Dual boot Question with Vista and XP (help appreciated)

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Deadpixel

Distinguished Member
So I Have a 160GB HDD, with Vista installed, and decided to dual boot. I found an old hard drive, reformatted it, and installed XP on it. XP did not overwrite the MBR, and I never had to fix Vista's Boot loader. I then go to EasyBCD, and click add entry, and choose XP, drive D:\ (this is where Xp is installed) and name it Microsoft Windows XP. When I click add entry, it then changes the Drive to C:\. Is this normal, or have I have done something totally wrong and need to redo something?
 
Ok, and when I do this, I do not need to copy over and files from my XP HDD, to my Vista HDD correct? And its ok, that my MBR for Vista never had to be repaired? Also do you want to see me Entry #2, from EasyBCD, so you can see if everything looks right? And if something goes wrong, that I can not boot up, just insert my vista disk, run recovery agent, and click start up repair? Thanks man soo much, btw my XP HDD is E:\, typed the wrong thing
 
I told you what needs to be done - change the XP letter to C: and see if that does the trick.

If not, we'll dig into your boot.ini as well :smile:
 
Computer Guru said:
I told you what needs to be done - change the XP letter to C: and see if that does the trick.

If not, we'll dig into your boot.ini as well :smile:
Click to expand...


WE need to, I got to the bootup screen, selected XP, and got this error

File \ntldr
status 0xc000000f

Tell me what to do, and it will be done. Thanks for helping me, post if it works. Also not to be rude or mean, but be specific about when you talk about stuff, I'm not good at this stuff, and the more specific or picures I get to help me the better. Thanks man

Deadpixel
 
Computer Guru said:
When it used to be E:\ - what error did you get?

Post your boot.ini as well.
Click to expand...


When I put it as Drive E:\, it changes it to C:\. The boot.ini is found in my xp hard drive, so this is it

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
 
OK, go to the second screen in EasyBCD and change the letter of XP to E:\

Does that do the trick? What's the error?
 
the configure boot screen.

The one where you can set the timeout and the default OS.
At the bottom you can select an entry from the drop-down list to rename it and set its drive.

Select the XP entry and change its drive manually to E:\
 
Yeah, that would help us pin it down a bit more.

If it doesn't work, please explain what happens when you select this from the bootloader screen.

Good luck!
 
OK - it's a boot.ini issue.

Open up EasyBCD | Add/Remove Entries | Linux/BSD

There is a list of drives and partitions at the bottom of that page. Look at the list, and figure out which is your XP partition.

Then do Tools | Edit Legacy Entries
the drive(x) number for the entry in Boot.ini should be the drive number that EasyBCD showed for the XP partition in the drive list.
The partition(y) number for the entry in boot.ini should be the partition number that EasyBCD showed for the XP partition in the drive list + 1.

Then save the file, exit notepad, and reboot to test.
 
Computer Guru said:
OK - it's a boot.ini issue.

Open up EasyBCD | Add/Remove Entries | Linux/BSD

There is a list of drives and partitions at the bottom of that page. Look at the list, and figure out which is your XP partition.

Then do Tools | Edit Legacy Entries
the drive(x) number for the entry in Boot.ini should be the drive number that EasyBCD showed for the XP partition in the drive list.
The partition(y) number for the entry in boot.ini should be the partition number that EasyBCD showed for the XP partition in the drive list + 1.

Then save the file, exit notepad, and reboot to test.
Click to expand...

So what am I chaing in the boot ini? the XP drive shows up as drive 0, and partion 0. What am I changing in the boot ini? HEre is a copy of it

Code: 
[boot loader]
timeout=1
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Hmmmm.... that looks correct to me!

Or maybe not... You have some spaces in the entries that might be the cause of your trouble. Copy and paste this instead:
Code: 
[boot loader]
timeout=1
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
 
Computer Guru said:
Hmmmm.... that looks correct to me!

Or maybe not... You have some spaces in the entries that might be the cause of your trouble. Copy and paste this instead:
Code: 
[boot loader]
timeout=1
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
Click to expand...

Ok, that did not work, just restarts. But you can hear the hard drive getlouder when it trys to bootup xp. Also under configure boot, I changed it to xp, and saved, but it changes back to vista.
 
OK.

Delete the old XP entry in EasyBCD and create a new one. Leave the default drive letter as it is (C:\).

Copy NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM, and Boot.ini from E:\ to C:\

Reboot and test the new XP entry.
 
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