Vista Dual Boot Problem, Restore Vista

J

jd5443uk

Member
Hey guys, Brand new to these forums but have been browsing around for the past few days trying to find the answer to my problem, hope I am posting this in the right place.

So I have a Compaq Presario c700 and it came pre-installed with Vista Home Premium on Drive C, A Restore partition on Drive D and DVD R/W on Drive E.

I am a music producer / engineer and I decided that I wanted to dual boot my laptop, Vista for all of my personal things, IM / MySpace etc and XP for all my recording software, Cubase / Reason etc.

So here's what I did, Using the facillitys in vista I shrunk my vista partition to half and called the second half of the patition "Recording" I then restarted my computer, went into the bios and disabled SATA support, I then booted my XP CD.

When the XP CD loaded I saw my three partitions, Vista, Recording and Recovery, I chose to format and install XP onto Recording and the setup ran smoothly, after setup had completed my system restarted and I wasn't given the option to boot vista or XP it just automatically booted XP but halfway through bootup I got the blue screen of death, this happend everytime I restarted my computer, I then re-enabled SATA support to see if I could boot vista but no luck.

So as I could not access my Vista boot or my XP I decided to delete both partitions, so I disabled SATA again and formatted both partitions I did not touch my recovery Partition before I installed XP I went into dos and ran Diskpart and split my hard drive into 2 halfs, (again completely leaving the Restore partition alone) I now have XP installed, great, XP is working fine apart from I need to install my drivers but this is not a problem.

Here is my problem, When I boot up my computer I press f11 to boot my restore so I can install my vista onto my free partition but when I press f11 it confirms that I have chosen to restore but it just boots my XP, When I go into My Computer on XP I notice that my drive letters have changed.

My Restore is now C, My Free Patition is D, My XP Partition is E and my DVDRW Drive is F

I'm thinking that my system resotre for vista will not work becuase my drive letter for the partition has changed, but when i try to chance the partition in XP it says I cant becasue the Drive I am trying to change is bootable.

Is there any way I can change the drive letter of my restore back to D?
And does anyone have any other ideas?

Thank you in advance for your help!
Jay
 
Hi Jay, welcome to the boards.
When you install XP after Vista, XP overwrites the Vista boot and you temporarily lose access to your Vista system because the XP NTLDR is not forward compatible. At that stage you should have repaired the Vista boot, and you would have had a dual boot system, in which you could have followed the XP troubleshooter in the wiki to fix the BSOD in XP.

I assume that your problem getting to your recovery partition is related, since your system was originally Vista only, you'll still need to repair the Vista bootloader.

Look here in the wiki
http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Repairing+the+Windows+Vista+Bootloader
Don't worry about the disk lettering, that's just what XP is calling them. When you recover your Vista, it will still call them what they were originally.
I don't have a pre-installed Vista. I installed it from DVD on a home-built system, so I don't have a recovery partition like you, so I'm not sure how yours will work. It might restore the system to look exactly the way you started, (i.e. all Vista) and make you start your dual boot all over again.
If it does, make sure you read the wiki about installing XP after Vista, so you understand, and have the facilities ready to repair your Vista boot
 
The first thing i have to say is a HUGE thank you
I am now back running vista and I cannot tell you what a relief that is!

However I am still determined to Dual boot but I am having a problem with SATA
When I disable Sata, Vista will not load, it gets to the vista boot screen and I get the blue screen of death!
however when I enable SATA my XP Installation will not find my hard drive.
So I tried disabling SATA, Installing XP And then Re-enabling SATA but then Vista Will boot but I get the blue screen of death on the XP Boot screen...

Please help,

Again thank you so much with you're previous help.
I've been really worried about it for the past 2 days haha
 
I take it your XP is pre SP2, because SP2 contains SATA support and installs without a problem. You'll need to get the SATA drivers and load them from floppy at the beginning of your XP install, or else slipstream SP2 into your XP installation before you install it.
Unfortunately I have no expertise in that area, since my XP is post SP2, but if you search round the forums you'll find threads on that topic, or hang around for a little while till Mak or Guru are around, and they'll point you in the right direction.
 
