Rescuing Windows XP after formatting the boot disk

Question

My computer has two physical disks:

• Disk 0 (C:) Windows 7
• Disk 1 (D:) Windows XP x64

I've been running a 64-bit version of XP installed on D: for some years but I didn’t realize it was initially booting off C:

Last weekend I decided to see if I could dual-boot the PC with Windows 7 so I formatted the C: Drive using an old XP boot disk and installed Windows 7, which went well but now I can’t boot XP on D:

I installed EasyBCD into Windows 7, created a boot entry for Windows XP x64 on D: and then created the following boot.ini and copied into C:\WINDOWS but when I start up and select the entry for XP I get system messages telling me I’m missing files like the NTLDR. Is there a way I would be able to get this to dual boot now?

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP" /fastdetect

Answer 1

And when you start your computer with the boot xp cd? And run a shell and using fixboot? Here is some more information. Fixboot Also fixmbr can help you. Fixmbr

Answer 2

Apparently in your old setup the XP NTLDR resided on C and was erased by the new installation.

To get a new NTLDR on D, you would need to Perform a Repair Installation for the XP disk. This kind of repair doesn't derange your installed applications.

Or you could simply copy NTLDR off another XP installation (and any other missing files).

In any case, mind your backups (if not already done).