Black screen on boot

[Guest]

I have two drive CPata) and DSATA). XP is on Drive C: and Vista on D:.
Having problems with Vista I decided to reinstall it. Before doing it I
tried something that turned out to be very stupid. I disconnected the C:
drive attempted to install XP on the SATA drive just to see if I could. When
it looked as if I could The SATA drive was now the C: drive I hit F3 to quit
and reconnected my C: drive.
Now the boot stops with a cursor top left of a black screen right after POST.
But a bootable CD in the drive it get the dual boot question and I'm up and
running.
I tried FIXMBR and FIXBOOT and the only thing I accomplish is to lose my
dual boot. No way to get to Vista.
No in an attempt to fix it I reinstalled everything starting with XP. I
deleted the partition on C: and recreated it then formatted it. reinstalled
XP and still the same bootable CD is needed in drive. Maybe installing Vista
will help. no way.
This where it stands now a CD(XP) in my CD drive and hoping someone has any
ideas as to what I could do to fix that problem. From what I've read on the
internet redoing the partition and reinstalling shouild have fixed it.

 

[peter]

The problem is that Vista uses a completely different bootloader than
XP...and it was placed on the C drive.
Now that you have "repaired" XP you need to repair the Vista Bootloader this
can be done by booting with the Vista Cd and picking the Repair Installation
option.It will detect both the Vista and the XP installation and "repair"
the Vista Boot Loader.
When you reboot you will again be given the option as to which OS to start
with.
peter

 

[Guest]

Thank you, Peter, for the suggestion but I just tried it and it didn't fix
the problem.
I do tend to come up with the worse kind of problems.
Whatever is supposed to kick the Vista or XP into action is probably what is
damaged.
So how do I get to fix that.

 

[Guest]

Thank you again, Peter for your quick response. Even though it didn't fix my
case it got me in the BIOS to switch booting from CD to DVD and back. And
that's when I looked a little deeper and found that it was setup to boot from
the SATA drive instead of the PATA drive. That fix the problem, a problem
that must be very rare since most people would be smart enough to NOT unplug
the C: drive in the first place. But in case there are other like me around
the fix is there to bail them out if they need it. Thanks again.