Can No Longer Dual Boot Into XP From Vista After Vista SP2 Upgrade

rouge

Active Member
After upgrading to vista sp2, I cannot boot into xp anymore. Can someone plz help me figure out which files (if any) are gone and which I need? I am using easy bcd and hide n seek together. Everything was running smoothly since last november, and now i've forgotten pretty much everything i've done to get the dual boot set up properly. Thank you :smile:
 
ty, is it still possible to download HnS?

ok, nvm, i found it :smile:
Gah, the download page continually asks me to login ??
(http://neosmart.net/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=438&stc=1&d=1219339382)

ha, i clicked the above link and the d/l started... ok, i'm giving reinstallation a whirl here. ty.

Hmmm, nope, didn't help. I uninstalled HnS, then reinstalled it, but no go. I cannot boot into xp.

Question: Am i supposed to have the file boot.ini in the Vista drive? Because, I don't. I have ntldr and ntdetect.com in the Vista drive.
No boot.ini or menu.1st files in the Vista drive.
 
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Have a read of this thread from post #18 onwards, and you should understand what's happened, and what you need to do to get HnS functioning again.
Post back if you don't understand anything or need more help.
 
Ty, Terry, will it matter that I did a system restore back to Vista SP1? I don't see any of the mentioned files in the root of my Vista (c) drive. (bootmgr, bootmrg.hns) Should I undo the restore that rolled back to SP1?
 
If the only reason you rolled back SP2 was because HnS stopped working, then yes, undo the restore.
Remember that HnS works by pretending to be bootmgr and renaming the real version. MS doesn't know this so it replaces HnS grub with the new SP bootmgr, instead of replacing its own SP1 bootmgr.
Get Vista SP2 working by itself, delete any file you see with a .hns filetype, and run the HnS UI.exe again.
Make sure you have folder options set like this if you can't see bootmgr.
 
Couldn't do the rollback because the sys restore was performed in safe mode, BUT i renamed the old bootmgr.hns file (vista wouldnt let me delete it), and re-ran Hns, i'm in XP now. Things are looking great. haha, so far anyway. TY!
 
Keep a copy of a live Linux distro handy and you can boot it from the CD and use it to do cleaning up that Windows permissions and ownerships prevent.
It's very handy for that.
A file is just a file, and whatever restrictions Windows sees internally are irrelevant and ignored.
 
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