i have 2 80gb SATA hdds in RAID 0 conig on my laptop. = 1 160gb hdd.

i installed x64 onto a partition that i made on it of 140gb. I got it all set up, and then i went to install XP32 on the remaining 20gb, which became the F drive. After setup formated and copied the files, it rebooted. It had a boot menu now for XP pro and XP64. only problem is that when it went to continue the install by going through xp pro, it said something about not being able to find the disk or the bootstrap or something. how do i get xp32 installed on my system?

The general rule with microsoft oses is to install the oldest OS
first if you want to dual boot. You can copy ntldr and ntdetect.com
from your x64 cd to your boot drive C:, they're in the i386 dir.

thats what i did for my dual boot and its worked out perfictly

can you post your boot ini for me?

Are you saying you installed xp64 then xp32 and it boots both
with no problems? and without making any changes?
Or maybe I'm misunderstanding j4ever's question.

That is the general idea, to instal the oldest OS first, I instaled XP pro, and then x64 and it all works fine for my machine.

I don't think, that your problem is due to the files of the MBR (boot.ini, ntldr ans ntdetect.com), but to your Sata Raid array.
What sort of chipset do you have on your mainboard?
Did you take the correct 32-bit Sata Raid drivers (by F6), when you tried to install Windows XP (32-bit version)?
Did the install routine of XP32 recognise your Raid array shortly after the begin of the installion correctly as 1 hard drive disk?

By the way: When you install an older OS after a newer OS, the newer OS may not boot any more, because it cannot use the old files from boot sector (MBR).
Easy resolution: Start your working OS and copy the files NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM from the CD of the newer OS (you find the files within the I386 folder of the CD) into the root of your drive C. That will overwrite the old files. After a reboot you can boot from both partitions.

i got it working. this is what happened. i also had a backup hdd installed on my computer when i installed xp32. for some reason it copied the ntdetect etc and boot.ini to that. so when id disconnect the backup drive it would boot to x64 but when it was plugged in it would boot to x32. well i got it fixed now cause i deleted the files that it put on my backup drive and then went on my x32 installation and copied the line from the backup drives boot.ini into my x64 boot.ini. i just had to change the setting rdisk(2) to rdisk(0). all works perfectly now!

What laptop do you have that will allow 2 harddrives and raid array????