lowderal

Strike 3. Yes, I forgot something. For the complete story, goto the Microsoft article Q322952, and you will find a definitive answer. I had forgotten -- momentarily -- that you must obtain the proper version of ntldr, as well. Sorry about the confusion -- but the original problem should now be fixed.

The problem we are talking about is caused when the most recently installed version of the Windows product -- is not the latest version -- an it overwrites the Newer products boot.ini file with its own. If you install the older system, then the newer, you are usually given the opportunity to setup a dual-boot menu. Server 2003 has the "bootcfg" command which can be used to view or possible edit the existing boot.ini file. However, the version of 2003-DOS in the Recovery console has the option to choose: "bootcfg /rebuild" . With this command and switch, the procedure is mostly menu-automated. You can choose which existing systems to include in your boot.ini file.

I was looking for someone elses solution, but it was not here. There are many ways to fix the problem. First if you can make an NT boot floppy from a similar machine, do so, and use it to boot into Server 2003. You can then edit the boot.ini file under that system partition (boot drive), and include additional menu choice using the XP's boot.ini drive path. Second, and perhaps simpler, is to boot into XP, and read the Boot.ini file from the Server 2003's system partition (boot drive -- likely C:\ ), then look at the boot.ini file on your XP system partition and do some merging of the two. To create a dual boot menu. Third, use the 2003 Server's installation CD, and go into the recovery mode. From the DOS prompt, there is a command -- I cannot remember, which should fix your problem -- I am not sure if is "fixboot" or "fixconfg" or similar -- since this is what I was searching for when I encountered the dual boot problem as stated here.