cant boot windows

[osiris999]

i had 2 hard drives in my pc. the first one was an old ide drive. i bought a new sata drive a few months ago. so on my first hard drive i just had windows xp and on the 2nd (sata) i had windows xp and ubuntu linux. when the pc would boot it would give me a choice of what system i wanted to boot. well the old ide drive became overtaken by viruses so i never used it. last night i decided to format the ide drive and use it for trying out other linux systems but now i have no boot loader. i tried installing windows on the sata drive hopeing since i would have 2 copys of it on one drive it would give me the choice screen again. it doesnt it just goes to the new copy of windows but the partition for the older copy of windows shows up under my computer. so is there anyway i can get the copy of windows i want to boot to start booting?

 

[tenchi86]

I am not exactly sure what you are talking about here. Basically your are trying to boot to an OS install tha does not appear on the boot loader? Is it a linux boot loader I take it? If so which one? If it's a windows boot loader have you tried editing the boot.ini file? To open it just type sysdm.cpl into run and hit enter, then go to the advanced tab and select settings under startup and recovery, then click edit. Yours will probably look something like this:

[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" /fastdetect

From what I understand you have XP on the same drive twice but under two partitions? If so then to get it to boot the other one just copy

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

and replace the (1) after partition with the partition # the copy of windows not booting is on, so it would be like (2).

If that is not what you meant then sorry, just tell me what I did wrong.

 

[Sub_Zero]

you might need to load an Sata driver. If you have a floppy incert the disk and Press F6 before it starts to load Windows and go from there.

 

[osiris999]

I am not exactly sure what you are talking about here. Basically your are trying to boot to an OS install tha does not appear on the boot loader? Is it a linux boot loader I take it? If so which one? If it's a windows boot loader have you tried editing the boot.ini file? To open it just type sysdm.cpl into run and hit enter, then go to the advanced tab and select settings under startup and recovery, then click edit. Yours will probably look something like this:

[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" /fastdetect

From what I understand you have XP on the same drive twice but under two partitions? If so then to get it to boot the other one just copy

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

and replace the (1) after partition with the partition # the copy of windows not booting is on, so it would be like (2).

If that is not what you meant then sorry, just tell me what I did wrong.

I changed the partition numbers and it works fine. thanks for the help