Dual boot Vista/XP problems

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Rusty4560

[H]ard|Gawd
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Sep 24, 2007
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So I got a 320GB HD and decided I wanted to do XP/Vista 64bit dual boot on it. I already had an OS installed so I poped in the drive and partitioned it 150/150GB. Then I restarted with just the new HD and installed XP on the first partion. Everything went fine and I installed some drivers and got it running.

Next I shut down and booted into Vista's setup. I formated the second partition I had made and put Vista on it. Again everything went fine. It booted up into vista and I did some post config set up. I then restarted after a windows update or driver install (not sure which). When my machine was booting I never got a boot manager. So after getting into XP again I restarted and watched intently. Again no boot manager and the machine boots directly into XP again. I opened up boot.ini and didn't see another OS listed so I copied the line and modified it so I should boot into partition 2 which is Vista. Restart and now I have 2 options... HOWEVER if I click XP it boots into XP... If I select Vista, the computer restarts...

I can't get into Vista it seems, so I cannot modify the BCD. I don't believe the boot.ini is even able to boot into vista.

I have a few questions:

Can I modify Vista's BCD from XP?

Has anyone else had a similar problem?

Did I go about the installation of the 2 OS's wrong, and how can I remedy it?

General suggestions on this problem?
 
oops, well i think EasyBCD could help you out, give it a try
 
EasyBCD? Is it at all OS dependant or can I use it in XP? Remeber I can't access the vista install as of right now. Unless someone knows a work around to get into it..
 
i reckon you can use it under XP, it would find the Vista partition and fix that.
 
Alright sounds good. When I get home from work I'll try it out and let you know what happens.
 
EasyBCD did not seem to work. it says added Windows XP to the BCD successfully but when I restart it just defaults to the boot.ini from XP. I need some way to make the BCD take over control of booting instead of the boot.ini trying to do it.

Also, I can get into the Vista partition now. However in order to do this I need to put the Vista DVD in and wait for it to pass the part where it tells me to hit a key to boot from it. Once it passes that the next screen is the vista boot manager..

If I don't put the Vista DVD in it just goes to XP's boot file.

Anyone have any ideas?
 
I ran into the same problem but I don't have a boot manager fix for it yet. Although I haven't tried EasyBCD.

Here is my speculation on what happened. I have both OS on one drive with two partitions. I also have a storage drive in the same rig. It's a completely seperate drive and is a PATA whlie my OS drive is SATA. The PATA drive is Drive 0 in my bios while the SATA is Drive 1. It appears that when Vista loaded it put some part of it's boot loader (I can see the file) on the PATA drive, perhaps because of it being in position 0?

So, to boot to XP I put the bios to boot the SATA drive first, to boot to Vista I have to put the first boot drive as the PATA. Obviously there is no OS on the PATA drive but during the boot it must recognize the boot loader and the boots Vista from the SATA drive.

I don't have a choice of OS during boot or in Vista under advanced.

I know it sounds crazy but that's the only thing that I can come up with that happened. Other then having to go into the bios to select my boot drive, everything seems to work great.

So, I'm curious to know if you also have a second drive and what position the bios shows it in?
 
I have 3 drives as of right now. What I usually do is disconnect my storage drives when partitioning and installing windows because I'm paranoid that the new Vista utility will eff up my storage drives... Anyway.. This time I left them in and install vista after xp. So I could possibly have the same problem. Try what my machine is doing.

Put in the Vista DVD and just let it boot like normal. When it says to hit a key to boot from the DVD just leave it and let it go past that. See if it then lets you choose with the boot manager.

I'm going to play around with the storage drives now that you said this though. I'm getting a bit tired of this however, so I might just give up and go straight Vista with VM for XP.
 
Bloody, what you suggested worked. I changed the boot order of my drives so that one of my other drives is first and it worked great. Vista boot manager pops up now and I can boot to whatever I want.

Thanks, hope you can fix your problem too.
 
Now that I can boot up without a problem I was wondering if there was a way to move the BCD from my storage drive to anywhere else really. The BCD is on a drive with my music and I have playlists that have always been maped to E:\. Because this has system files on it now I cannot changed the drive letter so I'm stuck with it as D:\. I would have to recreate all my playlists : \
 
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