iReboot v1.1.0 bugs(?) and workarounds

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fade2gray

Member
Observations.

1. On first use of iReboot v1.1.0 (e.g. boot to XP from Vista desktop).

'Reboot on Selection' checked.
Click on 'XP' and nothing appears to happen. Windows side bar still visible and apparently functional (i.e. clock and photo gallery still work). Hidden taskbar appears/hides when moused in/out. Start button brings up start menu but nothing in it is functional. Desktop icons don't function and neither does anything else in the system/info tray.

Using Ctrl+Alt+Delete brings up a black screen after a couple of seconds. Several seconds later a dialog box appears with the title "Logon Process Has Failed To Create The Security Options Dialog" with the content "Failure - Security Options" and an 'OK' button. Clicking 'OK' goes immediately back to the Vista desktop. This behavior is circular.

If a hard reset is performed at the "Logon Process Has Failed..." dialog, the system will then reboot to the XP logon screen. iReboot then functions as normal(?) from this point.

2. Machine is powered down and I want to boot straight into XP (boot to Vista by default).

Start machine and wait for boot manager. Not paying attention and end up with the Vista logon screen. Select 'Restart' from Vista's 'Shutdown' options and the system freezes requiring a hard reset. The same happens if 'Shutdown' is selected but the 'Sleep' option functions OK.

A workaround for this is to click into the password field first before selecting 'Shutdown' or 'Restart'. This behavior isn't present without iReboot installed.

Edit: I don't have EasyBCD installed, I manually edited the bootloader from a command prompt using Vista's bcdedit.exe.

Addendum:

oops - misspelled the title in the original post.:unamused:
 
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Interesting finds there, fade2gray. But I'm not sure they're bugs in iReboot..

1) I'll have to check it out, but it sounds like Vista was just taking its sweet, old time to reboot. I've seen this behavior many times before myself (not in iReboot, just generally speaking) where a system shutdown (or logoff) has been initiated, and for some odd reason Windows is reluctant to shut down... Trying to run apps results in the "Logon process has failed" error, and also has the same start menu symptoms, etc.

Most likely it was a one-off thing that, by happenstance, ended up occurring the very first time you used iReboot to restart.

2) This can't be caused by iReboot, at least not to the best of my knowledge. iReboot doesn't do anything to your system besides make use of the `bcdedit.exe /displayorder` command - and that is only carried out after you select an item from the menu. At the logon prompt iReboot isn't even running!

At any rate, I'll test both these out on a clean Windows XP & Windows Vista dual-boot as soon as I get the chance and let you know what I find. In the meantime, if you could verify this behavior on a second PC, that'd be awesome :smile:
 
A little history: This is a new PC that is so uncluttered it logs on and off at light speed compared to my old box, apart from the problem outlined at [1] above. Also, being a new system, I'm open to suggestions to what anyone else may consider a suitable hard/software configuration for successfully dual booting Vista and XP with minimal inconvenience when rebooting between the two.

The PC's spec can be seen here. The 1TB hard drive is actually 2x500 SATAs factory configured as a single RAID0(stripe) volume with a 15GB logical partition holding the drivers, bundled software and a Ghost image for factory restore. The RAID volume can be reconfigured as appropriate at POST, i.e. un-RAIDed as single drives etc.

I currently have the volume partitioned as:-
primary [logical]
As seen from Vista: D:XP [E:RECOVER; C:VISTA; G:grinning:ATA; I:grinning:OWNLOADS; H:WORK] F:OPTICAL; J:K:L:CARD READER
As seen from XP: C:XP [E:RECOVER; D:VISTA; G:grinning:ATA; I:grinning:OWNLOADS; H:WORK] F:OPTICAL; J:K:L:CARD READER

Regrading [1], I managed to re-trigger the same behaviour again, only this time it was circular; C+A+D and rebooting didn't resolve it. I had to un/reinstall iReboot, do the C+A+D reboot and things behaved again.

I had suspicions on what the trigger might be due to the action I'd taken just prior to trying to reboot to XP. Having earlier read the HnS thread, I was reminded of a certain issue when dual booting Vista and XP - the trigger, or so I thought, was creating a restore point in Vista. So I create another restore point, try to boot to XP and wallop - end up at at the XP logon screen!?!? I try once more - create a restore point, tickle the blue cap again and presto - bricked.

The actual problem is attempting to reboot to XP too quickly after creating the restore point. I haven't gone so far as to investigate a suitable waiting time, but needless to say, disabling system restore totally eliminates the problem from the onset.

As a side-note, within the last hour my old box has just suffered a Machine_Check_Exception BSoD, and the click, spin-up spin-down seems to indicate a failing hard drive - I just hope it's not the 250GB SATA I was hoping to transplant into this one.
 
Interesting - you've really gone out of your way troubleshooting this one!

I'd recommend using Smart Monitor (Download SMART Monitor 2.0) to check which drive is giving you trouble - be sure to enable SMART in the BIOS first though.

I'm open to suggestions to what anyone else may consider a suitable hard/software configuration for successfully dual booting Vista and XP with minimal inconvenience when rebooting between the two.
Click to expand...

You mention you've already seen the HnS thread... it might solve both problems with one stone (System Restore and an easy dual-boot).
 
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