Dual boot problem Vista/XP, separate drives, Vista only boots off dvd

M

msdmoney

Member
I have been using XP Pro 32 bit for a few years now, I bought a new hard drive for a Vista 64 bit install. I plugged the new hard drive in and installed Vista, leaving my old XP 32 bit drive still plugged in. Both are SATA drives.

Vista installed fine and worked great, but I don't receive any dual boot option at startup. Once I take the Vista DVD out of my drive, Vista no longer boots, my computer automatically goes back to my old XP install.

Both OS's seem to be working fine separately once I boot into them. I tried reinstalling Vista once I was already in Vista, and it seemed like it was going smooth, I even saw the dual boot screen during one of the restarts, but right near the end I got some message about it not being able to finish and needing to roll back to a previous install. So I am back to where I started, Vista + XP with no dual boot.

I downloaded EasyBCD and tried to read through some threads to figure out what I needed to do, but am still confused on the steps I need to take.
 
Hi msdmoney, welcome to NeoSmart Technologies.

Microsoft has disabled the ability to repair install Vista. You won't be able to fix it by installing over the original.

Download EasyBCD 1.61 beta.
Run EasyBCD | Bootloader Management | Reinstall Vista Bootloader

Should do the trick.
 
Thanks for the quick response, I will try it as soon as I get home.

Just to make sure, I do this from within Vista right? I noticed in one similar thread you mentioned this should be done from the properly booting OS (in my case XP) since EasyBCD is crossplatform, but I may have misread.
 
I think that was either with an older version of EasyBCD or for repairing the Vista bootloader under 1.6.....

At any rate, with 1.61 beta you can do anything from either OS :smile:
 
Okay I ended up using the procedure you suggested in Vista last night. But it didn't work, and the computer still booted back into XP.

Then I ran EasyBCD in XP. The first thing it said was something about not knowing what drive was the proper boot drive. Then it asked where my vista install was. Once I answered it made Vista the default booting OS and I was able to add XP to the entries list.

Everything works smooth now, thanks for your help
 
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