vista destroyed my boot loader, now can't get to my XP install...

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OvrrDrive

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Well, I piggybacked a thread and asked about this but haven't been able to get anything out of it yet...

This from the original thread:

OvrrDrive 06-14-2006 07:19 AM

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I'm having an interesting boot problem... Forgive me though as I just started searching and this was one of the first threads I saw. If I'm out of order I have a first -born i can sell... :p

My old setup consisted of a dual boot with with 1 15gig drive as C: (2 gig FAT32 partition) and E: (13 gig NTFS partition) and another drive D: with one 80 gig partition. I keep an old copy of winme full on the C: drive for clean installs from upgrade versions of XP on D:, and I always ran the boot manager to load XP on D:.

Vista wouldn't recognize the XP on D: when I ran the installer so I let it format C: and E: to ntfs and installed Vista on the E: drive.

Somewhere in all of this I lost my original boot loader. I think it was most likely on the C: drive with the winme install somewhere and of course I formatted that and its gone.

I've tried several times to get something to recognize the XP install but I can't get it to see it and I ahve been too friggin' stupid to figure out how to add a line to the bcd file to add an entry to XP. I've been playing around with bcdedit but haven't figured out the right combination yet.

I used to be pretty smart with this stuff but have been lazy the last few years. I know I'll figure it out eventually, but it would sure be nice if someone helped out.

Anyone have some advice?

Danith 06-14-2006 08:35 AM

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Soo.. you HAD win ME on C.. you have WinXP installed on the D driver.. ready to use..
you formatted the C drive (removing win ME and the boot loader..) and your installing Vista (on the C drive?).. but no boot menu comes up to let you chose between Vista or WinXP?

OvrrDrive 06-14-2006 08:42 AM

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Danith
Soo.. you HAD win ME on C.. you have WinXP installed on the D driver.. ready to use..
you formatted the C drive (removing win ME and the boot loader..) and your installing Vista (on the C drive?).. but no boot menu comes up to let you chose between Vista or WinXP?



Close...

I HAD winme on C:, and did format C: with ntfs along with reformatting E: with ntfs to clean it up. I already installed vista on E: because it had more free space on the logical partition.

Actually, as it turns out I didn't have to format C:, but I did it because there were a few stubborn files there I wanted to get rid of anyway.

And for the kicker, as already mentioned, vista renamed the drives so that the old E: is now C: where the installation is at.

XP is ready to run on D:, and yes I have no boot loader...


Neat huh?

JadedMaple 06-14-2006 10:03 AM

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Couldn't you just install Grub to your C: then boot the two OS's from that?

Sorry, I don't really know a ton about this stuff, but its just an idea.
Click to expand...

Any ideas?

Search didn't turn up anything definitive but trying a linux bl...

Btw, Vista is working great for me, but I'm thinking I'll at least need the option of booting back into XP from time to time...

Btw, to further complicate matters, my winxp disk is a home edition upgrade disk, which will no longer reinstall my version because after various updates I now have sp2 MCE. The disk says it can't reinstall the older version anymore.
 
ether get a copy of home SP2 off the net or

slipstream SP2 in to your copy then make a new CD
 
I'm too lazy to read the post :p

Do you have XP installed still? Look on the drive that has Vista installed. Show hidden files, and look for "boot.bak". Copy this to another location. Edit it as needed, and save it as boot.ini. Then copy it back to the root of the Vista drive. This is how I had to set up the dual boot once. For some reason it didn't see XP, and create the dual boot corectly.

Whatever you do though, you must install your older OS's first, and Vista last.
 
Get a windows disk, and boot from it. Once booted, when the setup asks, press "R" to enter the recovery console. Once you are there, type in "fixboot" and hit enter, and then type "fixmbr" and hit enter. then type exit (I think) and reboot.
 
just had a problem with messed up MBR on my drive also this is what i did,.

disconnect all harddrives except the one with windows xp then , boot from the windows xp install cd and follow these steps


"Reboot, this time taking the immediate R option and if the CD letter is say K: give these commands

copy K:\i386\ntldr C:\
copy K:\i386\ntdetect.com C:\


(two other files needed - just in case)

1. Type: attrib -h -r -s C:\boot.ini del C:\boot.ini

2. Type: BootCfg /Rebuild

which will get rid of any damaged boot.ini, search the disk for systems and make a new one. This might even result in a damaged windows reappearing; but gives another chance of getting at the repair"
 
For archive purposes, here's what I did and what worked.

