acronis OSS lists not only the two Windows installs, but several Linux installs and even more "unknown operating system" installs.

Under "Computer Management", drive C, where the 32 bit XP is installed, is listed as "healthy", and drive E , where XP 64bit is installed, (partition 2 of disk 0) is listed as "Healthy (boot)".

It is starting to look like I have completely "screwed the pooch" and I am about ready to back up all the data I can to another physical drive and completely wipe the drive clean and start over.

My question is this: when you use OSS to dual boot two versions of Windows, and you then uninstall OSS and are given the choice of which Windows to boot from when you restart, why is it seemingly impossible to use the recovery console to rescue the unchosen Windows install?

 

OK, same question, less verbose:

If you are dual booting XP Pro and XP Pro 64 Bit with Acronis Operating System selector, you uninstall OSS and have to chose an OS for booting after the uninstall, how can you make the alternate system bootable?

After this scenario I was unable to use the XP recovery console to restore the ability to dual boot. The recovery console is unable to detect the non-chosen OS after OSS is uninstalled, so no revisions to boot.ini can be made. There is a folder called bootwiz left on the unchosen OS, and I can't get rid of it.

 

I use OSS, Disk Director and True Image on my ASUS P5B Deluxe/WiFi computer. I have not have the problems you describe.

Since you have DD, have you tried using it to set a particular operating system to boot? For example: Set the XP 64 partition to active/boot and hide the XP Pro partition (or however it was setup in OSS). In other words, manually do what OSS was supposed to do automatically. You will have to boot from the rescue cd and use the "safe" mode of DD. The full version won't find any hard drives.

If you reinstall OSS, it worked better for me making sure that no partitions were hidden. It should detect the operating systems and then you can edit the properties and hide the necessary paritions, etc. If the hidden/active checkboxes are grayed out, check out this thread as it has an easy fix.

I've read about OSS creating multiple linux boot menu options because it detects it new every time the computer boots (or maybe only sometimes). I've had sucess with GRUB installed to a small linux "boot" partition and not the MBR. I've not tried LILO, though. Once it's setup, OSS should detect it using the Detect Operating System Wizard and selecting the linux boot partition.