OSS cannot launch default OS on Win XP Pro/XP Home dual-boot system after BSOD.

What version and build of DD are you using?

Can you post a copy of the BOOTWIZ.OSS file (instructions can be found here)?

Also, can you post a screenshot of what Disk Management shows for XP Home?

I assume you are currently still getting the OSS menu when you start the computer.

First of all, thank you for your swift response, even if its left me none the wiser!
DD version is v11.0.2121
I'm not sure how you expect me to get hold of the BOOTWIZ.OSS file, given that I cannot boot into the OS partition (XP PRO) on which DD and OSS are installed.
Yes, the OSS menu appears when I start the computer. From this, I can boot perfectly well into my second OS partition, containing XP Home. It is when I attempt to boot into my first (default) partition, containing XP Pro (Media Center Edition) that I get the blank screen and flashing cursor.

You would need to access the other Windows partition. If it's hidden, unhide it for XP Home. Otherwise, you may just need to assign the partition a drive letter in Disk Management.

I would still need to see the screenshot of Disk Management for XP Home.

Have attached screenshot of partitions from Disk Management on XP Home partition. Not sure if this is what you wanted - forgive my newbieness if it isn't! I have 2 hard drives. The first contains 3 partitions - 2 primary ones containing the XP Pro (Media Center) OS, labelled as 'HP Pavillion' (which is the OS I cannot access), the XP Home OS, labelled 'STUDIO' (which I use almost exclusively for music purposes, with no Internet access and no anti-virus to clutter it up and slow it down), and a third Logical partition labelled 'Audio' which contains data only. The second hard drive is labelled 'Music' and contains data only.

I installed DD and OS on the 'HP Pavillion' partition but, when the OSS boot menu loads, though presented with both OS's, I can only boot into the XP Home one. It is the HP choice, my normal default OS, which leads to the blank screen and flashing cursor. I don't know if this is helpful, but I realized I've also installed DD onto the XP Home partition (though not OSS, of course). I don't know if we may be able to use this to restore the missing OS. Thanks again for taking the time to respond.

When in Disk Management, right-click on the HP_PAVILION partition and select the Change Driver Letter and Paths... option. Then click the Add button. Next, select the Assign the following drive letter option (probably selected by default) and note the letter that will be assigned. Click OK.

You should now be able to browse the partition and get at the BOOTWIZ.OSS file (you may need to enable viewing of hidden and system files). Make a copy of the file and attach it to a post (instructions are linked in Post #1).

Just got back home from 12 hour Night Shift and followed all your instructions immediately! Have attached the resultant BOOTWIZ.OSS file as a text file. If we (you!!!) can restore my dual-booting options, might there be some advantage in future to installing OSS onto its own specific small partition?

I'm not seeing anything wrong with the file. It may be that the boot sector of the HP_PAVILION partition has become corrupted. You could try repairing it: From the OSS menu, attempt to boot into the HP partition. You should end up at the blank screen. Don't reset/reboot the computer. Insert the XP installation CD and reboot. When the CD boots, select to use the Recovery Console. When you get to the prompt, run fixboot (this will repair the boot sector of the currently Active partition). Once finished, remove the CD, reboot the computer, and then see if the partition will boot.

Boris Johnson wrote:

If we (you!!!) can restore my dual-booting options, might there be some advantage in future to installing OSS onto its own specific small partition?

Having OSS installed to a non-OS partition is something I recommend. It doesn't have to be a partition dedicated to OSS, though it can be.

Disaster! I followed your instructions to the letter, reached the 'blank screen with flashing cursor' of my missing XP Pro partition, re-booted with the XP Home cd, and watched whilst Windows Setup began to load lots of drivers. Just as I was expecting to see some kind of menu of choices, I suddenly got a 'Blue Screen Of Death' and had to manually shut down and re-boot.

From the ensuing OSS menu, I managed to get back into the XP Home Partition, which seemed OK as before. However, I then decided to do something without really knowing the possible consequences. I re-booted into the 'Safe Mode' menu and chose the option to revert to an earlier 'working' configuration. Back to the OSS menu, tried to access the XP Home partition, got to the first Windows screen (with the horizontally-scrolling hyphens) - then a blank screen and no further activity! I have since managed to get into the XP Home partition in 'Safe Mode' where, bizarrely, I'm now being told that I need to install drivers for my pro-quality EMU soundcard, but I can no longer access either OS directly via OSS.

I face the prospect of possibly having to re-install the original HP Media Center (XP Pro) from the HP Recovery discs, though this will entail formatting the entire hard disc, wiping out two OS partitions and a data partition, leading to weeks of work re-installing hardware and software and getting it all to work together again - no easy task on a PC.

