Win XP boot issues with ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen3

[FAUguy]

Re: Win XP boot issues with ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen3

Exactly. That's what the Image backup is for. Your XP is restorable without needing to reinstall any of the existing installed programs. The Image will function just like it was when you made the Image backup of the XP installation.
Ideally, you would already have made the Image backup of your XP partition. But, it's not too late. There are probably ways to do it without Bootit, (maybe boot from a linux disk?), but I've been using Bootit so long I don't know or care about any other methods. No way would I try to install over the XP, repair install, or whatever, until I had made an Image backup of the XP partition.

Since I can't currently get XP to load (for whatever the incompatibility reason), I'd first need to make a backup of it, then re-install XP over itself and see if my programs are still intact. If they aren't, then restore the backed-up XP image. But in doing so, XP would not boot up again like it does now, right?

[roscolo]

Re: Win XP boot issues with ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen3

Since I can't currently get XP to load (for whatever the incompatibility reason), I'd first need to make a backup of it, then re-install XP over itself and see if my programs are still intact. If they aren't, then restore the backed-up XP image. But in doing so, XP would not boot up again like it does now, right?

Dude, I think you're playing with fire. I would do what I suggested above. Use something (Bootit's all I know and trust) to make a bootable image of your apparently damaged / incompatible XP partition. I would make images of all the other partitions as well. Can't hurt.

Exactly what I would do:
-Hook up another HD to your computer.
-Use Image for Windows to boot from CD.
-From there you can see and make bootable images all of your OS's and put them on another HD or disks for safe keeping (I prefer another HD).
-Shut down.
-Remove the old HD you have been booting from containing your 3 OS partitions.
-Hook up a fresh, new HD in its place.
-Boot up with the Image For Windows CD.
-Restore your XP (and only your XP) partition image to this new HD.

Now you can try to save your XP by using the image backup without screwing up your original XP (it's still on the original HD, and you have the image backup on another HD).

When you get it sorted you MAY even be able to just:
-Install Bootit (I hate to preach this, but man it has saved my butt in situations like you describe). Bootit installs to it's own tiny partition.
-Then hook up your original HD. You can ignore the damaged / incompatible XP installation on that HD now because you will have fixed it and have it on the new HD. But you should be able to see and manage the other OS partitions from the Bootit screen. From that screen in Bootit you can choose which OS to boot into.

That is an optimistic scenario. I'm not an expert, but I know, particularly when one of the OS's is Windows 7, that some boot files can be problematic when booting multiple OS's from different HD's. I know because that is exactly what I do. But I also know the solution was pretty simple because I followed the solution step-by-step from the Terabyte Unlimited FAQ's. Even if the optimistic scenario doesn't work out, you will likely figure out how to effectively fix your XP partition problem, and you can rest easy even if you muck it up, because you will still have the XP image backup on the HD you will have stored the image backup on.

[roscolo]

Re: Win XP boot issues with ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen3

By the way, I should mention I'm multi-booting Win 7 Ult 64 from one HD, and booting Win XP Pro 32bit from another HD, so there is no inherent problem where Win XP is incompatible with Asrock z68 Fatal1ty Professional Gen 3 board.

What size HD do you have these 5 partitions on?
How big is your XP partition on that HD?
How much free space is available on that existing XP partition?

[wazza300]

Re: Win XP boot issues with ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen3

does you xp install have service pack 3? another user had issues because his only had service pack 2 and he was running into blue screens when installing

[roscolo]

Re: Win XP boot issues with ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen3

does you xp install have service pack 3? another user had issues because his only had service pack 2 and he was running into blue screens when installing

I'm not sure if you're asking me or the OP, but mine is Win XP Pro Service Pack 3.

[FAUguy]

Re: Win XP boot issues with ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen3

By the way, I should mention I'm multi-booting Win 7 Ult 64 from one HD, and booting Win XP Pro 32bit from another HD, so there is no inherent problem where Win XP is incompatible with Asrock z68 Fatal1ty Professional Gen 3 board.

What size HD do you have these 5 partitions on?
How big is your XP partition on that HD?
How much free space is available on that existing XP partition?

Ok. I understand what you're talking about...backing up my current 3 Windows partitions from the main HDD to a seperate HDD first.
Then restore XP back and do the re-install from the CD to see what happens. At least if it doesn't work, the origional 3 partitions are backed up and can be restored like they were to begin with. If you say that XP is compatible with my motherboard, then why is it not loading, as it's been updated to SP3 years ago?

I have a total of 4 SATA drives installed:

Disk 1 (boot) is 1TB with: XP partition 147GB used 37GB free, Vista partition 54GB used 204GB free, Win 7 partition 168GB used 124GB free, Partition 4 38GB used 56GB free, Partition 5 56GB used 42GB free.

Disk 2 is 320GB and has an old (original) XP partition 52GB used 7GB free, (original) Vista partition 22GB used 38GB free, Partition 3 60GB used 22MB free, Partition 4 32GB used 8GB free, Partition 5 7GB used 33GB free, Partition 6 32GB used 7GB free.

