ok heres the background: ive got 5 operating systems on 2 hard disks and i use the NT bootloader to choose which one to use. the bootloader is on the first partition of the first hard drive, the partition windows 98 is installed on. something i did (dont remember what) caused me to get a "i/o error accessing boot sector file c:\bootsect.dos" message when trying to select "windows 98" from the list. rather than figure out the problem, i thought it would be easier to just use bootpart.exe to repair the win98 bootsector and then reinstall the bootloader. repairing the win98 bootsector lets me boot windows 98 but none of my other OS's obviously since theres no bootloader. i put the nt bootloader back on using bootpart again, but now whenever i choose "windows 98" in the menu, i get a black screen for a second and then im back to the bootloader again. all the other OS's work fine. whats the problem?

paste a copy of your boot.ini file please. Rule #1 Good computers don't go down. Rule #2 There is no such thing as a good computer.

[boot loader] timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect C:\bootsect.622="MS-DOS 6.22" C:\bootsect.w98="Microsoft Windows 98" C:\bootsect.lin="SuSE 9.2" C:\bootsect.fds="FreeDOS" i renamed the windows 98 one, originally bootsect.dos (did this AFTER the problem happened)

when you reloaded the win98 boot sector did you save the new boot sector as bootsec.w98 and deleat the bad bootsec.dos befor reloading the nt bootloader ? Or are you still useing the bad bootsec.dos ? {"i/o error accessing boot sector file c:\bootsect.dos"} If still useing the old bootsec.dos file use the debug ruotine HERE

thanks a lot for that link. the moethod worked perfectly and im now writing this on windows 98! thanks for everything!!

glad you have the problem fixed