Tri boot mess up?

[sturdyworks]

I have an extra (zero byte) D: drive in XP. Can anyone see an entry in the diagnostic output that I need to fix?

I installed XP then Vista on first drive then Fedora on a second drive. Next reinstalled Vista as BootManger and made a NeoGrub entry for Fedora. All the OSs boot fine and are usable.

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier {9dea862c-5cdd-4e70-acc1-f32b344d4795}
device partition=D:
description Windows Boot Manager
locale en-US
inherit {7ea2e1ac-2e61-4728-aaa3-896d9d0a9f0e}
default {800bf49d-d32f-11dd-946c-a5f756ea7c12}
resumeobject {800bf49e-d32f-11dd-946c-a5f756ea7c12}
displayorder {466f5a88-0af2-4f76-9038-095b170dc21c}
{800bf49d-d32f-11dd-946c-a5f756ea7c12}
{677c6819-d290-11dd-93c4-00219b82cacb}
toolsdisplayorder {b2721d73-1db4-4c62-bf78-c548a880142d}
timeout 10
Windows Legacy OS Loader
------------------------
identifier {466f5a88-0af2-4f76-9038-095b170dc21c}
device partition=D:
path \ntldr
description XP Professional
Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {800bf49d-d32f-11dd-946c-a5f756ea7c12}
device partition=C:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Vista Ultimate
locale en-US
inherit {6efb52bf-1766-41db-a6b3-0ee5eff72bd7}
osdevice partition=C:
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {800bf49e-d32f-11dd-946c-a5f756ea7c12}
nx OptIn
Real-mode Boot Sector
---------------------
identifier {677c6819-d290-11dd-93c4-00219b82cacb}
device partition=D:
path \NST\NeoGrub.mbr
description Fedora 10 (2.6.27.9-159.fc10.x86_64)

 

[Terry60]

Hi sturdy, welcome to NST.
The BCD display shows that Vista boots as C:, but it's bootfiles (and those for Linux and XP) are on the partition Vista calls D:\ (that will be the "system" "active" partition in your disk management display)
Is this the partition you're talking about ?
Or are you saying that XP boots as C:\ , sees Vista and Linux as x:\ and y:\ and an additional empty D:\ partition ?
I don't quite understand your problem.

 

[Coolname007]

It seems to me that XP is on D:/, and Vista on C:/ while booted in Vista (assuming of course you're using EasyBCD from Vista, not XP)...and additionally, according to that, there is also an extra D:/, which must be the second drive, that Fedora 10 is on... Though why it would be called D:/ as well, instead of a different drive letter, i simply don't know... And like Terry said, the Vista boot files appear to be on the XP partition, which is D:/, as well...

-Coolname007

 

[Terry60]

The reason everything other than winload.exe is pointing at D:\ is because it's the "system" drive.
It's where all the bootloaders are to be found (Vista's XP's and Linux's), and the BCD is just chaining to them for everything other than Vista. For Vista it reads the entry to locate winload.exe from C:\windows\system32
The others in turn will load their respective systems using their own pointers.

 

[Coolname007]

The reason everything other than winload.exe is pointing at D:\ is because it's the "system" drive.
It's where all the bootloaders are to be found (Vista's XP's and Linux's), and the BCD is just chaining to them for everything other than Vista. For Vista it reads the entry to locate winload.exe from C:\windows\system32
The others in turn will load their respective systems using their own pointers.

Ahh...ok. I understand it now! So what you're basically saying then is the XP (as well as Vista's, and Fedora 10's) boot files are on D:\, which is the Vista partition (instead of C:\, like i originally thought was the Vista partition)? But if D:\ is Vista, why would the winload.exe file be on the XP partition (namely C:\), since it is a Vista boot file? it seems to me that it should be on D:\ instead...:wtf:

-Coolname007

 

[Terry60]

No Cool, C:\ is Vista, but D:\ is where the boot files are (including Vista's).
Vista's bootmgr and BCD don't have to be on the Vista partition (they're on my XP disk for example).
Remember that a second Vista is designed to install using a pre-existing BCD on another partition, so there's no requirement for the Vista files to be with Vista.
Even when there's only one Vista, it's quite happy to have its boot files somewhere completely different.
That's why we say to copy XP boot files to the "active" "system" partition, and not to the C:\ disk or to the Vista partition. Though they're often the same thing and the latter advice would work, they don't have to be, hence the former advice.

 

[Coolname007]

No Cool, C:\ is Vista, but D:\ is where the boot files are (including Vista's).
Vista's bootmgr and BCD don't have to be on the Vista partition (they're on my XP disk for example).
Remember that a second Vista is designed to install using a pre-existing BCD on another partition, so there's no requirement for the Vista files to be with Vista.
Even when there's only one Vista, it's quite happy to have its boot files somewhere completely different.
That's why we say to copy XP boot files to the "active" "system" partition, and not to the C:\ disk or to the Vista partition. Though they're often the same thing and the latter advice would work, they don't have to be, hence the former advice.

Oh...:S Now i understand it...thanks! Of course i knew before that having the Vista bootmgr and BCD on a different partition other than Vista's would probably work...but the fact that everything other than winload.exe was pointed at D:\ confused me, even after you explained it to me the last time. It seems i was right the first time about where XP and Vista were then, what drive letter.

But that still doesn't answer the original question though, which was that there was an extra partition with the D:/ letter, with zero bytes (i assume that means that its completely empty?), and how to get rid of it. What our discussion has simply pointed out, is that the diagonstic data shows that everything, except for winload.exe, is pointed to the D:\ drive...the very one that he said had nothing on it! So how would you answer that then? it seems to me that his original problem is still unsolved...

Cheers!

-Coolname007