So my next - and final (!) question is this: if I decide to go down the dual-boot route again, in order to have a separate, stripped-down Music Studio-only partition as well as a bread-and-butter Internet access partition, should I stick to the HP Media Center/XP Pro & XP Home scenario as before, should I maybe try cloning an identical XP Pro partition and then strip out non-essentials from the cloned twin, or is there a much simpler way to have two separate OS's living in harmony on the same hard drive? I'd be grateful for your advice - and maybe a link to an 'idiot's guide' to whatever you suggest. Thanks for all your help so far.

Did you start Windows Setup instead of the Recovery Console? There's not really a menu (it's just text info on the screen). If setup actually crashed before reaching the Recovery Console option then the problems may not be with Windows itself. Do you know what the BSOD error code was?

Have you changed anything on the computer recently (hardware, drives, BIOS settings, etc.)?

Have you tested the memory? Maybe you should run MEMTEST overnight and make sure it's okay. Bad RAM can cause all sorts of problems.

I don't know why doing what you did would have resulted in causing the same problem to the other partition. It sounds odd. There was probably no reason to revert the XP Home system and it wouldn't have affected the XP Pro system. I use System Restore with caution since it has rarely worked for me without causing additional problems (usually I just disable it). Do you have a backup image of either partition or the entire drive?

Usually what I like to do is install Windows clean and image it. This becomes the base for resets or multi-boot partitions. For different versions of Windows I usually just set up the system and install them normally. The main thing is to do it in steps and create backups as needed because it may be necessary to take a step back and repeat it. If you don't want to use images you can do it with just DD (nothing to fall back on, though). Since you only have two Windows it's not so bad.

It may be possible to fix your existing system too. I would try to get one system up and running with OSS deactivated and then go from there. At this point I don't know which system is in better shape since it seems the XP Home system is now somewhat corrupted. I can help you through either process if you want. I'd check the RAM first, though. Originally, you said you "pushed the system too far with downloads." Downloading, no matter how "hard" shouldn't cause the problems you're having. Do you have more specific information on what this entailed?

First of all, I must say again how much I appreciate the time and trouble you've taken in responding to my newbie problems. The fact that they are such an almighty pain in the butt is somewhat mitigated by the fact that I can share them with someone more knowledgeable - sort of long-distance pain-sharing by proxy!

You've asked me a lot of questions which I'll try to answer, not necessarily in order. You wanted to know what I was doing when I claimed to "push the system too far." I'm reluctant to go into too much detail. Suffice it to say that I was using BitComet to download some Torrents. If I tried to download too many, too fast - even within a pre-determined limit - BitComet would crash, and I think it was this in turn which caused the BSOD. I re-booted the computer, allowed CHKDSK to do its stuff, and reloaded BitComet. I inadvertently allowed the same error to occur, BitComet crashed again, as did the computer with another BSOD. Another re-boot, a seemingly much longer CHKDSK routine, then the resultant problem with OSS not being able to boot the partition containing XP Pro i.e. blank screen with flashing cursor.

I have not changed anything on the computer since I used DD to resize and create new partitions, after I'd first formatted and reinstalled a 500 GB hard drive using the HP Recovery Discs. I then used an XP Home CD to create a slipstreamed bootable installation CD, including Service Pack 3 and the original HP drivers. I used this to successfully install XP Home onto the second DD-created primary partition. Back on XP Pro I installed OSS and it immediately recognized both OS's and worked fine until my recent problems.

No, I've not tested the memory. I don't know what MEMTEST is or how to run it (though by the time you've read this I'll have Googled it!). However, it may interest you to know that I experienced another problem during this last rare weekend off when I tried to follow some of your advice. When I switched on my computer it refused to boot at all and instead emitted a series of loud beeps - one short, one long, repeated. I'd experienced this problem a while ago, and had resolved it by opening up the computer, removing excess dust and making sure all cables were properly connected and various cards secure in their slots. This worked the first time, but this weekend it took me the best part of 3 days to get it going again. I think it might have been my despairing, frustrated slap on the top which finally did the trick! I've read that this beeping problem could be caused by faulty memory, video card problems or even - especially with those bad sectors and clusters reported by CHKDSK - signs of an impending hard disc failure. If the latter, I would certainly want to find a way to check the physical integrity of my main hard disc before undertaking the tedious task of a full re-install.

On that subject, no, I do not have any images from which I could do a time-saving re-install. I've thought about this before, and considered the possibility of setting up my dual-boot system, getting both OS partitions working satisfactorily with important core programmes installed and then taking an image of the entire drive. I believe it IS possible to do this onto bootable discs - perhaps you can let me know if it is or if I can only take images of the individual partitions. I've done so much tech reading and research on the Net lately, my brain hurts!

