Thanks Mahmoud,
In one Tute I read re: this error it said, in a multi-boot scenario, to make that partition Active, but I can't see that doing anything with boot files and possibly will prevent multi-booting anyway, what do you think?
Why would booting up using minimal resources make a difference?
(Just edited the above post to remove those smilies, sorry about that).
Addendum:
Oh God, I marked D: active and now the netbook wont boot at all darn it. What should I do?
It says
"NTLDR is missing
Press Ctrl_Alt_Del to restart"
Edit: To make matters worse, if I put my XP SP3 disk in (using an external CD/DVD drive) and go to do a repair installation I can't get beyond F8 - 'I agree' the CD must be damaged - then I discovered netbook keyboards are different, you have to press Fn - F8..
The trouble is I don't get a repair option for XP, dammit.
I am in the Recovery Console but not sure what to do next.
.
Addendum:
I'm trying
THIS but can't seem to find the correct drive letter for the external drive.
In the Rec. Console it has given drive letter E: to XP C: to Windows 7 and no matter what I do it keeps saying wrong path.
Edit: OK I finally figured out G is my optical drive and I replace ntldr and ntdetect.com successfully but it still wont boot.
HELP !!
I tried fixmbr etc...doesn't work. Bootcfg can't find any disks etc. etc. If there was a simple way to unmark my Win 7 drive as active in XP's recovery console I'd do it but Google has let me down in that respect.
I think the only solution is to forget XP altogether and format the drive and install Windows 7.
Now...I wonder if I can merge partitions as well as delete them in the installation.....doubt it and have never tried it before....
I guess you guys are out of ideas.