Building dual boot Vista/XP box

T

turboxxiii

Member
i am building a dual boot Vista XP box, and having nothing but trouble with EasyBCD

Both partitions are on seperate drives, vista on C, XP on E. Both boot seperatel, and are registered and validated OS's.

When I run Easy BCD, it tells me there are no boot entries.

I try to create boot entries, and it will make one for Vista. When it makes one for XP, however, it specifies that XP is on C drive, not E drive. Attempts to boot to XP fail.

When I go to check configuration in EasyBCD, the program errors out, and wants to send an error report to Neosmart. I allowed it to do this.

Please help me get this boot loader installed.

turboxxiii@gmail.com

Edward THornton
AllPCZone
 
Hi Edward, welcome to NeoSmart Technologies.

Please download the latest 1.61 beta and try again. If it gives you an error, please re-submit with the latest beta.

As for the C:\ E:\ mix-up, that is by design. If you add a Windows XP drive, chances are, you want the boot drive which isn't necessarily the XP drive. Believe me, 999 times out of a 1000, this is the case.

Obviously your situation is different, so just add an XP drive, go to the second screen in EasyBCD and change the letter to E:\
 
yes, I did that, but no joy

I have the latest 1.61 beta.
I built this machine 2 weeks ago, and had no problems. I get it back with the hard drives reformatted, pissing me off royally, but not your problem.

So I rebuild the drives, and get them happy, then reinstall Easy BCD. Nothing is the same. Last time, it worked exactly like you said, I had no problem.

This time, it keeps telling me that there are no entries listed. I make one, then it pops up with two already there.

So I fdisked/mbr'd my boot partition, and tried again. This time I get three OS's listed in the boot manager at startup, but only Vista works. I uninstalled, and it was still there.

I cannot seem to assign the boot partition for XP. I have tried your suggestions, in fact tried them before I posted on the forum.
 
Interesting - first time I've heard of this.

Try Diagnostics | Reset BCD Data from the latest 1.61 build.
 
more

I try Recreate missing /deleted boot files and get this message:

Unfortunately, EasyBCD could not automatically detect the drive letter of your boot device. This can be caused by a non-standard MBR, use of a 3rd-party bootloader, or a failed Windows Vista install.
To proceed, please enter the letter of your boot drive below. The boot drive is identified by the presence of special files and folders like boot.ini, ntldr, and bootmgr. If you continue to see this error message, please run "Reset BCD storage" from the Diagnostics section.

It tries to make me select the C drive, and then gives me two or three errors before going away.

Then I click "View my settings", and it says "no vaild entries found"

then the screen shows me this:

Code: 
There are a total of 2 entries listed in the Vista Bootloader.
Bootloader TimeOut: 0 seconds.
Default OS: 
Entry #1
Name: Windows Vista
BCD ID: {default}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe
Windows Directory: \Windows
Entry #2
Name: Windows XP
BCD ID: {4213b578-266e-11dc-80d7-0017315f4562}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \ntldr

I don't know why it says timeout 0, because I set it to 30.
I Vista views the XP drive as D, I changed the drive letter thinking this might help. Stupid me...


I am using an Asus M2n4-SLI motherboard, and an AMD 6000+ with the latest bios revision.
I have 4 gigs of ram in here, and two identical Western digital 250GB SATA drives.

Vista is on SATA 0, and boots fine, no matter what I do.
XP is on SATA 1, and boots fine if I unplug SATA 0

The bootloader shows Vista and 2 entries of XP when booting. Nothing but Vista boots.

The dual boot utility had no problem with this configuration last time I used it.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Which did you choose?
Reset or Recreate?

You only need Reset. The other will give you problems if you already have the boot files available.
 
Ok, new problems.

I did reset, removed all entries, and "fixed my drive" to reinstall the default vista boot loader. this worked fine.

I went in Easy BCD, and set the boot configuration I want.
 
Now I get this in the configuration screen.


Code: 
There are a total of 2 entries listed in the Vista Bootloader.
Bootloader TimeOut: 0 seconds.
Default OS: 
Entry #1
Name: Vista
BCD ID: {current}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe
Windows Directory: \Windows
Entry #2
Name: Windows XP
BCD ID: {4213b57d-266e-11dc-80d7-0017315f4562}
Drive: D:\
Bootloader Path: \ntldr

Which is correct as far as that goes.

When I try to boot to XP, it says it can't find \ntldr, and tries to boot vista, which fails, and gives me a black screen. I reboot manually, and get the screen telling me vista failed to boot, and do I want to start normally. I boot up fine. to vista.

If I unplug the vista drive, XP starts normally.

Like I said, XP is physically on a different drive from Vista, both drives are identical WD 250's, which shouldn't matter anyway.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I'm trying to use my old hdd with a new Vista machine. It is an external drive J:, when I try to add it using bcd 1.61 the drive letter automatically switches back to C - How do I get it to work ?
 
The drive letter you need is that with "ntldr" on it.
Go to the second page in EasyBCD and change the letter for the XP partition to J:\ and reboot to test.
 
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