Take note of which mode you got your XP working in (w/with out SATA) and then see if your Vista cd well allow you to perform an install in that mode (Vista should have more support). While playing around with dual booting, i've noticed that 99% of the time Windows installs tend to only boot in the mode you have installed them in. If this works, I recommend you have both installed when in the same mode so you do not need to keep having to switch on/off SATA support. For me, I simply wiped the entire drive on my laptop and started fresh (installing xp then vista), however in your case, modifying the recovery partition in any way well prevent you from using the factory image (at least thats how it is on Dells - I played around with my partitions on my desktop and even though I have a utility partition I cannot boot it.). I recommend installing XP first, but It can be done either way.

By the way, the drive lettering problem is correct. On my laptop, my XP lists drive C: for itself and drive D: for Vista. Vista lists the opposite, showing itself as drive C: and XP as drive D:. This seems to be perfectly normal and should not affect the ability to dual boot between the two.
 
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Hi Kairo, welcome, and thanks for advising.
Jay, I'm a little mystified now as to why you turned off SATA support before installing XP ? Are you saying you tried it and it wouldn't work, or that you just assumed it wouldn't ?
I have a dual boot, Vista 64bit and XP SP2 32bit, on the first two partitions of a SATA HDD, with XP installed after Vista (to do what would no longer work in Vista), and apart from the repair of the Vista bootloader, which was expected, the installations were straightforward.
 
Hi guys, thanks for your feedback,

Terry,
My computer came with vista with SATA enabled in the bios, when attempting to run an XP installtion it would not recodnise my hard drive so I had to disable SATA in the bios, after disabling SATA in the bios XP would install but on vista boot I got the BSOD, after sucessfully installing XP I enabled SATA in the Bios again and Vista loaded fine but got the BSOD when trying to load XP, have I done somthing wrong?

Thanks in advance
 
You said your XP was SP2. Is that the level you were running it at on a previous system, (ie fully Windows Updated), or the way it came when you bought it ? (Does it actually say SP2 on the CD ?)
 
Hey Terry,
Yes, it is a Windows XP Service Pack 2 CD that I bought from PC world about 2 / 3 years ago

The CD says "Windows XP Home Edition, Includes Service pack 2 Version 2002"
 
Can't offer an explanation of why it won't install in that case Jay, that's exactly what mine says too. Wait around for Guru or Mak, who seem to reinstall their systems several times a week, and will maybe have come across the problem before.
 
The thing is that XP does ot come with SATA drivers on the disc like Vista does. That is why when you boot wit the XP Disc you can not run your SATA Drives. IF you wish to do so you will need to follow the steps outlined in this guide:

How to keep WinXP really fast stable - Computer Forums

There EricB outlines how you use Autostreamer to slipstream drivers into the disc to use for install. Doing this method will allow for you to use the XP CD to boot and install with SATA Drives.

There is another method as well. Using nlite. But i would recommend using AutoStreamer first.
 
Mak, My SP2 XP CD just booted and installed straight to my second partition on a SATA HDD without any further intervention. My only real driver problem was getting the ATi graphics loaded, and the solution to that was temporarily connecting the monitor as analogue to get the standard VGA driver as a stand-in till the real PCI-E graphics went on.
I took no special measures to get it to recognize the SATA drive. It was all automatic.
 
You XP SP2 disc sounds like a very new version. Cause i know my disc didnt have the SATA drivers at all. It could be that your disc was OEM and create with the drivers??

I know my disc wasnt and i had to use these steps to produce a XP and a MCE disc that i could use for install.
 
No my XP is Windows XP Home Edition Upgrade Includes Service Pack 2 Version 2002 Copyright 2004
Part Number X10-52221
 
Terry60 said:
No my XP is Windows XP Home Edition Upgrade Includes Service Pack 2 Version 2002 Copyright 2004
Part Number X10-52221
Click to expand...
As i stated Terry that could jsut be the generic SATA drivers that are built in. I have a MCE disc from 2005 that does not have them. I had to slipstream them. My XP Pro disc is from Feb 2007 and that did not have them either.

So my guess is that XP has very generic SATA drivers for some older machines. The newer ones the SATA Drivers are not on there.
 
Must just be HP's CD then. Dell's 2005 XP SP2 CD works just fine and I've set up a SATA system before with the full retail CD w/o SP2 slipstreamed.

If you have another computer and hard drive you don't need in somewhat a similar configuration, it might be possible to cheat the system by setting up XP there and then taking an image of it to put on your laptop.
 
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