I have an HP Intel dual-core 6600 @2.40 GHz, with 2 GB of Ram, a Radeon X1650 SE video card, and an EMU 1616M pro sound card (PCI) with external dock. The desktop originally came with 2 X 300 GB hard drives, supposedly to be used as a RAID array - which I didn't set up or use - and I've since replaced these with a 500 GB drive containing the two primary and one logical partition, and a 1 TB drive for data only.

I was thinking of perhaps going down the same route as before i.e. XP Pro (with Media Center disabled) alongside the slipstreamed XP Home, with a logical data partition (D) available to both. But then earlier tonight I read in the XP Idiot's guide that XP Home cannot make use of my dual core processors, whereas XP Pro can. Since it was the XP Home partition that contained my all-important Music Studio software, and was supposedly stripped down for maximum audio speed and minimum background activity, would I be making a significant 'hit' on performance if XP Home cannot use both processor cores? Might it therefore be a better idea to make the XP Pro partition my 'Studio' one, and keep the XP Home one for everyday and Internet/downloading use?

I've gone on long enough - it'll take you two days just to read this lot! Thanks, again.

The extra information is helpful. Thanks.

It sounds like the system is only barely functioning and additional stress (from whatever source) is causing failures to occur. The beep codes are usually the motherboard or video card reporting an error (some newer boards use LED lights for this). Errors include all sorts of things like CPU, RAM, insufficient power, etc. It's not common for a beep code to indicate a drive problem, so I doubt it's that. The drive problem seems to be the normal repsonse to being crashed during heavy activity -- still bad, but not usually fatal.

You could check in the Windows Event Log and see if any errors are showing up. They could point to a source of the problem.

It is possible (and common) to image individual partitions. They can also be saved to discs. However, I usually recommend using a USB hard drive because it's much faster and generally much less prone to problems.

MEMTEST can be found here.

XP Home can use multiple cores. I wouldn't worry about that.

Right. I think I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and re-install everything again from scratch. I have 3 days off from Sunday, so my plan of action is to try and have a dual-boot system up and running again within that time. It'll be a major pain, because my HP Recovery Discs (which will wipe the entire drive and install Media Center (XP Pro) are only SP2, which means hours of Windows Update downloads, including SP3, and messing about with IE again. Once I've got that OS working. I can then install DD and sort out the XP Home and data partitions. At least the slipstreamed disc has SP3 and other updates on it, so should install more quickly.

I have a few more questions, if I could continue to impose on your generous nature for a while longer. Re MEMTEST, I assume that I cannot install and run this from within XP Home in 'Safe Mode', which seems to be the only way I can access any part of my computer at the moment. So should I wait until I've re-installed XP Pro and test the memory then?

Last time I re-installed everything from scratch, beginning with the HP Recovery Discs, I first of all removed my EMU soundcard, since this wasn't part of the original 'Factory' configuration, and then added it once the system was up and running. I also disconnected my second 1TB data hard drive, in case the HP discs formatted that as well! However, when I come to install the XP Home partition later, should I again remove the soundcard (and maybe even the graphics card) before installing the OS from the slipstreamed disc, or can I just leave them in place and wait for XP Home to prompt me to add drivers?

Re your preference for using external USB hard drives for capturing and restoring disc images, I read somewhere that USB drives have to be 'made bootable' before they can perform this function. Is this true? If so, is it a relatively simple task to perform, or will I have to go to Computer Tech classes for 5 years?

Having learnt some very harsh lessons in the past year or so about what NOT to do with pesky PC's, what I would like to be able to do - if I can get the dual-boot system working without niggles - is to be able to capture an image of the entire drive in an idiot-proof way so that, in the event of future disasters, I can restore the entire system in one fell swoop, exactly as it was when it WAS working. Can current drive image software do this? I have a copy of Acronis True Image, and was also reading about freeware called Macrium Reflect. Can I use either of these to perform such a task? Are they 'Newbie-Friendly?'

Lastly (I promise!), I suffer from driver-phobia! I know what drivers are, and what they are supposed to do, but I cannot for the life of me figure them out. For example, go into Hardware, open up the driver tab for a device, and it may list a multitude of items. Are they all drivers for the device, or is only one of them being used? Is there a piece of software that can identify all the drivers being used for the hardware and peripherals on my system, extract them for me so that I can add them to a rescue or slipstreamed disc? I ask this because, when I installed XP Home last time with what I thought was all the original HP drivers, I STILL ended up with a yellow exclamation mark against one of the devices, and I cannot figure out what this device is because it isn't named!

I will let you know if and when I successfully get my system back, up and running, with OSS working properly. I may need to ask you for more advice re the drive imaging next, if you don't mind. Thanks for everything so far.