Not Booting Into XP In Dual Boot

Hi,

I have been adviced to come here to the Acronis Forum hoping that someone here might be able to help me.
Although my problem is not a "True Image" problem it is to with "Acronis OS Selector 8"

I desperately need my Windows XP back. This morning I was using my PC and everything was A1, I shut it down no problems, tonight on boot up I have no Windows XP only 98SE.
As you might guess I am dual booting 98SE with XP Pro my 98SE can see drive F which is XP witch is on a separate HD to 98SE. It is showing the My Documents and I did a defrag it seems all there both OS are Fat32. On boot up I am using “Acronis OS Selector” and Acronis recognises a second HD and names partitions #2-5 but no OS. Although I have no partitions on that drive.
What will happen if I turn off Acronis or uninstall it.
How can I get my PC to boot into XP I have no problems booting into 98.
Can the boot just vanish like that or could Acronis be at fault here.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
My BIOS shows this
First Boot Device [CD Rom]
Second Boot Device [Floppy]
Third Boot Device [ HDD0 ]
Would a XP Repair be any good I am really at my wits end.
thanks
hawk22

Hawk22

 

Hello Hawk22,

I don't know anything about the Acronis boot manager but I do know a little about dual booting using LILO, (LInux LOader), the boot manager that Mandrake Linux installs.

From my experience I would suggest this, which, if you are careful, won't damage the XP partition and will make it bootable if it isn't damaged:

Obtain a copy of Mandrake Linux (10.0 is the latest but 9.2 will work the same for this purpose) and PartitionMagic 8.0. Install the PartitionMagic in your Win98 (PartitionMagic only runs from Windows.) Use it to create some unused space on your hard drive. If you don't have any more room on your hard drive you might be able to shrink the Win98 partition using PartitionMagic. Run defrag before you do it. The unused space is for the Mandrake Linux. It doesn't need to be very big because you are just going to install a minimum version of Linux. I'm not sure exactly how big, perhaps 1GB. You will need to do some homework here.

Anyway, having found or created some unused space on the hard drive, boot your computer with the first Mandrake installation CD. It will ask you if you want to install Linux in the unused space it detects. Say yes and choose the default values it gives you for everything. If you chicken out at any point up to now, you can back out without writing anything to your hard drive. At the end of the installation process, LILO will be written to the boot sector of your hard drive, replacing the Acronis boot manager.

After the Linux installation is finished and you restart your computer, LILO shows for a few seconds a list of the partitions on your computer which it recognizes as bootable. This should include any partitions with Windows on them. If XP doesn't show up on the list then the XP is damaged and that's why the Acronis boot manager couldn't start it. Assuming it shows up you can choose it, or, if you do nothing LILO chooses Linux by default.

From within Linux you can tell LILO which of the partitions it recognizes as bootable on your hard drive to boot by default. I have installed Mandrake Linux, first 9.2 and then 10.0, on three computers, one with WinMe and two with W2KPro, with no problem. I changed LILO on all three so that Windows boots by default.

You can install LILO to the boot sector without going to all the trouble of installing Linux, and it might be very easy, but I've never done it. Discovering how easy it is to boot multiple OSs using LILO was a byproduct of experimenting with Linux.

 

Hi DiscernerO,
Thank you for your response, I have printed it out, and will seriously consider it.
I am presently writing this reply from my Win.XP I have just managed by some very unusual process off a XP repair to get it back. And as I had suspected it was not a problem with Acronis but the XP boot.
Fortunately it repaired itself with no loss off any data.
I will keep your advise close at hand, who knows it might happen again tomorrow.
thanks again
hawk22