Dual Boot with XP Only

DaveJ

Member
I have a dual boot configuration for both Vista and XP Pro, which was created by EasyBCD. Unfortunately last week, the hard drive containing Vista crashed and so I now only have the hard drive containing XP. How do I get rid of the boot loader which is still giving me options of booting to either Vista or XP?
 
Hi Dave , welcome to NST.
Run EasyBCD "change settings".
Make XP default
Change timeout to 0.
Click "save"
You won't see a menu at boot from then on.
 
You most likely saw EasyBCD installed on Vista not XP and would need to boot up with the XP disk to the recovery console to first log onto the XP installation and enter the "Fixboot" and "Fixmbr" commands at the command prompt there to see the mbr rewritten.
 
Thanks for the replies. I've now got a new hard drive that I'm going to install Vista on with XP remaining on the current hard drive. Do I have to do anything about the current boot loader? As I mentioned above, this boot loader currently gives me the option of booting to Vista (which doesn't currently exist) and XP. When I install Vista on the new drive, will the current boot loader be replaced? Would I be better off uninstalling the Vista bootloader in EasyBCD under "Manage Bootloader" before I install Vista?
 
No Dave.
If you put XP's bootloader back, it will just be replaced by Vista's again as soon as you install Vista.
As long as you own Vista, there's no reason not to use its bootmgr even just for booting XP.
(a lot of people come here to ask if they can do just that, to be able to use EasyBCD to manage the boot)
The previous instructions I gave would have left the spurious Vista entry in place, but you just wouldn't have seen the boot menu at startup because of the zero timeout.
If you intend to reinstall Vista, a better approach would be to leave the timeout at non zero, but remove the "busted" Vista entry with EasyBCD add/remove entries.
When you install the new Vista, it will see the existing BCD, add itself as a new entry and your dual boot will be up and running as soon as the Vista install completes.
Your BCD will be on the non-Vista disk, but that's not a problem unless you want to get rid of that original disk in the future.
If you'd prefer the Vista disk to contain the BCD and control the boot, you'll need to make it the 1st in your BIOS boot sequence, disconnect the old one temporarily, and do a clean install of Vista on the virgin HDD.
Then follow the advice in the sticky thread to get your dual boot back after you reconnect the old disk with it 2nd in the BIOS.
 
I've now installed Vista Home Premium on the second hard drive. In actual fact the only way it would install is if I made that drive the first drive, so I switched the hard drives around inside the PC. Vista then installed okay, but when I boot up, it boots automatically to Vista with no sign of XP at all. I installed EasyBCD in Vista, and tried adding XP, but it failed to boot when I selected the XP option. I switched the drives around again, and now it boots okay to XP. I guess I have BCD installed on both drives, and depending which is the first hard drive dictates which OS is booted. How do I configure EasyBCD, and in which OS, in order to get both OSs to boot without manually switching them.
 
Boot from the Vista drive and follow the links in the sticky.
The XP troubleshooter describes all the ways in which XP fails to dual boot (and how to fix them)
Read the footnotes to the sticky points 3-6 to make sure you know where everything is supposed to be. (because you didn't let Vista add itself to the old BCD, you need to copy all the XP boot files into Vista's root)
 
Did you have the XP unplugged when installing Vista again? The Vista installer should otherwise see it uner the previous versions of Windows option when XP was detected and added into the boot options.

You now need to copy the XP boot files over and edit the boot.ini copy to point at the other drive.
 
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