Unable to select boot partition

Okay so I have a Maxtor 320GB split in two 149GB partitions both running Windows XP Pro SP3, late Friday one of my partitions got pissed at me and crashed... all good, booted from the other partition (Primary), took my data and formatted it, An while ago I restarted my pc and proceeded to install XP Pro SP2 on the recently formatted partition... also all good. My problems arose when i restarted my pc after installing my drivers and such. I am unable to select which partition to boot from, the usual screen that pops up after bios asking to select a partition to boot isnt there... i can only access my other partition through My Computer.

I've been reading for the last hour and still unable to find an answer. Any ideas how I can fix this?
It's not that much of a big deal, i can always just boot my 80GB, take all my data, format the entire 320GB, create over my partitions and reinstall XP... again >.< lol which is like... 3 hours+ heh.

Thanks

 

I believe there is a program called grub (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...s65xJq-Mlxu0NGIdw&sig2=Ct0C0rCD2sNHF-g6hdKlJA) that works as a bootloader. You can install it and set up different boots. The windows installations it has to use a chainloader which means it has to use window's own loader to load windows, so if the window's loader is corrupt, it won't work.

I'm not too familiar with the program, but it would take you less time to re-install windows than it would to learn how to use the program.

 

Not sure if it will help or not but you may wish to give the trial of Acronis Disk Director a shot.

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/diskdirector/
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/diskdirector/multibooting.html

Acronis OS Selector trial period expires after 15 days but that part and other tools within it should help you get those installs chooseable again. Its easy to use.

 

Yo

Hey thanks a lot... I'll try them both before reinstalling and give ya'll some feedback