Triple boot: 1 vista 32 + 2 XPs 32

[electric zoo]

Hi there,

I just bought a Lenovo laptop with a pre-installed vista, and installed Windows Xp sp2 on another partition. So far, after using openBCD, everything worked well.

Then, I installed another instance of Windows Xp sp2 on a logical partition. After some manipulations, i'm having the three systems listed on vista's boot, but after selecting any of the two XP instances, the "XP-style" boot selection appears, and i got to select one once again.

My question is: is there a way to have the three systems directly selectable on the main boot, and get rid of the second screen? I'm trying to use iReboot for easier manipulations, and the app is useless with this kind of configuration.

Some details: the Vista partition is active

My detailed easyBCD settings:

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier {9dea862c-5cdd-4e70-acc1-f32b344d4795}
device partition=C:
description Windows Boot Manager
locale en-US
inherit {7ea2e1ac-2e61-4728-aaa3-896d9d0a9f0e}
default {e8709fb6-fa5f-11db-be4d-e219ece5282e}
displayorder {e8709fb6-fa5f-11db-be4d-e219ece5282e}
{19a1f393-e337-11dc-9e81-001b24d4cde6}
{19a1f395-e337-11dc-9e81-001b24d4cde6}
toolsdisplayorder {b2721d73-1db4-4c62-bf78-c548a880142d}
timeout 5
Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {e8709fb6-fa5f-11db-be4d-e219ece5282e}
device partition=C:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Vista
locale en-US
inherit {6efb52bf-1766-41db-a6b3-0ee5eff72bd7}
osdevice partition=C:
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {e8709fb7-fa5f-11db-be4d-e219ece5282e}
nx OptOut
Real-mode Boot Sector
---------------------
identifier {19a1f393-e337-11dc-9e81-001b24d4cde6}
device partition=D:
path \NTLDR
description Live
Real-mode Boot Sector
---------------------
identifier {19a1f395-e337-11dc-9e81-001b24d4cde6}
device partition=E:
path \NTLDR
description MAO

And my boot.ini file, on the C: partiton:

[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINDOWS="MAO" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Live" /fastdetect

There's a NTDLR file on each partition.

Hope eveything is clear, and thanks for your time!

 

[Terry60]

Hi Mr Zoo, or can I call you electric? Welcome to the forum.
When Vista bootloader is told to boot XP, it hands control to NTLDR on the system active disk, which refers to the boot.ini in the same root, which in turn has multiple XPs listed (if they exist). Hence the second boot menu.
However Neosmart have a product in late Beta called Vista Hide 'n Seek (HnS), which as the name suggests hides Vista from XP to overcome the XP forward compatibility problem (it thinks Vista's differently configured restore folders are corrupt, and turns them into XP format, thus screwing Vista's shadow copies and restore points)
Now you are dual booting you should be considering this incompatibilty if you have any desire to be able to recover your Vista system in the future.
If you are not a user of sys rec, HnS might still be of interest to you, since it was designed to improve the previous method of protecting sys rec by using Neogrub, which also required a 2 stage boot.
HnS is a "master bootloader" which sits atop the WIndows versions and hands control down to each (including multiple XPs) from a single level boot menu.
Look at the sticky thread in "ideas and wishlists" for its history and a download link

You will, if you use it, have to cease using iReboot for the moment because it knows nothing of HnS which is still in Beta.
see http://neosmart.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1998 for more detail.