Help with Vista/XP dualboot Please!!

S

Sconi

Member
I am so very confused, i am also tring to dual boot vista wth XP (vista installed first) i used Vista built in partitioning program, to seperate my HD. i have tried multiple ways to make this work, i don't know maybe i am just smartest when it comes to this type of thing, but i only have 1 hard drive with 4 partitions

fist: 55MB-don't really know what this is
second: 10GB- recovery drive
third: 245GB- Vista
fourth: 210GB- XP Pro

i have tried many combinations of hiding or unhiding (hd0,3) , (hd0,4) ,etc... to try to fix this problem but nothing seems to work, i have read all on the previous posts to try to figure something out but notta, i have 1.61 and xp booted fine before i stated trying to hide vista HD but now i just keep getting error messages. i have recieve virtually every message talked about perviously, from the "GRUB" screen to the "not found", to the hide vista, unhide vista loop, and a few others, i even managed to hide vista from it self a couple time. I am doing all of this from the vista side, i think that is correct, or should i be doing all this from the xp side i really am not sure, any input or advice would be helpfull, i have been working on this for quite some time and am rather confused with the whole process.

Thanks -Sconi-
 
Hi sconi, welcome to NeoSmart Technologies.

Uninstall NeoGrub, and download the latest beta build (1.61 beta) and use that to set it up once more - it'lll get rid of the GRUB error for sure, and maybe help with your other issues.

Good luck.
 
error 17: File not Found

Alright, i reinstalled the latest version on 1.61 beta, althogh i am pretty sure that i alredy had it, now all i get is the error 17: File not Found, then it puts me into the "hide vista", "unhide vista" loop. i am really not sure of "set this to the vista drive" and the "set this to the boot drive" part of the code, i am not sure if i am setting them to the correct drives, i have read the drive number help page u left, but am still not sure i am doing it right, any continued help would be appricated.
 
It would help if you posted your menu.lst here, then we can work on it from there :smile:

(btw, please use [c o d e] tags to surround the menu.lst for proper formatting like so:
Code: 
this is my menu.lst
)
 
continued

Alright this is what i have for menu.lst i this that it is probally wrong on multiple lvls but i dont know how to fix it.
Code: 
# NeoSmart NeoGrub Bootloader Configuration File
#
# This is the NeoGrub menu.lst file, and should be located at C:\menu.lst
# Please see the EasyBCD Documentation for information on how to create/modify entries
# [URL]http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD[/URL]
default 0
timeout 0
title Boot XP - Hide Vista
hide (hd0,3)   # SET THIS TO THE VISTA DRIVE
# Optionally repeat the above entry for all the Vista drives
chainloader (hd0,4)/ntldr # SET THIS TO THE BOOT PARTITION
boot
# Optional section
#  If you include this section, you will see a second bootloader menu!
title Boot XP - Unhide Vista
unhide (hd0,3)   # SET THIS TO THE VISTA DRIVE
# Optionally repeat the above entry for all the Vista drives
chainloader (hd0,4)/ntldr # SET THIS TO THE BOOT PARTITION
boot
 
Try this:

Code: 
# NeoSmart NeoGrub Bootloader Configuration File
#
# This is the NeoGrub menu.lst file, and should be located at C:\menu.lst
# Please see the EasyBCD Documentation for information on how to create/modify entries
# http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD
default 0
timeout 0
title Boot XP - Hide Vista
hide (hd0,3)   # SET THIS TO THE VISTA DRIVE
find --set-root \ntldr
chainloader /ntldr # 
boot

title Boot XP - Unhide Vista
unhide (hd0,3)   # SET THIS TO THE VISTA DRIVE
find --set-root \ntldr
chainloader /ntldr # 
boot
 
ok, i coppied that into my menu.lst and i am still getting the error 17: File not Found, then it routs me to the hide, unhide vista loop. but now that i have changed this, when i click on the "computer" icon, (in vista) i have hidden my recovery and my xp partition. i dont know if that means anything but yeah, next step?
 