Thanks so much for all the help guys...


Alias2 said:
I'm too lazy to read the post :p

Do you have XP installed still? Look on the drive that has Vista installed. Show hidden files, and look for "boot.bak". Copy this to another location. Edit it as needed, and save it as boot.ini. Then copy it back to the root of the Vista drive. This is how I had to set up the dual boot once. For some reason it didn't see XP, and create the dual boot corectly.

Whatever you do though, you must install your older OS's first, and Vista last.
Click to expand...

I tried this, but the file was not found. Remember, I deleted the old boot.ini before I tried installing vista...





AMD[H]unter said:
Get a windows disk, and boot from it. Once booted, when the setup asks, press "R" to enter the recovery console. Once you are there, type in "fixboot" and hit enter, and then type "fixmbr" and hit enter. then type exit (I think) and reboot.
Click to expand...

fixboot ran and worked.

fixmbr ran and worked.

When I tried to start I got ntldr not found.


AMD_Gamer said:
just had a problem with messed up MBR on my drive also this is what i did,.

disconnect all harddrives except the one with windows xp then , boot from the windows xp install cd and follow these steps


"Reboot, this time taking the immediate R option and if the CD letter is say K: give these commands

copy K:\i386\ntldr C:\
copy K:\i386\ntdetect.com C:\


(two other files needed - just in case)

1. Type: attrib -h -r -s C:\boot.ini del C:\boot.ini

2. Type: BootCfg /Rebuild

which will get rid of any damaged boot.ini, search the disk for systems and make a new one. This might even result in a damaged windows reappearing; but gives another chance of getting at the repair"
Click to expand...

I did this without disconnecting the other drives because I wanted to try setting it up like it was with the mbr on the C drive.

Copying files worked.

attrib -h -r -s C:\boot.ini del C:\boot.ini kept giving me a parameter error. I tried it every way I could and it wouldn't run, so I skipped it.

The last step worked like a charm. I'm in XP now. Thanks a million. ;)

I'll try running the installer again tonight for vista and see if since I have the MBR right again if it will work for me. I may even try installing winme again on the C root so I will have my full version disk again, then run vista.

Regardless, at least I know that if I screw it up I can run this again.

Thanks guys.
 
I was going to do this last night and was wondering if it would fix my problem.

Vista error

I fired up the recovery console from the XP x64 disc and saw the commands but was unsure on whether or not I should proceed.

This is the error I get with XP x64 plugged in only. The Vista drive is not plugged in. When it is, it goes straight to Vista without giving me a choice on which OS I would like to load.
 
OvrrDrive said:
I did this without disconnecting the other drives because I wanted to try setting it up like it was with the mbr on the C drive.

Copying files worked.

attrib -h -r -s C:\boot.ini del C:\boot.ini kept giving me a parameter error. I tried it every way I could and it wouldn't run, so I skipped it.

The last step worked like a charm. I'm in XP now. Thanks a million. ;)

I'll try running the installer again tonight for vista and see if since I have the MBR right again if it will work for me. I may even try installing winme again on the C root so I will have my full version disk again, then run vista.

Regardless, at least I know that if I screw it up I can run this again.

Thanks guys.
Click to expand...

yeah that attrib thing did not work for me either, glad it worked for you
:D
 
In a situation like this, if fixboot won't work, a repair install will almost always do the trick, and leave your user data intact.
 
I had the same problem, except these were with partitions. The E:\ boot drive got renamed to D:\ on the install of Vista. So after mucking about I just deleted the C:\ partition and tried to do fixmbr and fixboot on what is now C:\ but used to be E:\. Nothing has worked so far, but at one point the NTDLDR missing warning went away and I now it doesn't see the drive as bootable any more. Meh. XP sees the account in the recovery console, but not to repair it. I hope I don't have to format. Getting everything running on XP64 is a royal pain.


EDIT: Update. Now it says that I can't find a file called boot.ini and BootCfg /Rebuild won't work. Can I copy over a new or custom boot.ini to the root of C:/? I've done fixboot C:/ and fixmbr several times.


EDIT2: Well, it appears that the MBR won't see my partition as bootable. Any ideas other than running fix MBR for the umpteenth time?
 
Obi_Kwiet I wish i could help but you've gone beyond my knowledge of this subject... Hopefully someone will chime in that knows what to do.
 
By the way, now that I had the XP bootloader working properly I reformatted the vista drive and reinstalled it and now I get the vista boot loader. A little fine tuning and I should be gold.

Thanks again.
 
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