no luck with Vista XP dual boot

R

robk

Member
First we Installed XP on Drive D: and restored our copy of Vista on drive c:
So far so good.
I then copied boot.ini, ntldr and ntdetect.com to the root of c: or should they go to c:\boot\ as this is where you say Vista boots from? You just said to copy them to the active partition So I wasn't sure of the location.

Now for the questions:
1. When restoring Vista to the c: drive it said it was restoring to partition 2 (when looking in the disk manager there is a mystery partition shown (no drive letter) in front of the Vista partition which is drive c:. XP resides on d: So I guess the question is what partition is the d: drive partiton, Partition 3? The disk manager does not list partition numbers. My boot.ini is listed below (you said in your to alter it as if Vista did not exist)

[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" /fastdetect

2. So should the boot.ini read as below?

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

Do I have to List Vista in the Boot.ini also?

3. When choosing where the different operating systems boot from in EasyBCD I chose c:\ for vista and d:\ for XP. In another thread on this forum you suggested the person set the XP boot loaction to c: and Vista will figure it out. Should it point to C: or D: for the xp install?

4. The ntldr and ntdetect.com were from a different XP machine. Will that matter? Should they be off the xp install on my drive d: or does it matter?

5. I have rebooted about 20 times or more covering as many combinations as I could think of: partitions in boot.ini listed as 1, 2 and 3 and have changed the boot location settings in EasyBCD for XP for drive c: and d:
Most of the times I get errors that files are missing or corrupt and sometimes the screen goes blank and nothing happens.
It seems to be a pathing problem more than anything it is always looking for files in <windows>\.......

Am I corrupting files everytime I try to boot into XP?

6. We have most of our computers dual booting between XP and XP64 and have no problems at all with them.

If someone could help me out I would appreciate it.
The computer I am trying to dual boot is an ACER quad core machine and it would only let us make recovery disks (no Vista disks in the box) so when I have to restore Vista it takes about half an hour or better to do a full install (we have done this 3 times so far)
We also have an HP that came with vista that we wiped out vista on and just put XP back on after spending time trying to set up a dual boot that we could't get to work.(this was about 5 months ago)

We would like eventally to have Vista, xp and xp64 booting from the vista based computer we have (3 of them)

The computers are at work and I am at home now typing this up so I hope I didn't make any technical errors.
 
Okay lets work thru this.

Question #1. IT could be your recovery partition that is first. They are usually hidden by the manufacutrers.

#2. If that is what the boot.ini said for XP leave it as is right now.

#3. No you dont add Vista to the boot.ini

#4. No it doesnt matter. They are also available in our Wiki.

#5. Have you used EasyBCD to add xP to the BCD? Follow the instruction in the wiki:

Windows XP - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki

As for the very first question. The NTLDR and the NTDETECT should be in the root fo the drive not in the boot folder. Let us know how it goes after you read thru the Wiki and try out what it says.
 
Thanks

I beleive after looking at the Wiki that my main problem is that after I installed Xp and then had to restore Vista (which involves completely installing Vista again i.e. no repair option as shown in the guides) that any files xp had installed on the active partition have been erased because of the total new install of Vista. Since I don't have a copy of Vista on disk (just the restore disks I generated which don't give a repair option like I have read in all the procedures posted on the web) how do I replace the xp boot files that Vista has erased and written over.
I presume that is my problem. Everyone else seems to be just restoring Vista whereas my vista does a complete install overwriting all XP boot info.

I hope I am clear enough in my explanation. Is what I am stating correct?
 
That's correct.
The necessary boot files that have been erased are all available for download in the Wiki, as are the required steps to configure them properly.
 
robk said:
Thanks

I beleive after looking at the Wiki that my main problem is that after I installed Xp and then had to restore Vista (which involves completely installing Vista again i.e. no repair option as shown in the guides) that any files xp had installed on the active partition have been erased because of the total new install of Vista. Since I don't have a copy of Vista on disk (just the restore disks I generated which don't give a repair option like I have read in all the procedures posted on the web) how do I replace the xp boot files that Vista has erased and written over.
I presume that is my problem. Everyone else seems to be just restoring Vista whereas my vista does a complete install overwriting all XP boot info.

I hope I am clear enough in my explanation. Is what I am stating correct?
Click to expand...

Actually this is not true. There are instructions and a download available on how to restore teh Vista bootloader.

Recovering the Vista Bootloader from the DVD - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki

You did not have to do a full install of Vista again. But since you did yes the files were overwritten and they are available in the Wiki as well.

Troubleshooting Windows XP - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki
 
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