That's pretty weird.... error 17 implies that ntldr could not be found - can you double-check and ensure it is there?
 
um....ok, i dont really know how to find the root of the drive, so i just used the search command to look for any "ntldr" files, and it came up empty, there were none in the "NST" folder where i though they might be or anywhere else i looked, but with the new configuration you gave me, my XP partition and my Backup partition are no longer visible from "Computer" i dont know it that tells anything or not but yeah, sorry i am not the most helpfull in this type of thing.
 
ok, well i did some fooling around and am not sure if i got anywhere, tell me what you think. I got the "ntldr" and the "ntdetect" file from the wedsight and i put them in the c:\ diredrory which i think, is what you mean by "root" nothing happened so i coppied the files out of the NST folder and buy them alongside the other two files and i still could not boot into XP, but it now who showed my XP partition on "Computer" alongise my other ones, so i figured that i should coppy all 4 of thoes files to the XP partition of k:\(my xp partition) so i did that and also in EasyBCD, i went to the "change settings" tab, and changed my neogrub tad from "Boot" to "C", to "K"(my xp partition) with no luck, but when i told it to boot from K, it gave me the NST folder not found, so i coppied the NST folder to the XP partition in hopes that that might fix something, but them it put me right back into the error17-file not found error, so i am right back where i started.....so did i do anything right, or should i just put it all back the way it was?
 
Sconi said:
I am so very confused, i am also tring to dual boot vista wth XP (vista installed first) i used Vista built in partitioning program, to seperate my HD. i have tried multiple ways to make this work, i don't know maybe i am just smartest when it comes to this type of thing, but i only have 1 hard drive with 4 partitions

fist: 55MB-don't really know what this is
second: 10GB- recovery drive
third: 245GB- Vista
fourth: 210GB- XP Pro

i have tried many combinations of hiding or unhiding (hd0,3) , (hd0,4) ,etc... to try to fix this problem but nothing seems to work, i have read all on the previous posts to try to figure something out but notta, i have 1.61 and xp booted fine before i stated trying to hide vista HD but now i just keep getting error messages. i have recieve virtually every message talked about perviously, from the "GRUB" screen to the "not found", to the hide vista, unhide vista loop, and a few others, i even managed to hide vista from it self a couple time. I am doing all of this from the vista side, i think that is correct, or should i be doing all this from the xp side i really am not sure, any input or advice would be helpfull, i have been working on this for quite some time and am rather confused with the whole process.

Thanks -Sconi-
Click to expand...

just a comment, nice big hardrive:S
 
lol, I didn't even pay attention to the size when I was reading that post! :lol:

Sconi, you need to set the NTLDR/NTDETECT partition as primary and active.
 
Can you expalin how i go about setting the NTLDR/NTDETECT partition as primary and active, i though i had it, i have my c:\ partition an primary i think, i mean that is the default isint it, thats where my vista is installed, than i added thoes two files NTLDR/NTDETECT to the root of c:\, is that what you are meaning or an i just very confused? i guess here is another question, am i suposed to be doing all of these configurations from the vista side like i am doing now, or should i reformat, and try this easyBCD configurations from the XP side.
 
You can set the primary partition with a number of command-line tools like DiskPart or with a bootable partition manager like Paragon, Disk Director, or GParted.

The easiest option in your case would be to reinstall XP. Either a repair install or a format and reinstall.

Once you're in Windows XP, post back and we'll get the dual-boot going.
 
alright, well im in xp now, when i first booted up i couldent use my mouse or keyboard, that was kinda weird but i just restarted it and that went away, so yeah, next step?
 
Install EasyBCD 1.61 in XP.
EasyBCD| Bootloader Management | Reinstall Vista Bootloader
Delete the old XP entry in EasyBCD, and create a new one.
 
well i downloaded 1.61 beta, and installed it, but it gave me the error message, saying "Setup failed to load the Windows runtime library msvrc71.dll. Setup will function, but the visual style will not work. This is most likely caused by a fresh Windows instilation." i pushed ok, and went throught the setup for EasyBCD, and it installed but then it gave me another error saying "The application failed to innialize properly (0xc0000135). click on ok to terminate the application." and yeah, tried uninstalling it and reinstalling it, had the same peoblem it also gave me the first error again when i tried to unstill it, but i still got it uninstalled,any sugestions, XP repair or something?
 
Back
Top