I had some problems trying to create two new small partitions on my dual boot hard drive. I finally figured it out and then ran into another problem. XP doesn't want to boot. Here's the gist of whats happening and what led up to it.
Using Acronis Disk Director
Suite I had to first delete all previous efforts and return the drive to
its original two partitions. I then increased free space taking it from
the XP partition and added that free space to the Vista partition.
I then increased free space taking it from the Vista partition and partitioned the new free space into the partitions I wanted and formatted them.
There was a lot of attempts at resizing, moving, creating, deleting and other steps as I learned how to use the Acronis Disk Director Suite to perform its magic.
After I finished the final step in Acronis DDS, it had to reboot to make
the changes. That apparently went well, however now there are problems
with XP booting.
After a final reboot after the changes Xp tried to boot (it is my
default boot). Everything goes fine untill the blue Windows XP screen
appears (light blue in the middle with "Microsoft Windows Xp Logo),
letter boxed with dark blue top and bottom). Then a dialog box opens
identifying itself as Windows Installer and saying that it is preparing to
install. After a few moments the dialog box disappears. Then the
screen begins to occasionally flash and blink. When it flashes you see
a dialog box opening but it closes before you can tell anything except
that it was a dialog box. In between the dialog box flashes, the screen
blinks once in a while. It stays in that mode and appears to never want
to complete booting.
I did a hard shut down and on restart booted to Vista. It booted OK. I
opened EasyBCD and told it to rewrite the MBR. No help.
I rebooted to XP and when the installer dialog box appeared I clicked on
Cancel. It cancelled and then went into flashing and blinking mode again.
Is there a way to actually read the boot file to find out what is
happening? EasyBCD will show me the boot.ini file but nothing else.
I've tried to reboot into XP Safe mode, but that appears to be
impossible. As soon as you tell the boot menu to boot to XP it is too
late to tell it Safe mode.
If I tell it to reboot to Vista, and go into EasyBCD and tell it to
uninstall the Vista Bootloader (use to restore XP) I wonder what will
happen. If that allows a boot into XP, can I install EasyBCD in XP and
maybe get it to rewrite the Vista Bootloader and that will fix the
problem. What will happen if it does *not* allow a proper boot
to XP? How would I get Vista back?
Until the partition boondoggle everything booted and rebooted as advertised using either iReboot or the Start menu options.
Latest Info: Just downloaded the latest build of EasyBCD 2.0. Installed it and ran the tool to auto-configure boot.ini. No help.
I can always use my slipstreamed install disks and reinstall
everything, but I would like to figure this out if for no other reason
than to figure it out.
Anybody got any idea what is trying to install, why it doesn't install and how do I fix this mess so I can get back to dual booting?
Thanks,
Don
Using Acronis Disk Director
Suite I had to first delete all previous efforts and return the drive to
its original two partitions. I then increased free space taking it from
the XP partition and added that free space to the Vista partition.
I then increased free space taking it from the Vista partition and partitioned the new free space into the partitions I wanted and formatted them.
There was a lot of attempts at resizing, moving, creating, deleting and other steps as I learned how to use the Acronis Disk Director Suite to perform its magic.
After I finished the final step in Acronis DDS, it had to reboot to make
the changes. That apparently went well, however now there are problems
with XP booting.
After a final reboot after the changes Xp tried to boot (it is my
default boot). Everything goes fine untill the blue Windows XP screen
appears (light blue in the middle with "Microsoft Windows Xp Logo),
letter boxed with dark blue top and bottom). Then a dialog box opens
identifying itself as Windows Installer and saying that it is preparing to
install. After a few moments the dialog box disappears. Then the
screen begins to occasionally flash and blink. When it flashes you see
a dialog box opening but it closes before you can tell anything except
that it was a dialog box. In between the dialog box flashes, the screen
blinks once in a while. It stays in that mode and appears to never want
to complete booting.
I did a hard shut down and on restart booted to Vista. It booted OK. I
opened EasyBCD and told it to rewrite the MBR. No help.
I rebooted to XP and when the installer dialog box appeared I clicked on
Cancel. It cancelled and then went into flashing and blinking mode again.
Is there a way to actually read the boot file to find out what is
happening? EasyBCD will show me the boot.ini file but nothing else.
I've tried to reboot into XP Safe mode, but that appears to be
impossible. As soon as you tell the boot menu to boot to XP it is too
late to tell it Safe mode.
If I tell it to reboot to Vista, and go into EasyBCD and tell it to
uninstall the Vista Bootloader (use to restore XP) I wonder what will
happen. If that allows a boot into XP, can I install EasyBCD in XP and
maybe get it to rewrite the Vista Bootloader and that will fix the
problem. What will happen if it does *not* allow a proper boot
to XP? How would I get Vista back?
Until the partition boondoggle everything booted and rebooted as advertised using either iReboot or the Start menu options.
Latest Info: Just downloaded the latest build of EasyBCD 2.0. Installed it and ran the tool to auto-configure boot.ini. No help.
I can always use my slipstreamed install disks and reinstall
everything, but I would like to figure this out if for no other reason
than to figure it out.
Anybody got any idea what is trying to install, why it doesn't install and how do I fix this mess so I can get back to dual booting?
Thanks,
Don