Dual Vista/XP laptop

ianilly

Member
Hi, I hope this is not answered already but I could not find any info related to my setup.

1. Toshiba laptop A210 with Vista installed
2. Partitions: c: - Vista
D: - XP
E: - Data (for backup.

I did the shrink job then installed XP OK which booted but lacked drivers then did the repair of Vista bootloader.

Somehow the ntldr, boot.ini ntdetect.com got damaged and I replaced them onto the root level of C: (as seen by Vista).

diskpart shows:


Part
1 OEM 1500mb
2 PRI 75GB (Vista)
3 PRI 49GB (Data)
0 EXtended 23GB (XP)
4 Logical 23GB (XP?)

I reckon the count goes 1 & 2 for the primarys and 3 for the extended which looks right for boot.ini?

The boot.ini generated from an XP repair gives:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINDOWS=""
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect


This little lot offers two screen at boot up, one with Vista, XP then another with XP

Does anyone know where did this all go wrong please?


Thanks!

Ian
 
Hi Ian, welcome to the boards.
The reason you've got 2 boot menus when you choose XP is because the Vista bootloader hands control to NTLDR when you select XP, which refers to boot.ini.
In your boot.ini you've got 2 entries, hence the second menu to let you choose between them.
Edit boot.ini to get rid of the spurious entry, or else change timeout to 0, then the second menu will not be presented.
 
Terry i dont think he can get rid of one of the entries. If he does then he will lose the ability to boot into that copy of XP. Since the BCD doesnt control the boot into XP boot.ini still does. So the time out would have to be adjusted to Zero for that to stop.
 
More clarification

Hi guys, thanks for the response and ideas. I'm not too bothered about two boot option screens what I did not make clear is that my XP option will not boot. Sorry, I'm at work right now so can't quote the exact error message but it is something along the lines of a file missing. I am reluctant to go through the whole reinstall of XP then fix Vista boot etc but if that is the only solution then I will do what it takes to get off Vista.

Thanks.

Ian
 
It works!

Right now I m posting from XP. I never thought it would be such joy but after the experience with Vista.....

Basically, I booted to the default entry when the choice list came up.

To get it all working, I had previously downloaded all the XP drivers from the Toshiba site then when XP booted intall everything before rebooting. Now works fine and I hope I never have to boot back into XP.

Thanks for the useful tools and advice.
 
Glad you've successfully joined the dual-booting club.
If you're still getting the 2 boot menus, trust me you'll eventually get fed up with it, but since your default works, just changing the timeout to 0 in boot.ini will fix it.
If you don't like the idea of editing it with notepad, you can use the boot tab in msconfig to set it now you've got XP running.
 
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