Win XP boot.ini issue (found another solution)

D

Dave Bundren

Member
Hello all.
I use EasyBCD and love it.
My configuration consists of quad booting " Mac OSX, Win8.1, 7, and XP"..All on separate drives..
My prob was the "invalid boot.ini" "booting from c:\windows" issue.
Now this only occured when I booted my XP from bios selection, NOT from easyBCD..EasyBCD had no issues with it, which boggled me.

I tried ALL info in NEOSMART support on this issue with no results.
"Each system is on a separate drive instead of same drive with multiple partitions"..
XP is on hd0,0 on my computers first sata port..others follow on secondary and an installed sata3 controller which I boot from on an ssd drive..
I came across this fix after exhausting all other fixes and searching the net. WITH NO RESULTS.

You will need EasyBCD installed as I do and remember that I had no issues with EasyBCD booting XP.
Only when I selected the drive from bios.

FIX:: Boot from one of the other systems, "I booted win7"..
Delete "boot.ini, ntldr and NTDETECT.COM." ("ON THE XP INSTALLATION")
Notice the capitalization on NTDETECT.
Mine was that way..
Now copy those 3 files from the boot drive and /NST folder where EasyBCD is installed, "mine was on win8 partition on installed sata controller"
The ntdetect.com file from there was not capitalized..
Anyway, after copying those files to the XP drive and adjusting the ARC path, "which was different in EasyBCD,s boot.ini", rdisk(2) instead of rdisk(0), probably because at boot time from win8 it changes the drive ordering and sees win8 drive as hd0 and XP as hd2 and vice versa when XP is booted from bios. It works without the "invalid boot.ini" issue..
I had to change "rdisk(2)" to "rdisk(0)"...So I have 2 separate boot.ini files, "one for easyBCD when booting XP from win8 and one for XP when I select that disk at bios boot"...I guess as long as I used easyBCD, I had no complaints but HEY, I had to fix it somehow..All is well now..
Hope this helps somebody..
Dave Bundren...aka...(i_am_oz)
Oh..I use a bootable flash drive with easyBCD installed boot files and my bcd configuration copied to it for emergency booting..it has served me well..I have my needed utilities and drivers, etc on it also...
 
boot.ini is location sensitive (your rdisk change above).
When you use EasyBCD, it will create a correctly configured new boot.ini in the "active" ("system") partition (where it has to be to dual-boot) and the existing version becomes unused.
You (via the BIOS) made the MBR look for NTLDR and the old boot.ini which became disk 0 by virtue of your promotion in the BIOS boot sequence.
That old boot.ini reflected where XP was located when it was last used to boot the OS (rdisk(2)).
All you should have needed to do was correct that rdisk value as you did with the copied version.
In fact, just deleting boot.ini from the XP partition altogether would probably have sufficed.
NTLDR contains a default hardcoded version with rdisk(0) internally which it uses if it can't find a copy on the HDD.
 
Terry60 said:
boot.ini is location sensitive (your rdisk change above).
When you use EasyBCD, it will create a correctly configured new boot.ini in the "active" ("system") partition (where it has to be to dual-boot) and the existing version becomes unused.
You (via the BIOS) made the MBR look for NTLDR and the old boot.ini which became disk 0 by virtue of your promotion in the BIOS boot sequence.
That old boot.ini reflected where XP was located when it was last used to boot the OS (rdisk(2)).
All you should have needed to do was correct that rdisk value as you did with the copied version.
In fact, just deleting boot.ini from the XP partition altogether would probably have sufficed.
NTLDR contains a default hardcoded version with rdisk(0) internally which it uses if it can't find a copy on the HDD.
Click to expand...
Thanks Terry60.
I did edit the boot.ini on the XP partition to rdisk(0), replaced it, edited several times, but anything I tried still gave me the same error on bios boot. I understand what you are saying about the boot location from bios and easyBCD and the rdisk value difference.
Only after copying the boot.ini and files from the easyBCD boot partition and then set it to rdisk(0) did it bios boot without the error.. My next choice was to try reinstall of XP or ghost my saved copy..
Not sure if copying the ntdetect.com and ntldr had any part in correcting the error or not..but it worked..
Is it normal or does it have any affect that ntdetect was capitalized??
 
iirc the MS version is capitalized and the EasyBCD copied version isn't, but I don't think it's relevant.
The message is pretty specific that boot.ini was the problem
XP is generally specific in this area
Troubleshooting Windows XP Boot Problems
It could have been something as trivial as a spurious or missing blank, but all ancient history now anyway.
 
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