Vista boots but XP only boots if Vista DVD in drive

J

JimmyG

Member
Hi,

I am attempting to setup dual booting with Vista Ultimate and XP Pro. Each operating system has its own physical drive with a single partition on each drive.

Vista Ultimate (SATA II - setup as SATA Master)
XP Pro (IDE - setup as IDE Master)

I am using Easy BCD (latest version) and the dual booting works fine for both Vista and XP Pro when I have the Vista DVD inserted as the machine boots. I just don't boot from the DVD and select the OS I want to boot when I get to the BootLoader.

However, when I don't have the Vista DVD inserted, only Vista will boot - XP Pro just goes to a blank screen with initially some hard disk activity but then nothing. I have to reset the machine to continue.

The IDE Win XP drive is my original drive, initially I disconnected it when I connected the SATA II drive and installed Vista. Later I read that doing this was a bad idea as Vista rewrites the MBR and as it doesn't know about the IDE XP Pro drive things go bad. So I did reinstall of Vista onto the SATA II drive whilst having the IDE drive connected.

Any advice on how I could overcome having to keep the Vista DVD in drive on boot for XP Pro to work?

Here are my Easy BCD settings

Overview

There are a total of 2 entries listed in the Vista Bootloader.
Bootloader TimeOut: 30 seconds.
Default OS: Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate

Entry #1

Name: Microsoft Windows XP Professional
BCD ID: {ntldr}
Drive: D:\
Bootloader Path: \ntldr

Entry #2

Name: Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate
BCD ID: {current}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe
Windows Directory: \Windows



Detailed

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 {371caf40-1bf0-11dc-bb72-ff06d5add6d3}
displayorder {466f5a88-0af2-4f76-9038-095b170dc21c}
{371caf40-1bf0-11dc-bb72-ff06d5add6d3}
toolsdisplayorder {b2721d73-1db4-4c62-bf78-c548a880142d}
timeout 30

Windows Legacy OS Loader
------------------------
identifier {466f5a88-0af2-4f76-9038-095b170dc21c}
device partition=D:
path \ntldr
description Microsoft Windows XP Professional

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {371caf40-1bf0-11dc-bb72-ff06d5add6d3}
device partition=C:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate
locale en-US
inherit {6efb52bf-1766-41db-a6b3-0ee5eff72bd7}
osdevice partition=C:
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {371caf41-1bf0-11dc-bb72-ff06d5add6d3}
nx OptIn

boot.ini (from drive where XP is installed)

;
;Warning: Boot.ini is used on Windows XP and earlier operating systems.
;Warning: Use BCDEDIT.exe to modify Windows Vista boot options.
;
[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" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT





Cheers

Jimmy
 
EasyBCD -> Manage Bootloader -> Reinstall Vista bootloader.
EasyBCD -> Add/Remove -> Windows XP

Hope that helps :smile:
 
Hi,

Thanks for the reply, Whilst in Vista, I re-installed the Vista Bootloader and then deleted and re-added the Win XP Pro entry in Easy BCD. Unfortunately, I still got the same result when trying to boot Win XP Pro without the Vista DVD inserted in drive. Just a blank screen with some initial hard drive activity.

Could it be an issue with the drive letters? Should the Win XP Pro entry be pointing to C:\ instead of D:\? Any help appreciated..

EDIT: I also noticed that the order in which the operating systems appear in Bootloader changes when I have the Vista DVD inserted in drive.

When the DVD is inserted I get

Microsoft XP Professional
Microsoft Vista Ultimate

but if the DVD is not inserted I get

Microsoft Vista Ultimate
Microsoft XP Professional

Is the order different because its getting the boot configuration from two different places? Whilst in Vista, I looked at EasyBCD - Add/Remove Entries and Vista is at the top of the list followed by XP Pro which matches what I see when the DVD is not inserted.

Thanks

Jimmy.
 
OK, everything is fine on the BCD-end.

Now it's just boot.ini you need to configure.

Go to Add/Remove -> Linux and look at the list of partitions on your PC. Identify the one for XP.
In boot.ini, set disk() equal to the value shown in EasyBCD's drive list, and partition() equal to the easybcd value + 1
 
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