Dual boot issue..

[Yoroshiku]

i have a korean windowsXP installed on my first hard drive 'C', it is split into 2 partition, so it's 'C' and 'D'. i recently installed a new HDD and installed english WindowsXP and the drive letters are 'F' and 'G'. 'E' is used by the CDROM.

so when i boot up the pc, i get an option to boot either to the first korean OS or the english OS. all this works fine. but i want to reformat the first hard disk and consolidate C and D into a single drive. but i wonder how will this affect the dual boot system. i noticed that the new windows XP OS drive F does not have any boot related files on the root folder, and this is with hidden files turned on. i looked into C and i find a couple files such as boot.ini, ntldr and the usual config.sys io.sys msdos.sys autoexec.bat.

so my question/issue is, what would happen to my new english XP if i reformatted C and D and repartitioned it into just C. assuming the format and repartition and Korean XP installation is all done via booting up from the Kor XP CD, would i still be able to access the Eng OS after the reformat and everything? do i have to perform something before hand? will XP installation know that i have another OS on another drive? and what's that 8mb partition i remember seeing when when i repartitioned the main drive for installation, i think windows used it for something boot related.

sorry if this post seems long, i hope u guys can offer some insight into this. thanks.

[grossjamesh]

Welcome to the forum.

Try PartitionMagic.

[ranchhand]

If you reformat the Master Drive/C&D partitions you will erase your MBR (Master Boot Record). This is the big problem. The MBR as it is now is set to recognize two partitions containing Operating Systems; when you reinstall Korean XP as the Master it will rebuild the MBR as recognizing only one harddrive.

The only thing I can suggest is to directly copy your MBR record as it is now and save it to a flash drive or a floppy (Cntrl. Panel/System/Properties/Advanced/Startup & Recovery/Edit).

Now physically uplug the power cable from your Slave harddrive containing English XP. This is a protection so that you do not accidentally format that drive. Don't laugh, I have seen that happen on more than one occasion.

Reconstruct & format your harddrive and install Korean XP on it. Now go back into your MBR, and copy and paste the saved MBR from your flash drive. Power Down. Plug in the power cable to your Slave/English drive and power up. Now you HOPE that this will return your system back to the same as it was with the dual boot setup. The only fishhook that I can think of with this is that you now have one partition instead of the original two on the Master drive, and that may confuse the MBR if it is expecting two partitions on the Master drive. Hard to say.

As far as Partition Magic is concerned, be careful. I cannot begin to count the number of people who have trashed their operating systems using PM, especially with a complicated situation like this. If you decide to go this route, practice on a different computer first with the same setup before you try it. PM is like a loaded gun; very useful in certain circumstances but always dangerous.

Which ever way you decide to go, be sure to back up all your programs and data first.

[Yoroshiku]

hmm thanks ranchhand, that was the kind of answer i was looking for. so just as i suspected, formatting the master drive will destroy the MBR records.

any idea if using the Windows XP setup to do the partitioning, formatting and installing XP will make any difference in terms of it detecting the dual boot and preserve it somehow compared to formatting the master drive manually via something then only attempt to run XP setup?

[ranchhand]

using the Windows XP setup

I assume you mean using the XP installation disk, not trying to do this from within XP itself in Disk Management.
Yes, you would have to use the XP installation disk to do this; there are workarounds, but that is the most direct and efficient way. Trying to use, say, a Windows 98 boot floppy will not work.

There is nothing a 3rd party utility can do that the XP system disk can do better. Remember that you are first deleting two partitions (which hoses the hard drive) and re-creating a new, single partition. That is the fishhook. And you are doing it on your Master drive with the Primary Boot Partition, not your Slave drive with the secondary partition. On boot, if the BIOS goes searching for that primary partition, it had better also include a path to the secondary partition otherwise you will not get the option to boot into the secondary partiton. It will just boot into the Primary and will not see the secondary.

[Bjs]

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

Xp use's boot.ini that reside's on the os partition in order to know the os to load ... some linux distro's can help recover this file should it need to be edited because of screwed up multiple os's .

[Yoroshiku]

thanks again, i'm gonna prepare the all the recovery tools and stuff at work and give the format a go during the weekend. will let u guys know how it goes.