Dual Booting 2 Drives XP and Vista - Both Already Installed

phaze112

phaze112

Member
So I was reading the documentation and tried it out. I have 2 drives which already have their respective OS's installed, XP and Vista.

I was reading the documentation about what to do if XP is installed first or Vista is installed first:
Installing XP After Vista - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki

My problem is I already have both sata drives with XP and Vista on them already.

I boot into Vista as that is the one that is bootable atm and do the program and setup XP by adding its entry after the Vista one. (note yes the XP drive can boot if it's by itself)

Here is what I get when I choose the 2nd (XP) boot option:

windows failed to start. a recent hardware or software change might be the cause . to fix the problem:

1. insert your window installation disc and restart your computer
2. choose your language setting then click next
3. click repair your computer


if you do not have the disc contact your system administrator or computer manufacturer for assitance.


file: \ntldr

status: 0xc000000f

info: the selected entry could not be loadeded because the application is missing or corrupt


____________________


Thank you for any help guys and yes I will be the first contributer this month if anyone can help me :smile: thank you guys so much I am so looking forward to doing this.

Travis
 
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Hi Travis, welcome to NST.
This one's easy to fix. When Vista's bootldr is asked to hand control to XP's ntldr (to boot XP), it doesn't know where to find it until NTLDR reads boot.ini (on XP). This catch 22 is resolved by copying the 3 necessary XP boot files into the Vista partition root. (Bootldr expects to find them where it is).
When you've done that, you'll have another problem in that boot.ini will incorrectly describe the rdisk number. (It's correct when XP is first in the BIOS, but obviously wrong when it's not).
see the wiki for the files to copy
http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Windows+XP
and then edit your boot.ini appropriately. (probably from rdisk(0) to rdisk(1) )

ADDENDUM

Hi Mak, sorry for the cross post. At least we gave the same advice !
 
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Thank You Alot

Thank you so much Terry! I was reading over the Troubleshooting and I was getting confused to say the least. I read over your directions then reread the troubleshooting and wow it all made perfect sense!

Thank you alot it works perfectly now!

Travis
 
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