Technically speaking, it DID get it right. You had a fully working installation of Win XP until you confused it by changing hard disks around.
If you look in your boot.ini file, you’ll see this line;
<pre>multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect </pre>
That line gives the NT loader the exact path to the windows installation. Before modifying the boot.ini file, I suggest you read this MS article <a target="_blank" href=http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=102873>BOOT.INI and ARC Path Naming Conventions and Usage”</a>
Modifying the boot.ini file will correct the error but will not be enough to make your XP bootable and that’s why Bert suggested a repair installation.
I have never had to do a repair installation (I just restore from backups) but I believe the steps listed in this webpage are correct
<a target="_blank" href=http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm> How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install </a>
Make sure the drive containing Windows 98 is connected to the Primary Master Channel and the XP one to the Slave Channel before you do the repair.
Personally, I don’t think anything but a fresh install will help you. I have a theory that I have not had the chance to test and it’s; what will happen when drive letters change??
When you swap drives around, Win98 will be drive c:\ (First primary partition on first hard disk) and XP will be given the letter D:\.
All your applications and shortcuts in XP will still be pointing to files or applications in drive c:\
Will the XP repair fix this? Or will you have an endless number of error message every time you want to open a file or a program?
Please let us know if you find out
Jama