I have backed up 2 partitions on my laptops (C drive and the Dell Partition).  I have restored the C drive partition sucessfully, however when going through the restore wizard for the the Dell partition I was unsure of some of the settings so I didn't proceed as I didn't want to render my laptop unbootable.  What I was not sure of were the mbr and primary/active partition settings.  Should I enable those?

 Also, I noticed on my first boot back from restoring I was shown 2 boot OS options.  The first/default was labled Microsoft Windows the 2nd was Microsoft WIndows XP Professional.  Not sure why 2 entries were added in the restore.  Can I remove the one instance that does not boot in msconfig?

Thanks,

Tom
 

not sure about the first issue but i have read many posts here on issues with the utility partition and i dont recall seeing someone getting it to work. really this partition is useless; you can always download the latest utility boot cd from dell to run the same diagnostics (but possibly updated version or additional ones). it is a tiny download

as for your 2nd issue, yes. use msconfig button 'check all boot paths' and just answer yes to clear the invalid one

I tried the "check all boot paths" option in msconfig and it said both instances were invalid!  How could that be?

very strange. open up c:\boot.ini in notepad and paste its contents here. you need to enable viewing hidden/system files first

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

The first generic "Microsoft Windows" is what actually boots.

 There is also a backup1.boot.ini in the root of C that only has one Windows installation.  It was dated May 21, 2008.
 

here is mine, looks like your first one with the correct name. should be safe to change yours to this but have a current backup to be safe:

[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

thanks for the tip on the button to check the paths.  I hadn't noticed that one before.  Even though it said both paths were invalid, I deleted the one I knew didn't boot leaving the known good one from testing and it booted fine on the following reboot.  Thanks again!