BleepingComputer.com: Is it possible to have both XP Professional and XP Home Edition installed at the same time?

My computer has gone haywire and I'm in need of some serious help.

Initially I received a "NTLDR is Compressed. Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE" message and that would result in an endless loop. I talked with an IT guy at my job and he gave me an XP Professional Re-Installation disk and afterward I visited some forums that told me to go into Recovery and type in some codes (cd\ ... attrib -c ntldr ... exit) and that would take care of the problem, but when I rebooted I would simply get a blinking cursor and nothing more.

After that, I loaded up XP Pro from the CD and booted that, but it told me that it would have to reformat the recovery partition to do so, so I allowed it to.

Now, when I log on it asks me to select between Home Edition and Pro -- if I select Pro it loads up fine but if I select Home Ed I simply get a black screen.

From what I've explained of my situation does it look like I have both OS installed on my machine? I'm hoping so because I had important files on the desktop of my Home Edition that I would like to somehow recover. Any help I could get would be extremely appreciated. Thanks.

Yes you can have both operating systems installed at once, it is called a Dual Boot.

Also, when I go into Safe Mode after selecting Home Edition, I get the following list in this exact order:

multi:(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
multi:(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS\system32\hal.dll
multi:(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS\system32\KDCOM.DLL


.......now, by having both OS on my machine does that mean that a new partition was created for XP Pro? Should my Home Edition files still be intact somewhere on my machine?

If pro had run as an upgrade you wouldn't see the home option anymore, we need to see your boot.ini file to figure out where your old files are

Show Hidden Folders/Files

• Open My Computer.
  
• Go to Tools > Folder Options.
  
• Select the View tab.
  
• Scroll down to Hidden files and folders.
  
• Select Show hidden files and folders.
  
• Uncheck (untick) Hide extensions of known file types.
  
• Uncheck (untick) Hide protected operating system files (Recommended).
  
• Click Yes when prompted.
  
• Click OK.
  
• Close My Computer.

You can open it with notepad and paste the contents here

DO NOT CHANGE IT

hi, like the user mentioned above boot.ini will give a good indication under the operating system.
I believe you probably installed XP pro in another partition or folder, hence why home still has problems.

you can access the boot.ini via another way
click start then run, type C:\boot.ini
C can be replced by the drive letter of your local disk

Wow, you guys (and possibly ladies too) are really making me feel better about recovering my files. Unfortunately right now I'm on the Mac at work so I won't be able to copy the registry until I get home, so I'll just put this topic on ice until then. But thanks already for what you all have done.

hi, no problem, if you have important data and need it recovering there are many free ware application that will provide a significant percentage of success in recovering data.

Cool, thanks. Now I'm wondering if I'll be able to re-boot Home Edition and see the desktop as it were before everything went crazy or is it just a matter of finding a way to secure those files and getting out before the roof collapses?

Is this something that can only be answered after viewing the boot.ini files?

Hi, it should. But if I am right then the home edition needs repairing still. So backup should be the first thing you do, also when you load xp pro, do you have two windows folder, or just one check, or is there two partition. That can give a better understanding.

You need to be on the computer and apply the show hidden files and folders for us to troubleshoot this

Otherwise we are only guessing

Quote

I suspect xp pro got installed to that partition

By the way since you aren't liscensed to use XP pro on that machine you should order the home recovery disks from your manufacturer and start over after recovering your data

OK, I accessed the hidden files as suggested and came up with this log:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect


...I had to do it from the 'Start' menu because the instructions that say "My Computet, then Tools" didn't specify what to do after changing the Hidden Files option.

If you open my computer you should see a drive letter for the old windows install, it should have your old files there

Hmmmm .... this is what I see

Files Shared on This Computer:
-Shared Documents
-Owner Documents

Hard Disc Drives:
HP Pavillion (C:)
Local Disk (H:)

And then there's the "Devices With Removable Storage"

Would it make a difference if my files were on the XP Home Edition desktop? All the files that were in the C Drive are there but the items that were on the desktop weren't in that folder. Are they still out there somewhere?

X:\Documents and Settings\Chewy\Desktop

Look for this

X and Chewy are for mine

No luck there either ... the only folder I couldn't access was the "Owner" folder, but hovering over it says it's empty