Dual Booting XP & Vista

[Brian]

I have XP on one hard drive and Vista on another...when Vista was installed,
the XP drive was unplugged and not added to the bootmgr. I want to add the
XP install to the bootmgr, so I don't have to keep changing in the BIOS.

You may doubt this is possible, except my XP install was once part of a
different Vista install, so has already been modified

Before you draw conclusions, read below:

SCENARIO:
First I had XP installed on Hard Drive A

Then I Installed Vista onto Hard Drive A on a separate partition with a
working Dual Boot that gave selections for Legacy and Vista.

Since that install, I decided to create Hard Drive B, which was a RAID 5
configuration on a separate SATA controller set. I wanted to basically
re-install vista on this hard-drive and migrate my setup, while keeping XP
installed on Hard Drive A.

I was unable to easily get vista onto the RAID 5, because of the problems
with nvidia nforce4 drivers, and it wouldn't install while Hard Drive A was
plugged in. Eventually I unplugged hard drive A and successfully installed
Vista on hard drive B. Since this was an OEM disc, my other Vista install on
Hard Drive A no longer worked....

Since then, I have been forced to switch whether hdd B or hdd A is my
primary drive in the BIOS to switch between XP and Vista instead of using the
BootMGR screen.

Do you think I can grab the Vista modified Bootsect.BAK from the XP Root on
hdd A and somehow add it to my Vista Bootmgr on hdd B?

 

[John Inzer]

I have XP on one hard drive and Vista on another...when Vista was
installed, the XP drive was unplugged and not added to the bootmgr.
I want to add the XP install to the bootmgr, so I don't have to keep
changing in the BIOS.

You may doubt this is possible, except my XP install was once part of
a different Vista install, so has already been modified

Before you draw conclusions, read below:

SCENARIO:
First I had XP installed on Hard Drive A

Then I Installed Vista onto Hard Drive A on a separate partition
with a working Dual Boot that gave selections for Legacy and Vista.

Since that install, I decided to create Hard Drive B, which was a
RAID 5 configuration on a separate SATA controller set. I wanted to
basically re-install vista on this hard-drive and migrate my setup,
while keeping XP installed on Hard Drive A.

I was unable to easily get vista onto the RAID 5, because of the
problems with nvidia nforce4 drivers, and it wouldn't install while
Hard Drive A was plugged in. Eventually I unplugged hard drive A and
successfully installed Vista on hard drive B. Since this was an OEM
disc, my other Vista install on Hard Drive A no longer worked....

Since then, I have been forced to switch whether hdd B or hdd A is my
primary drive in the BIOS to switch between XP and Vista instead of
using the BootMGR screen.

Do you think I can grab the Vista modified Bootsect.BAK from the XP
Root on hdd A and somehow add it to my Vista Bootmgr on hdd B?

===========================
Maybe the following link will be useful:

VistaBootPRO
http://www.vistabootpro.org/index.php
(scroll down to the download link)

--

John Inzer
MS Picture It! -
Digital Image MVP

Digital Image
Highlights and FAQs
http://tinyurl.com/aczzp

Notice
This is not tech support
I am a volunteer

Solutions that work for
me may not work for you

Proceed at your own risk

 

[Brian]

I have vistabootpro 3.3. installed. I have been trying to figure it out, but
simply creating a new OS entry allows for a selection in the bootmgr, but
then when the legacy entry is selected, the message: NTLDR is either missing
or corrupt. Where can I find the loader file?

 

[Mick Murphy]

NTDETECT.COM
boot.ini
NTLDR are your boot files.

Have a look in i386

 

[andy]

Copy hidden files ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini from the XP drive
to the Vista drive.

 

[John Barnes]

Follows Andy's advice and be prepared to modify the boot.ini as necessary.

 

[Brian]

Now i have the hidden files: ntldr, NTDETEC.COM, and Boot.ini on my desktop
in Vista, copied from XP. I dont' really know what to do next with
VistabootPro or BCDedit, because they don't seem to recognize the hdd that XP
is installed on.

 

[Brian]

I have solved my problem:
The main consideration is that the XP hdd was unplugged when Vista was
installed.

By following the Directions listed here:
http://www.pro-networks.org/forum/about84455.html

I can now boot into both operating systems with the Bios set to always boot
to hdd A

Thanks for everyone's help