Dual boot 7 beta + XP. XP corrupted how do i repair it?

I have windows 7 beta and xp on dual boot on my apirre one. I cant start XP anymore as its become corrupted but i cant find a way to repair it. If i hold down F8 (or alt -f10) on boot i get to the can get to the recovery console but it only gives me the option to repair windows 7. If i change the boot order to default to "earlier version of windows" and then hold down F8 i cant get to the recovery console at all!
Most of my appps are installed on my XP

 

What *exactly* does happen when you start your "earlier version of Windows" (= XP) ?

 

see attached pic

 

First, F8 won't help you in this situation. There is no recovery console on the F8 screen. You have to run the recovery console for XP from the CD/DVD. However, I don't know if it would find your XP setup. Having said that, if you hit to boot in XP and hit F8 right after that you should get the F8 screen. You won't get it if you hit F8 before choosing the OS. But, as I said, it won't help you.
It seems the system part of your registry is corrupted or it cannot find that path. That drive should be easily accessible from your Win7 system. So, boot into it and look over that drive. Check if that file exists. Then check if the boot.ini on that drive is correct. Maybe the drive order got changed somehow when you installed Win7.
If all of that doesn't help you can either try a repair from the XP CD or reinstall. If you do an "update install" most of your custom settings and software settings should be kept. Depending on your applications you might also be able to run them from the Win7 system or even drag them over on another drive. It depends if the applications need registry or not.
If the drive is not accessible at all then there's little chance to revive it. You might try from a Linux system with gparted (Puppy Linux has gparted on board and can be put on a small stick).
Good luck.

 

ok i got my hands on an external dvd drive and can boot of a Windows XP disc that i have.
When it starts to boot the Recovery Console it is asking me for the Administrator password. I never set one so is there a default one?
If i just press enter it brings me to a DOS command line. Do i enter commands here to try and repair the installation? is so what commands?

 

Your password is empty then and you are already logged in. The recovery console is not an automatic repair mechanism. You have to know what you want to do. As I said: you should be able to access your XP partition from the Win7 setup and look around what might be wrong on it. I don't think that the recovery console will be of much help in this case as the basic boot mechanism seems to work (e.g. you do not need to "fixmbr" or "fixboot" as it seems to boot). You could try running a chkdsk on the XP partition, maybe there's some flaw on the partition and that's why it can't find the system branch of the registry.
The other option from the XP CD is doing a repair which will probably want a repair disk that you don't have. The next option is to do an upgrade install as I already explained. However, it's possible that this overwrites the Win7 bootloader and you are locked out of your Win7. I'm not exactly sure how you can get the Win7 bootloader back. Maybe allowing the repair from the Win7 disk would do. I'm dual-booting my AA1 via grub. I have installed Fedora 10 and Win7 and the grub from fedora 10 is also used to boot Win7's bootloader on the Win7 partition. It's also possible that you only have to add the Win7 partition to the XP boot.ini for being able to boot again into Win7.

 

I fixed it by installing Vistaboot Pro and moving Win7 in the boot order. Didnt have to do a repair install of XP at all after all. The boot loading info must have just got messed up.
Thanks for your help.

 

Seems so. Sorry, that I couldn't be of more help.

 

was just gonna suggest that well done.