Removing XP from dual boot - repair not working

S

spooksman

Member
Hi

I spent some reading up on how to remove XP from my dual boot installation - I had XP installed first, and then added Vista - I have two HDDs, XP is on '0' and Vista is on '1' - I am pretty sure that the bootloader is on the XP drive...

I'm equally sure that the drives are SATA drives, but I don't remember having separate drivers when I installed Vista.

If I unplug the '0' drive and boot from the Vista DVD and select repair, it does not find the system to repair (the dialog stays empty).

I have read some comments that infer the 'recreate missing/deleted boot files' or 'reset BCD Storage' or 'reinstall the Vista bootloader' options in EasyBCD may be what I want to do - but I am pretty scared of bricking this machine and don't know which, if any, to try..

Can you offer any advice?
 
Hi spooksman - welcome to NST.

Add a new Vista entry in EasyBCD. Go to CHange Settings and change the drive for this new Vista entry to "Boot"

Copy bootmgr and the BOOT folder from the XP drive to the Vista one.

Unplug drive 0. Connect the Vista drive to the same slot the XP one used to be connected to. Try to boot -- be sure to use the newly-created Vista entry instead of the old one.

Let me know how that works out for you.
 
Thanks for the quick response - I'll give it a blast when I get a free evening...

Is there any significance in calling the new entry Boot, or could it be anything?

S
 
Don't name the new entry Boot.

Change the DRIVE for the new entry from C:\, D:\, or whatever to boot -- it's name can stay whatever you like it to be :smile:
 
OK - copying the boot folder doesn't seem to work - it says the file BCD is in use by another program?

If I skip that, there seem to be others as well...

I'm pretty scared to restart - wondering if I should just leave well alone

G
 
You'll have to copy it from a bootable CD. You can do so from the recovery console in the XP or Vista DVDs and/or in a GUI with a Linux Live CD w/ NTFS support, or by connecting the drives to another PC and doing it from there.
 
Thansk for all the help so far - is this all down to the fact that the vista DVD can't see my existing system for a repair? Is that cos it is a SATA drive? Is there no way to get the Vista DVD see my existing system?

I guess I am moving out of my area of knowledge a little with recovery consoles and the like - if I boot into one of these, will the 'c' and 'd' be the same?

What are the downsides on me just leaving it alone - I assume i have to ensure i don't format the XP drive, but I'm guessing i can delete all the 'normal stuff' from it.

Ever wish you hadn't started something - :??
 
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