OS Selector not showing at startup, please help

I have a WinXP dual boot setup (two copies on a separate hard drives) and I've used OS Selector to switch between them. After experiencing wheather storm last night, I turned on my computer this morning and noticed that my secondary system booted up even though my first drive is specified in OS selector to boot immediately (unless I hit the escape key during bootup and manualy choose the second copy of XP). I tried to restart the machine and during the bootup there is no OS Selector anymore (the part when computer prompts me to hit the escape key to start OS Selector). The computer just immediately start booting into my secondary copy of XP. I managed to boot from Acronis bootable disk into my primary system, then tryed to reactivate OS selector. It prompted me that OS selector was succesfully activated, but when I try to rebot again the same thing happened, it immediately boots from my second hard drive and OS Selector doesn't even appear during the bootup.
What should I do? Please, help!
thanks

 

I think you might need to uninstall OSS and then re-install - sounds like something has corrupted the bootwiz files.

What happens if you try to run OSS from the rescue CD?

It might also be worth checking in your BIOS that your drive order hasn't for some strange reason altered.


Colin

 

I can start OS Selector from the rescue disc and then choose to boot to my primary system (I choose activate OSS from the menu, then get the message that activation went succesfull, and after removing the disc from the drive end click OK I get the OSS screen from which I then can select my primary WinXP). I've tried to uninstall and then reinstall OS Selector but nothing has changed (still not getting that loading OSS at bootup message and the system just goes straight into booting from my second drive). I've also checked the drives in BIOS and as far as my knowledge goes, everything seems to be OK.

 

I've uninstalled OS Selector and tried to fixed mbr and then reinstalled OSS again but that didnt help either. I looked at my boot.ini file and it seemed strange to me. This was the boot.ini on my first partition:

[boot loader]
;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" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /noexecute=alwaysoff

I then uninstalled the OSS again and edited the boot.ini files on my first WinXP instalation to:

[boot loader]
;timeout=1
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Now my system boots into my first WinXP installation on my primary hard disk. Can someone please help what should I put into my boot.ini files on my primary and secondary WinXP installs to be able to switch between them from the OS Selector. And why the OSS won't even show at a boot time?

Any help would be highly appreciated cause I'm starting to bang my head up a wall already. Thanks

 

OK try uninstalling OSS - boot into windows and then check boot.ini and see if it is showing your second disk as the default and also check to make sure your first disk is shown.

If this is wrong then correct it here - and then try re-installing OSS.

As you can boot into OSS from the rescue CD - click on one of your OS installs and choose properties - go to 'FILES' and then choose boot.ini from here and check its content - this might save you having to uninstall OSS in the first place.

Colin

 

You managed to post whilst I was typing a reply!

OK, I have 4 partitions - 2 XP, 1 W2K and sort of Solaris (doesn't work)

There is only 1 boot.ini file for the XP's setup.

The primary one that I boot into is on my SATA 2 drive and is shown below.

[boot loader]
;timeout=1
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect sos

Now OSS does not use the boot.ini file, but it does gather the info in them when it is making its own bootwiz files.

Thats why I suggested uninstalling OSS, make sure the boot.ini file has both XP entries in it and then re-install OSS and hope it picks them up.

Your plain boot.ini should look a little like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=20
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /sos /noexecute=optin
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINDOWS="winXP test" /fastdetect/sos
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(3)\WINNT="W2K" /fastdetect

Have you tried getting OSS to detect operating systems, though I have found this a flaky way of trying to get it to recognise installs. It seems to prefer detecting extra systems as they are installed.

Colin

 

Ok here's what I managed to do (unfortunately I've already tried some steps on my own so I can't anymore do what you suggested):

I once again reinstalled OS Selector then went into Recovery Console from my WinXP installation disk. I ran fixmbr from there, and also did a bootcg /rebuild. After that I reinstalled OSS and voila!, it finally appeared during the bootup. But now there are four OS installation recognized in the menu (I figured that OSS recognizes each of my OS installation twice). I decided to hide the two duplicated choices and now everything appears to be fine. But it still botheres me that I get two extra copies of OSes appearing in the OSS menu. These are the new created boot.ini files:

for the first primary disk:

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


and for the secondary:

[boot loader]
;timeout=20
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS=""
;multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=""
;multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /noexecute=alwaysoff

Is there anything I can do to make things perfect just the way they were before? Is there any logical explanation what may have happened to cause this kind of problem, cause everything was just perfect for a long time and it seems to me that I didn't do anything to cause this problem.

Big, big thank to you Bodgy, I really appreciate your help. Hope to get your final thoughts on what I just wrote

 

When you recreated the boot files, was OSS still installed?

This would explain why it then decided to show 4 Os's - even though it wasn't working properly part of it had taken note so to speak.

this looks strange to me, this may be another reason OSS picked up four installs. I'd be tempted to erase these two and uncomment the last entry, as RDISK(0) is your first drive and (1) your second. By the looks of it the second one XP thinks is your primary boot drive.

Colin