XP Failure in XP/ME Dual Boot Configuration

My XP/ME dual boot configuration had been running fine for a year. Today, XP failed to boot, blank screen, no hard drive activity, safe modes don't work. ME still works fine.

What should I do? Can I reinstall XP from dual boot ME and retain my dual boot configuration? Can I retain my old XP configurations?

 

Explain "safe moe don't work ".

Can you get the safe mode prompt or nothing at all.

What did you do different yesteday new software or updates or config changes?

Mike

 

I solved the problem following Rod's advice here:

http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?threadid=1172

This was a relatively painless procedure. The only difference for dual boot is that Boot.ini is modified with a third option for booting into XP Setup. After restoring Boot.ini with a backup, everything was the same as before the XP breakdown. It might be a good idea to save a copy the second Boot.ini with the setup option. If this happens again, I might be able to bypass some steps by booting the setup option. If so, this would be an advantage for dual boot configurations.

 

10-4 to that!

That is what I suspected but, did you find out what actually caused it!

Mike

 

GUYS,

Have to say that I got fed up with the problem of running an O/S in "C" drive when using dual/triple boot especially when things went wrong requiring restore or even format/reinstall so i split up my 2x20 gig h/drives as follows::


C.......less than 200 mb.........very generous for bootloader files
only. Therefore easy to back-up.

D.......documents
E.......win ME (o/s and essentials only.Nothing valuable to loose)
F.......Store partition for software etc
G.......Pagefile (for ME/XP)........(used to be for win2k T/boot).
H.......XP pro (ntfs)...again only essentials.
G.......backup (images from C,E,H)

As I just love "experimenting" ........some might say buggering around.........the above configuration has save may bacon on countless occasions.

regards
andro