Need ... some more help

[Deepak]

This might be somewhat of a harder problem for those of who you are interested in problem solving.

Im running a dual boot on my computer. I have three partitions on my hard drive. One for vista and one for XP and one for programs for vista. What seems to have happened recently that when I try to select XP in the Boot screen it comes up with an error.

This is what it says;

Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause of this. To fix this problem

1. insert the windows installation disc and restart
2. Choose the language
3. Repair your computer

file \ntldr
Status 0xc000000f

the selected entry could not be loaded coz the app is missing or corrupted.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

When I try to go through the repair phase it asks me for the admin password and even though I enter the correct password it wont let me go through with the repair phase through the installation disc. So what it seems like is the password file is corrupted.

So what do you think, how do I resolve this issue without having to reinstall the OS.

This might pose more of a challenge right A?

[AYHJA]

Actually, not really..! :D

What more than likely has happened is that, depending on the order in which you installed the OS, the boot sector has become corrupted...Maybe XP was handling it, and now Vista is, or whatever the reason...You should be able to fix it by manually fixing the boot file, or as you suggested, simply doing a blanket install...

Try booting from your XP CD and using the Administrator password (not your user pass) to login via the command line...Run a the fixmbr command and see if that does the trick...

[zaphodz]

1) Open this link: http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp

2) Goto this section: Restoring Vista and dual booting

3) Follow that and you'll be able to dual boot again.

This is of course provided that you haven't actually damaged your XP install by running some malicious program on it or by deleting something important.

[Deepak]

zaphodz, that didnt help me out, thanks though.

Sorry A I have been a bit busy recently so I havent been around as much. Anyway what do you mean Admin password, I was the only user on the comp and it was the admin pass.

If you can give me some steps to fix this, it would be great.

[AYHJA]

The blanket install is probably the least problematic way to fix your issue...

[zaphodz]

Did you happen to try using the XP disk to repair the installation? It's worth a go but probably unlikely to fix your problem.

Ultimately you may have to just reinstall XP and then redo the bootloader so you can dual boot.

[Deepak]

Im probably going to do a blanket install but the question is will all the programs that were installed work properly?

[AYHJA]

Some may require that they be re-registered, but the important thing to remember is that you won't loose data, and that with your current setup, the kinds of problems you're having are to be expected...I'd definitely not put any pertinent information on that system...What did you use to partition your drive..?

[Deepak]

I used g-parted to partion my hd. I dont have any thing important on any of the drives anymore. I use an external hd to have all my info and only programs that are absolutly important are on the hd every thing else on an external one. I will try the blanket install and hope everything is ok.