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General discussion

upgrade to vista from windows xp home

Sep 22, 2007 10:23AM PDT

I recently upgraded my windows xp home edition, to windows vista business. Everything worked fine. I only have one partition (cHappy and a recovery partition (d:,which i dont touch at all.) I decided that I wanted to dual boot windows xp professional and windows vista business. I created a new partition (eHappy (with gparted linux live cd), and booted back into vista to make sure everything was ok. It was. So then i proceeded to install windows xp on the new partition. It installed and worked, but windows xp boots up, instead of the windows vista [bootloader]. My computer starts up as if windows vista isnt installed at all. The c: partition is still there with windows vista and all my files, but the computer just boots from the e: partition. Does anyone know how i can fix this, so that the windows vista bootloader shows up when i start my computer? (or is this fixable at all without reformating my harddriver?)

Discussion is locked

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It's normal and fixable...
Sep 22, 2007 10:53AM PDT

By installing XP you overwrote the new Windows Boot Manager, preventing Vista from booting. Thankfully that has no effect on Vista itself or your files, settings, or programs, and is easily repaired. The first option is to click here for the command-line solution you can run from within XP. The other method is to boot to your Vista DVD and choose the Repair Computer option from the bottom left corner instead of proceeding with the installation, and then choosing Startup Repair. Either way should have you good to go in a matter of minutes.

Hope this helps,
John

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boot vista dvd
Sep 22, 2007 12:04PM PDT

I did the second option, but it only booted into windows vista. (There was no boot menu) So do I have to do the second option now?

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(NT) (correction:do i have to do the first option now?)
Sep 22, 2007 12:09PM PDT
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That won't change it...
Sep 22, 2007 2:47PM PDT

Repairing the Vista bootloader should have done the trick after rebooting as it's designed to scan for all Windows OSes to display. Unfortunately option one does the same thing as option two, so it won't bring in XP either. Given it's failure I would download VistaBootPRO (freeware) and on the Manage Entries page opt to Add an Entry for a Legacy OS, entering in XP's drive letter. Save the changes and reboot...with crossed fingers both Vista and XP should be options.

John


P.S. Using VistaBootPRO you can also check the Configure page and verify that the option screen is set to display for XX seconds.

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thanks for the help
Sep 22, 2007 3:06PM PDT

I actually did get the boot manager to show up using the first method, but I also had to put ntldr back into the root directory of the windows xp partition to get it working.