Disk 3 is 320GB and is not partitioned with 291GB used 6GB free.

Disk 4 is 160GB with Partition 1 empty with 39GB free, Partition 2 empty 24GB free, Partition 3 empty 14GB free, Partition 4 33GB used 6GB free, Partition 5 20GB used 11GB free.

As you can tell, I started out with the 160GB as my first drive and had Windows (ME or 95) on it, but eventual got two 320GB drives and installed XP and then Vista on one of those. Then a couple years back got the 1TB drive and used Acrons to clone the XP and Vista from the 320GB drive to the 1TB drive. Later on, I also installed Win 7 on the 1TB drive. That is how XP, Vista, and Win 7 are all on it.

The issue seems to be that I might not have enough free space on the other drives to back-up XP, Vista, and Win 7 from my main drive.

[FAUguy]

Re: Win XP boot issues with ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen3

does you xp install have service pack 3? another user had issues because his only had service pack 2 and he was running into blue screens when installing

Yes, the XP Pro partition does have SP3 installed to it years ago. But it still BSOD when trying to load it up, and when going to Safe Mode it will stop at mup.sys.
When I place the original XP CD (with no SP) in my DVD drive and try to install XP using it, it will BSDO saying there's an error with pci.sys.
But after doing this, and creating a new XP CD that has SP2 and SP3 applied to it, I was able to get to the part of the installation where you can install XP or press R for Recovery.

[roscolo]

Re: Win XP boot issues with ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen3

If you say that XP is compatible with my motherboard, then why is it not loading, as it's been updated to SP3 years ago?

....

The issue seems to be that I might not have enough free space on the other drives to back-up XP, Vista, and Win 7 from my main drive.

I say XP is compatible with your motherboard, because I have the exact same motherboard and run XP.

There are any number of reason your XP is not loading. Corrupted sounds like a good guess after reading how you moved XP from one old drive to another.

Buy a drive to back up those other OS partitions to. You should be doing that already. What is your plan if that HD fails that you are running all 3 OS's from? Adios XP, programs, Win 7, Vista and data.

If I were you I would take this opportunity to do a fresh clean reinstall of Windows XP. If it were me I would probably go ahead and do a fresh install of the other 2 OS as well. Obviously I would use a boot manager. Then I would reinstall my programs. And I would make a habit of making regular image backups of those OS installations, as well as data backups, to something other than a 2-5 yr. old HD's. Don't get me wrong. I've got some old HD's sitting in an old system I still use. But they aren't holding important data. If they are, it's almost always duplicated on another, newer HD.

[FAUguy]

Re: Win XP boot issues with ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen3

I say XP is compatible with your motherboard, because I have the exact same motherboard and run XP.

There are any number of reason your XP is not loading. Corrupted sounds like a good guess after reading how you moved XP from one old drive to another.

Buy a drive to back up those other OS partitions to. You should be doing that already. What is your plan if that HD fails that you are running all 3 OS's from? Adios XP, programs, Win 7, Vista and data.

If I were you I would take this opportunity to do a fresh clean reinstall of Windows XP. If it were me I would probably go ahead and do a fresh install of the other 2 OS as well. Obviously I would use a boot manager. Then I would reinstall my programs. And I would make a habit of making regular image backups of those OS installations, as well as data backups, to something other than a 2-5 yr. old HD's. Don't get me wrong. I've got some old HD's sitting in an old system I still use. But they aren't holding important data. If they are, it's almost always duplicated on another, newer HD.

I highly doubt the XP is corrupted, just because I use it about once a week, and was working fine with the old ABIT AMD motherboard. Unfortunately, I don't have another PC here to hook that drive up to and see if XP will load on it or not; just the new one I built last month.
My 1TB drive is only 3 years old, so that's not too bad. The two 320GB drivers are probably 5 years, and the 160GB about 6 years.
Eventually, (next year) I was thinking about buying two new drivers and clone my Windows partitions to one of them, and use the 2nd drive to copy every thing over from the 320/160GB drives I'm using now.

I know doing a fresh clean install is best, but it would take major time to get everything else loaded up on there afterwards. That's why I'd prefer to just do a clone drive/partition so everything is intact.

Getting back to the topic of XP, I have programs installed in there that ONLY work in XP (some cell phone testing and programing software) that I can't get my hands on again, and other programs too that only work in XP. Vista I don't need, just XP and Win 7, but need to stay intact with all the programs.

[roscolo]

Re: Win XP boot issues with ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen3

I still vote for clean installs of XP and your other OS's, but after rereading most of this, if you are just dead set against reinstalling your OS's and programs (probably easier, definitely better) I would do what I described further up above. I'm running XP for the same reason, I have some old programs, and hardware, that do not play nice with Win 7 64.
-Make an Image backup of your XP with Image for Windows.
-Then disconnect those other drives from your system.
-Then restore that image backup of XP to another drive (physically separate newly formatted clean drive, not one of your many partitions).
-Then go forward with trying to do a Repair install (not recovery) and see how it goes. If it works out OK, then you can try the Repair install on your XP installation on that drive you've created so many OS partitions on.

