Dual Boot Configuration Problem

[Guest]

Because of the curiosity factor involved in seeing how a x64 OS would respond
to the digital media apps that I run on my 64bit processor, I decided to
install Vista x64 on a spare 40GB PATA drive on my x86 XP SATA setup.

I installed the drive and then ran setup directly from the DVD during
startup (I did not boot into XP first.) During setup, in the graphic
presentation of the partitions available for installation, I notice that the
spare drive (listed in the second column) had some old data on it, so I
formatted it and then proceed with the install without incidence.

Upon restart of the machine, after updating some of the drivers, I noticed
that I booted directly into Vista without a boot menu showing a choice for a
previous windows installation. After another restart to confirm that I had
the SATA drive selected as the first boot device in the BIOS, I again went
directly into Vista. I then checked the Startup and Recovery settings under
the Advanced tab of the System Properties, and noticed that Windows Vista was
the only operating system listed. After another restart, I noticed that the
installation DVD was still in the drive, prompting me to strike any key for
setup, then booting straight into Vista instead of the boot menu or XP.
Thinking that the DVD had something to do with the drives being recognized, I
ejected it, then restarted and then booted directly to XP. In XP, the Vista
installation shows up as my G: drive. In Vista, the XP installation shows up
as the D: drive. The drive letter assignments don't bother me. What bothers
me is that the bootsector was installed on the wrong drive.

First of all, why would the DVD interrupt the normal boot process like that?
Second, how do I get the Vista bootsector installed on the primary boot
device, which holds the ntldr/boot.ini files for the XP installation? Can I
move the boot folder to that drive? I can't run bootsect.exe from the DVD,
because its not a Win32 app. VistaBootPro was no help, either.

 

[Bones]

Have you tried booting from the dvd and running the Vista startup recovery
tool? I havent tried this yet, but you should be able to run bootsetc from
the dvd by booting to the recovery options (WinRE) and running a command
prompt from there.
I am assuiming that vista installed the boot manager to the pata drive
because the sata drivers were not installed during Vista setup (there is an
option called 'load drivers' at the partitioning screen during setup

 

[Guest]

No I haven't. I will try that.

During setup, the sata drives showed up in the list of drives to install to,
though.

 

[andy]

Because of the curiosity factor involved in seeing how a x64 OS would respond
to the digital media apps that I run on my 64bit processor, I decided to
install Vista x64 on a spare 40GB PATA drive on my x86 XP SATA setup.

I installed the drive and then ran setup directly from the DVD during
startup (I did not boot into XP first.) During setup, in the graphic
presentation of the partitions available for installation, I notice that the
spare drive (listed in the second column) had some old data on it, so I
formatted it and then proceed with the install without incidence.

Upon restart of the machine, after updating some of the drivers, I noticed
that I booted directly into Vista without a boot menu showing a choice for a
previous windows installation. After another restart to confirm that I had
the SATA drive selected as the first boot device in the BIOS, I again went
directly into Vista. I then checked the Startup and Recovery settings under
the Advanced tab of the System Properties, and noticed that Windows Vista was
the only operating system listed. After another restart, I noticed that the
installation DVD was still in the drive, prompting me to strike any key for
setup, then booting straight into Vista instead of the boot menu or XP.
Thinking that the DVD had something to do with the drives being recognized, I
ejected it, then restarted and then booted directly to XP. In XP, the Vista
installation shows up as my G: drive. In Vista, the XP installation shows up
as the D: drive. The drive letter assignments don't bother me. What bothers
me is that the bootsector was installed on the wrong drive.

You're pretty much at the mercy of how your motherboard BIOS behaves.
I have a Biostar K8NHA Grand motherboard that uses a Phoenix-Award
BIOS. Whichever disk that I place first under Hard Disk Boot Priority
is the one that the BIOS enumerates as the first disk, which makes it
the one where Windows setup will put the boot files.

With your motherboard, if there's a PATA disk installed, the BIOS
enumerates it as the first disk, regardless of which disk you
designate to boot from.

First of all, why would the DVD interrupt the normal boot process like that?

One thing the Windows CD/DVD boot software does is to check the first
disk to see if it's bootable. If it determines that the disk is not
bootable, it immediately runs Windows setup; in other words, you do
not see the "Press any key to boot from the CD/DVD..." prompt. If, on
the other hand, the first disk is bootable, you do see the "Press any
key to boot from the CD/DVD..." prompt, and if you don't boot from the
CD/DVD, then it lets the computer boot from the first disk.