Issues when trying to dual boot

[Holey]

Hey guys, I was wondering if you could help me with a problem :)

It has been a LONG time since I've dual booted, and I'm trying to do it again with Windows 8 and Windows XP.

I have 3 partitions on my boot drive (120gb SSD)

System Reserved (100mb) - unmapped in Win8, C: in WinXP

Windows 8 Installation (80gb) - C: in Windows 8, H: in WinXP

Windows XP Installation (30gb) - G: in Windows 8, G: in WinXP

I started out with only the system reserved + win8 installed, and everything was working fine (I had a blank 30gb at the end of the drive).

I then installed WinXP to this free 30gb, from that point onwards only Windows XP would boot, as expected.

I then ran EasyBCD, it only showed Windows 8 in the list, although the PC was obviously booting straight into Windows XP on startup each time..

I added both Windows 8 and Windows XP to the list, and may have hit another button (such as install bootmgr or something like that..)

Now nothing boots. Comes up with the newer style (think vista/win7) bootmgr error message saying that the bootmgr is missing or some such..

I'm not entirely sure where to go from here, I can boot into a live xp environment in order to run programs and make changes without reinstalling anything. I haven't yet changed the status of any volumes, should I be setting the system reserved to 'system' and the other 2 partitions to 'boot volumes'? And is this my core issue?

Need to get this fixed by tonight and I'd prefer to avoid a reinstall >.<

Cheers fellas!

[Detection]

Rule of the thumb is install the oldest OS first, that way the newer OS knows the older one and knows how to add it, XP has never heard of 8, but 8 has heard of XP

I would boot from the 8 DVD and try to repair the MBR, then add XP with EasyBCD

[Holey]

So just boot into the windows 8 recovery and bootrec /fixmbr + bootrec /fixboot?

That will then allow me to boot back into Win8 consistently?

[Detection]

So just boot into the windows 8 recovery and bootrec /fixmbr + bootrec /fixboot?

That will then allow me to boot back into Win8 consistently?

So long as that is the problem yes, once you are back in 8, goto msconfig and set 8 as default

[Holey]

Problem all fixed :)

Used EasyBCD and worked fine, although the core issue was with windows XP, all of the files were on the H:, but the ntldr was on the system reserved partition (C:)...

Once I realised that it was all good :)