Strange dual boot problem...help???

I have a dual boot system that I am trying to get up and running, but I
cannot get dual boot to work without constantly changing the versions of
ntldr and dtdetect.com in c:\ . I have 33 scsi drives, and the first drive is
divided into 3 volumes, c, f, and z. C and F are NTFS, Z is fat32 (eventually
I may want to load an old operating system there, but for now it is basically
unused or for data storage.
Anyway, win2k is up and running on F, in f:\winnt It has been working for
almost 2 years. When I first set up the system, I tried dual boot with xp
x64, but it stopped working after a while, and I just used it as a win2k
machine. Now, I have reloaded xp x64 into c:\windows. I have dual boot set
up, and it looks correct, but, if the version of ntldr and ntdetect in c:\
are the newer ones supplied with xp x64, then xp x64 boots up fine, but I get
an error message "winnt\system32\config\system missing or corrupt" if I try
to boot win2k. If I replace the ntldr and ntdetect.com in c:\ with the older
versions from win2k sp4, then win2k boots up fine, but I get an error about a
missing or corrupt ntoskrnl.exe file, and I cannot boot xp x64.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

dakota02 wrote:

> I have a dual boot system that I am trying to get up and running, but I
> cannot get dual boot to work without constantly changing the versions of
> ntldr and dtdetect.com in c:\ . I have 33 scsi drives, and the first drive
> is divided into 3 volumes, c, f, and z. C and F are NTFS, Z is fat32
> (eventually I may want to load an old operating system there, but for now
> it is basically unused or for data storage.
> Anyway, win2k is up and running on F, in f:\winnt It has been working for
> almost 2 years. When I first set up the system, I tried dual boot with xp
> x64, but it stopped working after a while, and I just used it as a win2k
> machine. Now, I have reloaded xp x64 into c:\windows. I have dual boot set
> up, and it looks correct, but, if the version of ntldr and ntdetect in c:\
> are the newer ones supplied with xp x64, then xp x64 boots up fine, but I
> get
> an error message "winnt\system32\config\system missing or corrupt" if I
> try to boot win2k. If I replace the ntldr and ntdetect.com in c:\ with the
> older versions from win2k sp4, then win2k boots up fine, but I get an
> error about a missing or corrupt ntoskrnl.exe file, and I cannot boot xp
> x64.
>
> Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

My suggestion would be not to use dual-boot at all, but to use something
like the free VMWare server. You can then install one mail OS and run the
second (guest) inside the VMWare server ontop of the main OS. In fact I'm
doing this right now, running Kubuntu 6.10 as my main OS with Windows XP
running in the background on VMWare Server.......brilliant! You don't need
to close on OS to use the other.....