Hello everyone, I have tried to get help about this on italian forums (and even from a facebook page), without success, I will try to explain:
I had 3 operating systems on 3 different hard drives (windows 8.1 on a 1tb western digital sata, windows vista on a 600gb western digital sata, and windows xp on a 300gb maxtor Pata), windows xp was not booting anymore because of a blue screen (error 0x0000007b), but I was able to back up all the data onto the 1tb drive, and then formatted the drive where windows xp was installed. I had used EasyBCD to create a multi-boot. I tried to reinstall windows xp by unplugging the 2 sata drives so that windows xp would have its own boot, the installation was ok, I restarted the pc, and plugged the other drives back in, I logged in windows 8.1 and from the file explorer I went to take a look a the drive where I just installed windows xp, only to find out that it looked as if it was never formatted! I could still see all the files I had previously in it, before installing xp... after restarting the machine and logging on windows 8.1 again, it started a drive check (where xp was installed), when I finally got access to the file explorer, I noticed that all the files from the windows xp drive were gone again, but some system files were missing and so windows xp wouldn't boot up. That's where I tried to follow neosmart's guide to install windows xp on a machine with an already existing operating system, I followed the instructions, I didn't unplug the other 2 sata drives this time, it worked, but when I was in windows xp, and accessed file explorer, I could see that the C drive had the windows 8.1 content, and the windows xp content was on the E drive. I didn't like that, because it could cause some problems when installing auto-extracting things or even regular programs, that made me feel bad after spending around 1 week to get this to work, I even tried programs to try to change the drive letter, like paragon rescue kit, and easy recovery essentials but they didn't work. So I tried to reinstall windows xp, and unplugged the 2 sata drives first, the OS was fine, I was also installing some drivers, but then I shut down the pc, plugged the 2 sata drives back, and logged in windows 8.1, and the same thing happened again, the drive where xp was supposed to be installed was empty, only 2 folders were in it (system volume information and recycle bin), I also got a message from windows 8.1 telling me that the recycle bin in the D drive was corrupted/broken (can't remember) and asked me to empty it, so I said yes... I tried to find something on the internet without success, so I just restarted the pc again, and windows 8.1 made a drive check again (on the win xp drive), and after that, from the file explorer, I could see some system files on the D drive, including the programs folder, but the windows folder was not there. I really would like to get my XP back, but I don't want to deal with the wrong drive letter associated to it... if I follow neosmart's instructions, windows xp will be installed on the E drive, C will have windows 8.1 content and D windows vista content. Is there anything else I can try to do? And why is Windows 8.1 deleting all the files on the windows xp drive after the restart? Strange things happening into this world... thank you very much in advance!
Edited by Rasetsu, 03 August 2015 - 08:13 PM.
I know it's confusing, but I have noticed that on both my 2 sata disks (windows 8.1 and windows vista) there is a boot.ini file which refers to a windows xp installation, how do I get rid of them? I don't think it's safe to just delete them...
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