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From: Ant on 1 Aug 2010 06:30
Thanks Paul. That reminds me...

I forgot to mention what I saw in multi-boot menus. It said "previous
Windows" or "Windows 7". A funny thing is that even with specific
Windows restored from Ghost image backups, I still see "Windows 7"
mentioned even if Vista was restored. I cannot remember which is which
since I am not at the PC, but I think booting up a Windows resulted
either ANOTHER multi-boot or blank screen (nothing happens, not even a
blinkin cursor). I am sure I broke the bootup process badly. :(


On 7/31/2010 11:05 PM PT, Paul typed:

> Start with a copy of PTEDIT32, to look at the partition table. In the
> picture
> here, you can see the second partition is marked active (boot flag is
> 0x80).
> I think what the fixmbr does, is rewrites 446 bytes of WinXP boot code in
> the MBR. I doubt it would change the boot flag or modify the 64 bytes in
> the MBR that define the four primary partition entries.
>
> You might change the boot flag, to the partition you're currently trying
> to single boot. (The boot flag can be changed with Partition Magic. The
> boot flag could be changed with the "fdisk" program in some Linux distro.
> It is possible PTEDIT32 supports that capability, but I don't make any
> changes with this tool - I use this purely for a quick look.)
>
> http://www.vistax64.com/attachments/vista-installation-setup/7308d1224108918-hidden-partiton-recovery-dell-xps-420-dell-tbl.gif
>
>
> (
> ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/PTEDIT32.zip
> )
>
> I'm a little foggy on the whole boot process, but it goes something like
> this.
>
> Starts with MBR. OS specific boot loader is loaded in the MBR sector.
> Some primary partition is marked active. In that partition, is a
> "partition boot sector", containing more code. (When I look here,
> it seems that code is 1536 bytes long.)
>
> The OS itself, has a boot manager. It may have multiple entries in a
> menu it presents, and you can vector from there, to whatever other OS
> you were trying to load. In WinXP, the details are in boot.ini. If
> Windows 7 boot manager was being used, then a different scheme is
> used for holding that information (you can't fix it with Notepad there).
>
> Since you say you're only trying to get WinXP running again, you'd
> want the boot flag set for the WinXP partition, and do your repairs to
> that partition. By doing so, your hope would be, to break your
> dependency on the other partitions for aiding the boot process.
> (Like using the Windows 7 boot manager to launch WinXP.)
> So if currently, the boot manager in Windows 7 is running the
> show, it probably wouldn't be that useful to try deleting Windows 7
> entirely. At least, until WinXP is working on its own, and a
> path that uses only WinXP components is at work.
>
> fixmbr would put the WinXP version of the MBR boot code back.
>
> fixboot writes a new partition boot sector (which is located just
> in front of where the file system starts, on C:). At this point,
> I don't think you need to do that (because you say Windows 7 is
> on D:, WinXP is on C:, so if the Windows 7 installer wrote the
> partition boot sector, is would have overwritten the 1536 bytes
> of D:).
>
> bootcfg seems to be involved with boot.ini, but I've never used
> it. That would be used perhaps, if there was a problem with the
> menu offered in WinXP (boot.ini), for its boot manager.
>
> http://chara.epfl.ch/~fsalvi/Windows/ntfs_recovery/recconsole2.html
>
> Now, I seem to remember some individual, making an awful mess.
> They could have been using bootcfg /rebuild or something. You're less
> likely
> to make a big mess, with the other two. You could certainly point
> them at the wrong disk.
>
> To make matters worse, in a search engine, I seem to be seeing a
> bootcfg available right in Windows, and a different bootcfg in the
> Recovery Console, with different command options. The /rebuild
> option is available in the bootcfg in the Recovery Console.
>
> Some day, I'm going to find a web page that documents all this
> stuff in one article. It would sure save typing, if there
> were such a web page.
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