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General discussion

Problem with dual booting XP + Vista

Feb 4, 2007 2:32AM PST

Hi,

Sorry for this longish post, I just want to explain things as clearly as possible.

I am having problems dual booting XP and Vista. XP boots up as default which is what I want for the time being but I cannot boot to Vista. I do not get the boot loader during start-up so I cannot choose. The only way I can boot to Vista is to have the Vista DVD in the dvd drive at start-up, which loads the Vista boot loader allowing me to choose what OS I want to boot from.

I have 2 HDD?s:

1. My main drive is 250G. This has 2 partitions (200G for XP Pro 64bit and the rest for Vista Business 32bit)
2. My second drive is 160G with XP Pro 32bit and is only used as a backup. I cannot boot to this drive either. I transfer files from my main drive to this one.

I would like the option to boot to all three without an application like Acronis Boot Selector ? I?ve tried this with my old system and it worked fine for a week and then I couldn?t boot to anything!

Ideally I would like to use Vista Boot Loader or something built into Windows so I can choose what OS to choose to boot from. My main goal is just to get my main drive working with XP 64 and Vista. The 2nd drive would be a bonus. I have not changed the ?jumpers? on the 2nd drive, I don?t know if I need to? there is no labelling to show me which is slave etc. So at the moment both drives are primary but the Vista partition is not (if that makes sense).

I have tried ?Vista Boot PRO? and ?Easy BCD? to configure the boot options but I am having no luck. Changing Vista to default or changing XP 64 to default from within Vista made no difference. I know Vista does not use boot.ini any longer but this is my boot.ini for my default OS, XP 64:
-----
;
;Warning: Boot.ini is used on Windows XP and earlier operating systems.
;Warning: Use BCDEDIT.exe to modify Windows Vista boot options.
;
[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="Windows XP Professional x64 Edition" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT /USEPMTIMER
-----
Vista or XP 32bit are not on there, are they meant to be?

Also, which ever OS I boot with, whether it is XP 64 or Vista, the drive is always C? When I boot normally with XP 64, Vista is Drive H and when I boot from Vista (with Vista DVD), XP 64 is drive D. Won?t this confuse things?

This is my boot sequence:

1. DVD drive
2. DVD/RW drive
3. Main hard drive
4. Second hard drive

Any advise would be greatly appreciated, thanks for your time.

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Two things...
Feb 4, 2007 4:07AM PST

First, I would modify boot.ini to the following to include your installation of Windows XP x86:

----- Code Begins Below This Line -----
;
;Warning: Boot.ini is used on Windows XP and earlier operating systems.
;Warning: Use BCDEDIT.exe to modify Windows Vista boot options.
;
[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="Windows XP Professional x64 Edition" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT
multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional x86 Edition" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT
----- Code Ends Above This Line -----

After that's addressed I would click here and follow the instructions to reinstall the Windows Boot Loader for Vista. Afterwards restart your computer and you should be presented with the Vista boot loader, where Vista is the default OS. If you choose to boot an older version of Windows the old boot loader should load with the two XP options.

Hope this helps,
John

- Collapse -
Still not having any joy
Feb 5, 2007 3:34AM PST

Hi,

Thanks for your quick reply.

The boot.ini code did not work. I also tried disk(0)rdisk(1).

Instead of doing the repair with the link you provided, I used 'Easy BCD'. But this didn't seem to resolve the problem either.

So, I decided to repair the boot with the Vista DVD. But the repair at first didn't work so I renamed the 'Boot' folder so start-up could not find it and restarted. As usual XP 64 booted up as default without Vista boot loader. I then tried to boot to Vista via DVD and it said something like 'Problem loading Windows, please repair the installation using the Vista DVD'... or along those lines.

I did repair and restarted, Vista booted up as default but no boot loader as the other OS was not added. I then added XP 64 to the boot entry with 'Easy BCD' and restarted. XP 64 now booted up as default with no boot loader... so back to square one.

In Easy BCD, Vista was set to C: after the repair which should be the case, right? When I added XP 64, it was assigned to drive D... after that didn't work I changed XP 64 to drive C so now both partitions are drive C... this also does not work.

Here is a screen shot of bcdedit - http://i5.tinypic.com/482nsrp.gif

According to that, the Boot Manager is in the XP 64 partition... I'm guessing that's wrong? If so how do I change it?

Thanks.

- Collapse -
dual boot
Feb 10, 2007 9:33AM PST

Your BIOS must have the capability of DUAL BOOTING....some do..some don't...you may check the mfg. for an updated BIOS. When mine boots I can hit the F8 key during boot and the option to boot menu appears. Also if you install XP on both drives and then upgrade one to VISTA the boot window appears after the bios finishes and before windows starts.