XP and 2000 dual boot

F

fitsum

Geek Trainee
Hi all,
I had windows xp installed on my pc. Later, I installed win 2000 pro. The win 2000 works perfectly, but when I select windows xp from the dual boot menu, it gives me a message that windows 2000 cannot boot and other stuff and it stopes there. I used a third party boot manager(osl 2000) and with the boot loader, when I select windows xp, I get a message saying that 'ntldr is missing'. Is there any way I can fix this problem without loosing my data and installed applications on the xp side?
 
I'm not really sure why you're running XP and 2k since they're essentially the same OS (XP is just a prettier Win2k). But, in any case you really don't even need that 3rd party bootloader. I'd uninstall that, then do a repair install of XP. Start off like you would to go install XP (meaning boot off the XP CD), but instead of going ahead and formatting the drive, just have XP install over itself.

Of course, I'd still back up, just in case. (You can't ever back up too often).
 
Big B said:
I'm not really sure why you're running XP and 2k since they're essentially the same OS (XP is just a prettier Win2k). But, in any case you really don't even need that 3rd party bootloader. I'd uninstall that, then do a repair install of XP. Start off like you would to go install XP (meaning boot off the XP CD), but instead of going ahead and formatting the drive, just have XP install over itself.

Of course, I'd still back up, just in case. (You can't ever back up too often).
Click to expand...
Big B read my mind. The differences between XP and 2000 are literally skin deep, except that 2kPro tends to be more stable, and also uses less resources. If I was you, I'd simply save my HDD space and just go with 2000. But if you're determined to install both, first partition your HDD into two partitions, one for each OS, but do not yet format them. Next, install 2KPro first, and once complete install XP on the other partition. XP will set up the bootloader for you.
 
Actually I didn't mean to have 2k and xp. I originally had xp only but it had some problems. So I wanted to see if 2k was better so I installed it. Amazingly it worked just fine. The pc got faster and the freezing problem got minimized. 2k is much more stable than xp but xp is comfy for home use that's why I chose it. Anyways, I think I'm going to stick with the 2k.
But still, I don't have a bootable xp cd. what if I start the xp setup from win2k, wouldn't that work? wouldn't it let me fix the existing xp installation?
 
fitsum said:
...I think I'm going to stick with the 2k.
But still, I don't have a bootable xp cd. what if I start the xp setup from win2k, wouldn't that work? wouldn't it let me fix the existing xp installation?
Click to expand...
If I understand you correctly, what you are talking about will result in you having two installations of XP on the same system.
 
Yeah you can do that assuming your XP is a full disk and not an upgrade version. The upgrade would only then allow u to "upgrade" - (their words not mine!! he he). If you run win 2k and use an XP cdrom which isnt an upgrade version it will install the boot loader for you again and then copy the temp files needed for setup, so yes you can do that. The machine will reboot and go into the normal XP setup where as already mentioned you can then proceed to install it again (or repair) without ding a "fresh" copy.
 
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