Two OSes on one partition

ok great i installed win2000 on the same partition as my winxp, now it's really messed up, cause my xp cannot boot while i cant find my ethernet driver for my win2000. gee need help desperately thanks.

 

Windows 2000 installs in a different folder than XP, so you likely did not overwrite your XP installation. What you need to do is edit the "boot.ini" file so that it sees your Windows XP folder as well as the WIN2K folder.

The boot file may say something like this:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

You need to add another line so it sees Windows XP, perhaps like this:

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

But I may be off a little, see what you can find.

Good Luck.

 

aiite will give that a shot. thanks a bunch

 

oh great i cant even locate the boot.ini file. i tried using the windows' search program but it gives me zero search results. blah.

 

In Windows Explorer, go to the tools->folder options->view tab. Check 'show hidden files and folders'

Uncheck 'hide extensions for known file types'
Uncheck 'Hide protected operating systems files'

You should now be able to find the 'boot.ini' file, right in the root C:\ drive.

 

Sorry, forgot to mention the file is hidden. I assume to much.

 

doods i guessed as much and opened the boot.ini file, the line you wanted me to add is already there. anyway, the problem now is that when i boot my comp, they'll ask me to choose the OS to boot up on. when i choose XP they'll tell me that WIN2000 cannot start because the following file is missing or corrupt. c:\windows\system32\config\systemd and they suggest fixing this problem by using the setup on the windows 2000 cd. i tried and it doesnt help at all, now im really confused about how attempting to boot up on xp can be linked to win2000 at all.

help!

 

Can you post the contents of the boot.ini file here?

 

HI, I might be confusing the issue here but I thought in a situation like this that XP had to be the last OS installed and when it installed it ook care of the previous install and made a menu so you could pick which one on startup.