Make sure in your BIOS everywhere you have all SATA set to IDE. No AHCI. I'm typing this on my laptop and I have shut my Asrock Z68 system down. See how it goes. Maybe you get this sorted. Seems there are a few extra nooks and crannies in the BIOS where you may have problems. I'll check back because I would like you to get the thing done in the fastest, easiest way possible. I think the clean reinstall is fastest and easiest. But I appreciate the desire, and in your case with your old programs, the need, to accomplish the mission of not having to do the clean reinstall! :)

[FAUguy]

Re: Win XP boot issues with ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen3

I still vote for clean installs of XP and your other OS's, but after rereading most of this, if you are just dead set against reinstalling your OS's and programs (probably easier, definitely better) I would do what I described further up above. I'm running XP for the same reason, I have some old programs, and hardware, that do not play nice with Win 7 64.
-Make an Image backup of your XP with Image for Windows.
-Then disconnect those other drives from your system.
-Then restore that image backup of XP to another drive (physically separate newly formatted clean drive, not one of your many partitions).
-Then go forward with trying to do a Repair install (not recovery) and see how it goes. If it works out OK, then you can try the Repair install on your XP installation on that drive you've created so many OS partitions on.

Make sure in your BIOS everywhere you have all SATA set to IDE. No AHCI. I'm typing this on my laptop and I have shut my Asrock Z68 system down. See how it goes. Maybe you get this sorted. Seems there are a few extra nooks and crannies in the BIOS where you may have problems. I'll check back because I would like you to get the thing done in the fastest, easiest way possible. I think the clean reinstall is fastest and easiest. But I appreciate the desire, and in your case with your old programs, the need, to accomplish the mission of not having to do the clean reinstall! :)

In this case, I'd have to purchase a new 2TB drive, as none of the other drives I have could be used since most are getting full.
All my drives are Western Digital. The two 320GB are Caviar Black and the 1TB is the high-end RE3.
I now there is now the RE4, but have read good things about the 2TB Seagate Barracuda XT and Constellation ES (but pricy).
If I have to get new HDDs, I don't want garbage that dies in a year or two.

I just wish there was a simple way to get XP working with the new hardware and not lose by programs. It sounds like it's almost more work and time evolved than it's worth.

[roscolo]

Re: Win XP boot issues with ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen3

This may not matter, but since I had no problems installing / running XP on this board, here's some more info:

-I'm not using a dedicated graphics card. I'm using onboard video. In the BSOD, it says to "try changing video adapters." Probably not going to matter, but maybe try removing your card and use the onboard video.

-You stated you disabled the USB 3.0. I did not and it presented no problems.

-Seems I remember somewhere in the manual that your SATA boot drive(s) should be connected to the top 2 SATA3 connectors (labeled 14 on page 4 of the Quick Installation Guide).

-I also updated the BIOS first thing when I did my build.

[FAUguy]

Re: Win XP boot issues with ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen3

Ok, I've now got XP working on the drive.
When I did the install, it has a Repair option. This fixes any problems in XP and keep all your files and settings.
But in doing so, I've lost the boot options to get into Vista and Windows 7. So I guess I'll have to give one of these boot manager programs a try.

[roscolo]

Re: Win XP boot issues with ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen3

Ok, I've now got XP working on the drive.
When I did the install, it has a Repair option. This fixes any problems in XP and keep all your files and settings.
But in doing so, I've lost the boot options to get into Vista and Windows 7. So I guess I'll have to give one of these boot manager programs a try.

That's precisely what I was afraid of. Did you make Image backups of those partitions first? I would always do that just to be safe.
I think you'll be OK. I don't even think it's too big of a deal. Go to the Bootit Bare Metal Support page, and I bet if you just put a pre-sales question on the forum or email to them, they will tell you exactly what to do. Hate to sound like a salesman, but I bought Bootit, I guess back around 2002. I think the package that included Bootit and all the other tools was $49 or so. Has paid for itself many times over. Lifetime updates free, and as you see, they are still there and updating / supporting what I think is the best tool of its kind. Saved my butt several times. I won't build a system now without putting Bootit on. I sure as heck wouldn't multi-boot without it. It will sit there and you won't really use it most of the time. But, if / when things go wrong, as in your case, Bootit makes solving the problem an easy few minutes instead of hours and hours of headache.

This may be helpful:

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=324

And if you Browse by Category in the Knowledge Base on that page above, and scroll down to Windows Vista/7, and Windows XP/NT, you may find some articles that are helpful whether or not you choose to use Bootit.

[FAUguy]

Re: Win XP boot issues with ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen3

Since I haven't had time yet to fully read up on the Bootit Bare Metal PDF, I used a program called EasyBCD. I was able to re-enable the Vista and Win 7 in the MBR and still uses the Windows Bcdedit for the MBR. It took one click:


After than I went back to XP to install all my new drivers (SATA, USB3) but the one from Intel called "INF Update Utility" will not install in XP and says that I need Administrator rights. But I am the Administrator, and went into my User Account to verify. Even the older Intel INF that is on the ASRock CD gives the same "Administrator" error when trying to install in XP.