Dual Partitions

[Guest]

Ok ? I have xp on 1 partition and Vista on the other my ? is my xp side is
messed up can I format the xp side and not mess up the vista side

 

[Bernie]

If XP is on your primary active partition then after you format you will
lose the dual boot menu. There is a tool that can discover bootable O/Ss

 

[tas]

You may be able to, if the boot manager is on the Vista partition. However,
if it's on the XP partition, and you format it, Vista will be unable to
boot.

You can find out where your boot manager is by starting a Command Prompt
with administrator privileges, and then running bcdedit from the command
line:

C:\>bcdedit

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier {bootmgr}
device partition=D:
description Windows Boot Manager
locale en-US
inherit {globalsettings}
default {current}
displayorder {ntldr}
{current}
toolsdisplayorder {memdiag}
timeout 30

....

<<

The above output from my machine shows that my boot manager is on the
partition labelled D: in Vista (which is C: under XP). This means that
formatting my XP partition would erase the Vista boot manager, and leave
Vista unable to boot.

 

[John Barnett MVP]

The Vista boot details (bootloader) will be on your XP partition, therefore,
if you reformat, you will loose the Vista bootloader and be unable to boot
to Vista.

--
John Barnett MVP
Associate Expert
http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org

The information in this mail is supplied "as is". No warranty of any kind,
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[Colin Barnhorst]

Rather than reformat, first run "sfc /scannow" in an XP Run box. If that
does not fix the system then do Repair Installation of Windows.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315341/en-us