Cable Forum - View Single Post - Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!

meld51 · 26-02-2004, 17:56

Well it's fixed but I don't understand why! Here Is what I did and what happened.

I just could not bring myself to do a fixmbr except as a very last resort.
I thought I could re install XP as a second to last resort and put up with some of my applications not working too well. I suppose I would have to reinstall some of them as well.
However, since it was easy to do I thought that first I would swap my HD around physically so that my Win 98 HD was in IDE0 and my XP HD was in IDE1. I thought I could then boot from win 98 and then use it to back up my data onto an external disk. (wasn't sure about this but what could I lose?)
I swapped them and sure enough I could get Win 98 to boot.
After it had searched around for all the drivers it asks you to reboot, and guess what, when it restarted it started in XP!
I quickly took the opportunity to backup all my data.
Next I did a system restore to the point before I installed Boot Magic and Partition Magic.
After that I formatted my Win 98 disk to be sure of having 1 OS only (for now).
Then I ran a checkdisk to make sure that there were no errors: there were none!
I checked the BIOS to ensure that it was seeing the HDs correctly and it was.

So that's it. Fixed but I don't know why.

If anyone else knows the logic then let me know!

Actually I'm surprised to find that the IDE designation seems to move with the HDD. My BIOS still sees it as having the OS in IDE0?

Anyway thanks for all your time and attention. It really helps to chew the fat when these things happen!

26-02-2004, 17:56	#27
meld51 Inactive Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 364	Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start! Well it's fixed but I don't understand why! Here Is what I did and what happened. I just could not bring myself to do a fixmbr except as a very last resort. I thought I could re install XP as a second to last resort and put up with some of my applications not working too well. I suppose I would have to reinstall some of them as well. However, since it was easy to do I thought that first I would swap my HD around physically so that my Win 98 HD was in IDE0 and my XP HD was in IDE1. I thought I could then boot from win 98 and then use it to back up my data onto an external disk. (wasn't sure about this but what could I lose?) I swapped them and sure enough I could get Win 98 to boot. After it had searched around for all the drivers it asks you to reboot, and guess what, when it restarted it started in XP! I quickly took the opportunity to backup all my data. Next I did a system restore to the point before I installed Boot Magic and Partition Magic. After that I formatted my Win 98 disk to be sure of having 1 OS only (for now). Then I ran a checkdisk to make sure that there were no errors: there were none! I checked the BIOS to ensure that it was seeing the HDs correctly and it was. So that's it. Fixed but I don't know why. If anyone else knows the logic then let me know! Actually I'm surprised to find that the IDE designation seems to move with the HDD. My BIOS still sees it as having the OS in IDE0? Anyway thanks for all your time and attention. It really helps to chew the fat when these things happen!