Messed up and now I need help (Vista and XP Dual boot)

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mr.kevinn

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Aside from the obvious help (lol) I need some help.

Yesterday I had a dual booting system, XP and Vista and all was well. I have been using Vista for everything and didnt see the point of having the XP partition. So I deleted it... AS SOON AS I did that I realized I did a OOPS!

Tried everything I could think of to fix it so that Vista would boot.. no luck there. So I re-installed XP on the partition that it was originally on and now I can get to the internet. XP is listed as Drive C, Vista is listed as Drive F:, I can see that Vista is still their by way of going into My computer and clicking on the icon but I cannot figure out how to go back to the dual boot, let alone on how to only have Vista without having to lose everything and start over.

Can anyone advise me? PPPllease.

BTW... thank in advance for any help.
 
Hi Kevin, welcome to NST.
Your dual-boot obviously had the Vista bootmgr and BCD on the XP partition (as does mine). No problem with that, unless you delete the partiton of course.
You need to repair the Vista boot, putting it back on the Vista partition this time.
If you have a Vista DVD (or you burn yourself a copy of the Vista recovery CD from this site), the simplest solution is to delete the XP partition again, boot the Vista DVD and select "repair my computer | repair startup"
This will need to be done 2 or 3 times till it's put everything back (it only seems capable of doing one thing per boot unfortunately)
Follow the instructions in the wiki.
Alternatively, you can rebuild the BCD manually from within XP using EasyBCD, provided you install NET 2.0 framework on your new XP install first, and set the Vista partition "active" in disk management before you start.
 
Where are XP and Vista installed? XP or Vista on partition or drive #1? If Vista was installed after XP on a second partition you would want to delete the XP primary and move the Vista partition to the front of the drive as the first and then use the startup repair tool in order to see Vista running.

Following that you would create a new second primary for XP and repair the Vista mbr once XP was on again. Then you would simply unhide and copy the XP boot files(ntdetect.com, ntldr, boot.ini) onto the Vista root. From there simply edit the boot.ini if needed and add the XP entry in with EasyBCD.
 
Following that you would create a new second primary for XP and repair the Vista mbr once XP was on again. Then you would simply unhide and copy the XP boot files(ntdetect.com, ntldr, boot.ini) onto the Vista root. From there simply edit the boot.ini if needed and add the XP entry in with EasyBCD.

Not trying to intrude or anything here, but it sounds to me like he wants to get rid of XP, and keep Vista! :wink: Though i'm not sure why he would want to do that, since XP is much better than Vista anyway...:tongueout:

Cheers! :brows:

-Coolname007
 
From the sounds of it the Vista Drive needs to be made the System Active Drive which should make it the boot drive where the boot info is stored. Right now that part is still being handled by the XP Partition which is why once you deleted the XP partition your Vista would no longer boot.

Go into Disk Management and make the Vista drive the System Active drive and restart. See if it boots. You should get a NO OS found or System Disk not ready please restart error. If you do then go thru the steps listed in the Wiki to recover the Vista boot loader.

Repairing the Windows Vista Bootloader - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki

That should allow Vista to boot and be the boot drive along with allowing you to get rid of the XP Partition.
 
Not trying to intrude or anything here, but it sounds to me like he wants to get rid of XP, and keep Vista! :wink: Though i'm not sure why he would want to do that, since XP is much better than Vista anyway...:tongueout:

Cheers! :brows:

-Coolname007

That's a matter of your opinion and not helpful here. :lup:

If you can restore or rebuild the Vista mbr and save the present installation you would set that as the default boot drive if not already and then proceed to install XP again later. Moving a second primary to the front of the drive however will take time to then provide space for the new XP primary.

For some of us the quick and easy solution found most effective is to first backup any data you want before proceeding even booting from a live Linux cd for that. The next step after would be simply wiping the drive and seeing two brand new primaries go on with Vista first adding XP in afterwards. It makes life much easier if you decide to remove XP again at some time. :lol:
 
Coolname's being serious PCeye, Kevin is trying to get rid of XP. See the 1st post.
 
Aside from the obvious help (lol) I need some help.

Yesterday I had a dual booting system, XP and Vista and all was well. I have been using Vista for everything and didnt see the point of having the XP partition. So I deleted it... AS SOON AS I did that I realized I did a OOPS!

They are right. As i bolded the remakr made by the OP. He wants to get RID of XP not try to restore it.

While his opinion on Vista is not what many of us agree with it is still his opinion which he is free to share.
 
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