Dual Booting Win XP SP2 & Vista RC1 on 2 Hard Drives

J

jwalkin

Member
Hi,
I have 2 hard drives, the primary has WinXP Sp2 installed on it and is a Sata Drive registering as C: (Disk1, System) under Disk Management in XP. I hooked up a new 200gig on it's own IDE channel as Master and installed Windows Vista RC1 on it. I installed EasyBCD 1.5 in Vista and am having problems booting into Win XP. The WinXP drive registers as D: (as seen by My Computer) in Vista and this is causing some confusion. I can boot into WinXP when I set the SATA drive to boot priority and I get the Vista Boot Loader when I select the IDE drive as boot prior. When selecting Vista from the bootloader it boots fine, when selecting WinXP from the bootloader I receive the \ntldr not found Status: 0xc000000f error prompting me to insert my installation CD... I haven't done that... I don't want to mess with the SATA drive's boot records since I have XP running fine on there. Anyway, this all happens when I have the C: drive selected under EasyBCD for WinXP, when I select D: drive for WinXP and I select WinXP from the Vista Bootloader the computer just reboots. BTW, Vista is pointing to drive C: in EasyBCD. If I navigate around drive D: (the SATA XP drive) in Vista I can see \ntldr...
I don't want to mess with the Sata drive since I want to keep the somewhat-stable XP running there and if I where to pull out the IDE drive I want the computer to function normally. I just don't understand why Vista is switching the drive letters around and why pointing to drive D: for Xp is causing the computer to instantly reboot. Any idea how I could fix this?
Thanks,
J
 
OK

Set XP to drive C: in EasyBCD, then copy ntldr, ntdetect, and boot.ini over to drive c: as well.
 
Copied over the 3 files. Now when I select XP from Vista's bootloader I get a black screen and nothing happens. No responses from input devices, Ctrl-Alt-Del woudln't work, had to hit reset switch. Upon returning to Vista's bootloader and selecting Vista it asks me if I want to boot in safe mode or normally since there was an error booting the previous time, select Vista and it boots fine.
 
There are a total of 3 entries listed in the Vista Bootloader.
Bootloader TimeOut: 30 seconds.
Default OS: Windows Vista RC1

Entry #1

Name: Windows Vista RC1
BCD ID: {current}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe
Windows Directory: \Windows

Entry #2

Name: Windows XP Professional SP2
BCD ID: {ntldr}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \ntldr
Windows Directory:

Entry #3

Name: Microsoft Windows
BCD ID: {b49bd71f-7ca2-11db-bfc0-00142a78106f}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \ntldr
Windows Directory:

I just added Entry #3 after reading your last post, same effect as #2. Black screen, had to hit reset switch.
 
I guess you'll need a couple more files too:

Is your Boot.ini properly configured?
When you installed Vista, the drives were re-ordered. Open C:\Boot.ini and check the integers in the text.
for instance
Code: 
rdisk(0)disk(0)partition(1)
might need to become
Code: 
rdisk(0)disk(0)partition(2)
now with Vista installed. EasyBCD 1.6 will provide advanced bootloading features that will work around this Vista bug.
 
This is my boot.ini:

[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

Windows Xp boots fine when I set my bios boot sequence to the other drive, so I think that would mean the boot.ini is fine?
 
First I changed the Win XP boot drive to D: in EasyBCD, rebooted and it did the same thing. Went to black screen. Then I went back to EasyBCD, wiped out all the XP entries and just left Vista. I added a new XP entry (NOT a LH/Vist entry) and pointed it to drive D: Wrote the changes and rebooted. Same thing. Now it does not mattter whether I point to drive C: or D: When trying to boot XP I get a black screen. /ntldr boot.ini and ntdetect are on both drives. I can STILL boot into WinXP by going into bios and changing boot priority to other drive.

