It is common to have your OS and data separated, leaving just enough on your OS partition (C:), and leaving the rest for storage of data/files.
If you installed XP to your D: drive, it still automatically boots to the boot loader set up for the OS installed on C:, which is corrupt (apparently).
What I would do is delete all your partitions during Windows Setup, create a new partition of 20GB and install XP to it. Once installed, it will be the lone OS and the boot loader will be recreated for the disk. Then you can recreate your data partition with the 200GB+ remaining space. You don't need the Utility Partition (P1 - 957MB) ... it only holds diagnostics to run from the hard drive ... you can download the latest version of the same diagnostics and run it from USB, CD, network, etc.
You need to edit your partition table and make partition 2 active and not partition 3. Partition 3 is your recovery by symantec using ghost. WinXP needs to be on a ntfs partition, so it look as if you did install to correct partition.
theflash1932
9 Legend
•
16.3K Posts
0
September 10th, 2011 13:00
It is common to have your OS and data separated, leaving just enough on your OS partition (C:), and leaving the rest for storage of data/files.
If you installed XP to your D: drive, it still automatically boots to the boot loader set up for the OS installed on C:, which is corrupt (apparently).
What I would do is delete all your partitions during Windows Setup, create a new partition of 20GB and install XP to it. Once installed, it will be the lone OS and the boot loader will be recreated for the disk. Then you can recreate your data partition with the 200GB+ remaining space. You don't need the Utility Partition (P1 - 957MB) ... it only holds diagnostics to run from the hard drive ... you can download the latest version of the same diagnostics and run it from USB, CD, network, etc.
theflash1932
9 Legend
•
16.3K Posts
0
September 10th, 2011 20:00
XP can be on a FAT partition, but by default (and from Dell), it would be NTFS.
Tom Green
322 Posts
0
September 10th, 2011 20:00
You need to edit your partition table and make partition 2 active and not partition 3. Partition 3 is your recovery by symantec using ghost. WinXP needs to be on a ntfs partition, so it look as if you did install to correct partition.