XP install on 2nd partition

I just created a 2nd partion on my HDD. What i want to do is keep the original system were it is (HP XP media crap) and install XP on the newly created partition. So after creating the 2nd partition i rebooted and booted from the XP pro disk to try to install it into the new partition. When the installation came to the screen were ask what drive i would like to install XP the partitions weren't on the list and instead there it stated there is no hardrive. It had this about 5 times in the row. Then i when press the arrow keys i get the blue screen of death.
What i'm I doing wrong?

 

If your BIOS has a setting for "Compatibility" or "IDE" mode, try that setting before booting to the XP install CD. If the installer isn't seeing your disk drive then it's because the aging XP install CD doesn't have the correct driver for your newer disk controller.

After installing Windows, set the BIOS back to "AHCI" mode for the disk, and reboot into Windows. You can then install the correct driver in Windows.

 

The only "IDE" setting I saw on the bios was under the SATA catagory. It said IDE, RAID and ACHI. I set it to "IDE" and the installer did see the drive. The only problem was that it only saw the original system partition, this is the one i want to leave alone. It did not see the newly created partition I want to install XP on. So only drive C: partition was available and the new drive F: wasn't. Also the partition it was able to see (preinstalled xp media) was labeled Unkown and the amount of drive space was the same amount I had set it to when i created the F: partion.
So now what do I do?

 

If you boot into your original installation of XP Media Center Edition, can you see your new partition using Windows Disk Management? How is it listed (primary or logical)? Which partition is active? A screen shot from Disk Mangement or from Acronis Disk Director (in manual mode) would be helpful.

 

Yes i can see the new partition in disk management. No its not marked as active. When i created this partion I made it Primary. I can't or don't know how to see this in Windows disk Management. The XP media edition is set as active. The new partition I created is labeled as "Ruido Productions"
Here's a screenshot (which i just learned how to do )
Thanks for the help

 

chingon:

Everything looks correct so far. Here are some screen shots (steps 3 and 4) that show which screens to expect when you are installing Windows to a disk that already contains another installation of Windows.

In Disk Management, the secret decoder key is shown at the bottom of the window. Primary partitions are color-coded blue. Yours look fine.

At the moment, I don't know why the XP installer is unable to see your existing partitions; it should.

 

The link to the screenshots you provided look just like mine. Except its missing the partition I created. Should i just create another partition on while on the XP install and be done with it? I just need a dual boot system and nothing else fancy.

 

The only other reason that I can think of is that perhaps the XP installer is coded in such a way to prevent installation of two XP operating systems on the same disk.

If that's the reason then you'll have to hide the first XP in order to install the second. You could test this theory out very simply by using Disk Director to make your first two partitions hidden and the third, empty partition unhidden and active. Then see if the installer can see your empty partition.

I would not proceed with this install unless you are willing to use a boot manager to switch between operating systems. OSS can do this, for example. If you want to do it this way then I would search this forum for posts by MudCrab, who has some explicit instructions for setting up OSS with more than one installation of XP.

 

hmmmmm. Well in the past i've dual booted using the same XP disk. One partition for internet. games and another for music production. But that was on another PC were did it both with a clean install. You think maybe its do the already installed xp media on the hewlett packard i'm using?
The XP disk i'm using is pretty old. I'm guessing around 5-6 years old.

 

I'm only guessing because I have no experience with dual-booting "the Microsoft Way" with each Windows OS able to see the other. Instead I've always preferred to set up each OS on its own partition, completely isolated from each other, and then use a boot manager to switch between them.

 

I don't think there should be a problem with installing XP again on the same drive, even the "Microsoft" way.

If you delete the F: partition, does XP's installer show the space as unallocated? If it does, you could create the partition with the installer and proceed to install. If you do it this way, that XP won't be assigned the C: drive letter.

 

I tried this out the other day and the installer was still unable to see the partition. BUT now i have bigger problem. I can't boot to the Original xp media anymore because i get some nonsense about NTLR "something" missing. Now my PC is a big paper weight. I need to fix this thing ASAP because i use everyday for work and have a week of recording session i may have to cancel to get this piece of crap to work...HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Could you provide a little more detail about what you did? Hopefully, after doing the test, you hid the third partition, unhid the first and second partitions, and made partition 1 active again?

 

I created a new partition. Then i hid the already existing 2 HP partitions to try to install XP pro on the newly created partition. Thats pretty much all i did. The XP install didn't see the new partition i created so i said the hell with this and tried to reboot but now i just cant reboot. I get a black screen with a blinking cursor and nothing else.
I tried booting from the DD disk and the original hp drive which somehow has been labeled as "NONE'' shows up with a red flag on it and is set to primary active. There's also a red "X" icon that states its the wrong format.
The newly created partition shows up on the list along with the other HP recovery partition and an unallocated partition that came out of nowhere.

I also don't have the HP recovery disk so if i'm going to need those then i'm screwed.

 

OK - Try this. Boot to the Acronis DD recovery disk and do the following:

1. Make sure that all three of your original partitions are not hidden. Right-click on each one in turn and choose "Advanced". If the partition is hidden you will see a menu item for "unhide". Choose it. If the partition is not hidden you will see "hide", so don't do anything for these.
2. Right-click on the main OS partition; the one that you used to call "HP_PAVILION (C" and choose "Advanced" and then "Change Type". Check to see if the type is listed as "7h NTFS, HPFS". If not, choose that setting.

There should be a red flag on this partition indicating that it is the Active (boot) partition. While you're examining the OS partition you could also right-click on it and choose "Properties" from the menu. This will bring up an informational box. Look through the various items and see if you can see anything abnormal listed. I've attached a screen shot of the information box from a normal NTFS partition.

If you made any changes then click on the checkered flag to commit the changes, reboot, and see if the PC is now bootable.

 

Ok. All the partitions are unhidden and I changed the original HP partition to 7h NTFS, HPFS
Yes the partition is set as active and has the red flag on it. In the properties section there's a red "X" that still states and "file system error,invalid format." The PC still isn't bootable.

 

chingon:

Then the next step would be to run chkdsk on the corrupted partition to see if it can fix the problems.

You will need a Windows XP CD. Follow the instructions in this article to boot the PC from the CD and to enter the recovery console. Skip over the middle part of the article about removing restrictions and jump to the last paragraph for a description of running the chkdsk command.

Before doing what the article recommends (chkdsk /r, which will check for and repair bad blocks) I would first just run chkdsk /p. This will perform a read-only check and will report on the condition of the file system. If any errors are reported then I would do the chkdsk /r.

While in the recovery console you may also want to do a fixboot command to repair the bootsector of the system partition, if damaged. The syntax for both of these commands is on the second page of the article.

 

I tried doing the chkdsk /p & /r operation and i got a response that states "the volume contains one or more unrecoverable problems."
That doesn't sound good at all. Now what?

 

That does sound bad. You could try a recovery program like "GetDataBack" to see if it can recover anything from the disk. You will probably then have to reformat the disk.

 

So there's nothing else i can do? Would i be able to slave that drive and dump the data from it into another drive?

 

Yes, you should try to recover any data from the drive that you can. Connecting the drive as a slave disk in another PC is a good idea, but in case you can't see any data then try one of the recovery programs as mentioned in my previous post.