There are a total of 3 entries listed in the Vista Bootloader.
Bootloader TimeOut: 30 seconds.
Default OS: Windows Vista RC1

Entry #1

Name: Windows Vista RC1
BCD ID: {current}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe
Windows Directory: \Windows

Entry #2

Name: Microsoft Windows XP Sp2
BCD ID: {ntldr}
Drive: D:\
Bootloader Path: \ntldr
Windows Directory:

Entry #3

Name: Microsoft Windows XP Sp2-2
BCD ID: {b49bd720-7ca2-11db-bfc0-00142a78106f}
Drive: D:\
Bootloader Path: \ntldr
Windows Directory:

I did notice that in EasyBCD when I add XP for the second time instead of it's ID being {ntldr} it's {b49bd720-7ca2-11db-bfc0-00142a78106f}, but either way they both give me a black screen.
Hmm... running out of ideas...
 
Copy \Windows\System32\winload.exe from Vista to \Windows\System32\winload.exe on XP partition.

Add drive D: as a *WINDOWS VISTA* partition
 
Copied the file, added 'Vista' for D:

Won't boot, got this error msg:

Windows cannot verify the digital signature for this file:

Windows\system32\ntkrnlpa.exe
Status: 0xc0000428

If I change Drive letter to C: boots to Vista as expected...

:/
 
EasyBCD 1.5 - Dual Boot - Win 2K3 Sp1 - Vista RC1 - 2 Hard Drives

Hi, my situation is very similar to the one in this thread and I am following the discussion closely. As above I have 2 drives each with their own OS. Both unaware of the other. I installed Vista with one IDE drive disconnected to be sure no changes could be made to the bootsector of the Win 2K3 Sp1 drive. I would like to leave the Win 2K3 Sp1 drive in its original state. I am currently using this OS, given that this is currently the primary drive. When I next log on to the Vista drive (by physically switching them), I would like to add the ability to dual boot. If I use EasyBCD 1.5 for this

1. Am I right in thinking that this will not alter the Win 2K3 Sp1 drive, just that the bootloader will transfer me to the older boot.ini ?

2. Both OS see themselves as C, will I need to copy files across from one to the other as is being tried in this thread.

I am aware that the easy way to dual boot is just to put the Vista DVD in, reboot and repair. But of course that alters my Win 2K3 Sp1 drive which I'm loath to do just yet.

Kevin
 
Yes. You can do that.

Just add 2k3 as Drive C: from Vista, then copy over the files from 2k3 to Vista
 
Hi

Thanks for the reply, I will try this later.
Have a couple of points to mention that I hadn't noticed yesterday.

1. I did not need to physically swap the disks. It is simple to swap their priority in the BIOS.
2. When my original win2k3 is first in the BIOS this boots in boot.ini as multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)
When the vista disk is first in the BIOS, the original win2k3 disk is
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)
Hence I hence added this line in the boot.ini. I can now choose from the two in the boot.ini list, which I assume will be necessary when transferring to boot.ini from bootloader.
3. I tested to see what happens when you choose the wrong disk in boot.ini. I got a frozen black screen, which surprised me because I thought it would say "ntldr is missing"

Will add a posting later when I have actually tried altering the vista bootloader using easybcd.

Kevin
 
Hi again

Yes it works. Am now dual booting two drives from vista without any alterations to the first.

The solution to jwalkin's problem seems to be the boot.ini

When I boot from vista I boot to rdisk(1) to get to win2k3
When I boot from win2k3 I boot to rdisk(0) to get to win2k3

I have both options in boot.ini
I am going to set up the former as default and always boot from vista. for the next 30 days anyway. Then I can easily swap back to the original.

Interestingly I have two additional options in my boot.ini, recovery console and bartpe.
These now both appear in the vista bootloader and then again in the boot.ini screen.
Given that these are both repair functions for my win2k3 disk I see no reason to check whether they actually work from vista. Just thought people might be curious.

So thanks for the help. And easyBCD worked well.

Kevin
 
That's great news, Kevin.. Really glad to hear it!

Of course with every new build we strive to make EasyBCD more powerful and easier to use, so every bit of feedback is appreciated and listened to! :smile:
 
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