Repair Vista boot sector

[caboosemoose]

So, I had Vista and XP dual booting on a single HD with two partitions (Just used standard windws disk t set this up - had XP on one partition first, then added Vista to the second partition). I was messing around with resizing the partition and hosed the boot sector somehow - got lots of errors when trying to resize.

The upshot is that a had to format the old XP installation and reinstall Vista on that partition.

The result is that I now have a new install of vista on one partition and the old vista install on the other except the system boots directly into the new Vista without offering me the boot menu. How do I rebuild the boot sector on the disk so that it offers me a choice between the two installations?

 

[digital_exhaust]

I was messing around with resizing the partition and hosed the boot sector somehow - got lots of errors when trying to resize.

What partition were you resizing, and what utility were you using... because if it was your Vista partition and you were using anything other than Vista to resize the partition.... that is likely going to be your problem.

Try booting your XP disc and when prompted, choose to save the partition that your original Vista install is on, reboot and see if your able to boot into that partition..... don't know for sure if that will work in your case, but it saved my ass not too long ago....

Good luck....

 

[caboosemoose]

Umm, I was trying to resize the XP partition, not the original Vista partition. I'm trying to get the boot menu so that I can choose between the old Vista install and the new one.

 

[wolveen]

Did you try the Start up repair option by booting to the Vista Disc?
If that wont work try the /FixBoot at the command prompt off the DVD Boot disc.
Hope it helps!

 

[caboosemoose]

I did try using the Vista disk to repair, but it couldn't see any installed OSes to repair - the boot sector had been hosed, I think...