I am trying to create a dual boot of Windows PE and Windows XP and be able to switch with Boot.ini. I have searched and cannot find the solution if they are on different partitions.

partition view
partition 1 - Windows PE
partition 2 - Windows 2k/xp/2k3 - active partition with boot.ini
partition 3 - Data

Boot.ini
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\MININT="Microsoft Windows PE 2005" /fastdetect /minint

Has anyone else done this? Do you have some ideas?

things I have tried...
ntldr from different OSes.
Different boot.ini settings.
Tried Recover Console changes in different msfn postings.

Yes you can

I posted this in the tread boot pe form HD earlier

1. Grab a copy of mkbt and nt2peldr from bart
2. make a working ramdisk booting pe iso, place it in c:\ with the name test1.iso
3. copy setupldr.bin from a server2003sp1 disc to c:\peldr
4. run mkbt -c -x c: c:\peboot.bin
5. run nt2peldr c:\peboot.bin
6. Edit boot.ini and add a line
c:\peboot.bin="PE From ram"
7. Create a winnt.sif file with the following in it
[SetupData]
BootDevice = "ramdisk(0)"
BootPath = "\i386\System32\"
OsLoadOptions = "/noguiboot /fastdetect /minint /rdexportascd /rdpath=test1.iso"
Architecture = "i386"

Reboot the system and enjoy

If you don't want to boot from a ramdisk image simply create the minint folder and place the contents of your pebuild/i386 folder in minint

What about without a RAMDisk

contents of winnt.sif?

Delete winnt.sif.

Setupldr will look for winnt.sif (or any sif i think) and if it doesn't find it it will look for a minint folder and boot from that instead