Vista as main boot drive with XP installed as primary OS

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fantomau

2[H]4U
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Aug 25, 2007
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I have XP installed on my D drive (C drive when booting xp), Which was what I use to use.
I have vista installed as well.

What I want to do is format the XP drive to use as a data drive and boot up using the vista drive.

If i take the xp drive out, I get 'error loading os'

I tried something called vistabootpro and set it up correctly, Went into bios, Set the boot drive, Booted up and got Error loading OS.

What can I do to set my vista drive up to boot up, So I can use the XP drive as a data drive?
 
Uhmmm... so you want to get rid of XP completely or... ? Because it sounds to me like you:

a) want to keep XP and just use the space left on the partition for data storage for Vista when it's running, or...

b) you want to have Vista on the machine alone with the second partition used for data...

So which is it?

b) is easy; put in the Vista DVD, wipe the partitions, create a new partition for Vista and a second partition for data, install Vista, format the second partition after Vista is installed, simple.

If it's a) it's a bit more complicated...
 
Yeah I want to get rid of xp totally.

I've had vista installed for awhile now, Thats what I am on now. Its on a completely different drive than XP.

[C:Fants-Vista64] (With D drive(XP) pulled, I get Error loading OS, Even if i set it to boot the vista drive)
[D:Fants-XP] (Boots up and displays OS selection, Select vista and boots)
 
Honestly, if you don't want anything but Vista on the machine, just do a clean install. It really doesn't get any simpler than that: move your data/whatever off that machine or hard drive, back it up someplace, and when the drive is ready to be done right, install Vista on it clean and set up the partitions as you wish during Vista's installation.

Beating a dead horse comes to mind when you stick with the old layout and you're trying to manage the boot capability which already is pretty mucked up to begin with.

Start over... from scratch... make it much easier on yourself... ;)
 
fantomau said:
chinesepiratefood said:
If you unplug the 2nd drive (one that used to have XP) does it find the Vista bootloader?
Click to expand...
If i do that, It says 'Error loading OS'
Click to expand...
Which is expected because the system partition is XP. In other words, the Vista boot loader is on the XP drive.
I told you how you can fix it. Or, just do a fresh install as suggested.
 
Last edited:
Oh, so he's dealing with two physical hard drives, eh? Well that's a whole new can of worms... still go with the clean install on the hard drive you want the OS on, and when you install Vista, unplug the other hard drive totally, power and ATA or SATA cable too... makes things so much simpler.
 
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