How to change Dual boot to Individual boot.

[churin]

My hardware system has two physical drives and WXP is on the first drive
and WVT(Windows Vista) is on the second drive respectively. The physical
drives, the OSs, the drive names, and the location of WVT's "System"
files and "Boot" files are as follows:

1st Physical drive WXP D: System
2nd Physical drive WVT C: Boot

Note that the drive names shown above are those assigned when WVT is
booted.

My question: How can I remove the WVT's "System" files from WXP, AND
properly add them to WVT's installation? I want each of multiple OS's
installed to be a self-standing installation.

 

[Guest]

My hardware system has two physical drives and WXP is on the first drive
and WVT(Windows Vista) is on the second drive respectively. The physical
drives, the OSs, the drive names, and the location of WVT's "System"
files and "Boot" files are as follows:

1st Physical drive WXP D: System
2nd Physical drive WVT C: Boot

Note that the drive names shown above are those assigned when WVT is
booted.

My question: How can I remove the WVT's "System" files from WXP, AND
properly add them to WVT's installation? I want each of multiple OS's
installed to be a self-standing installation.

if you installed XP first and that drive was bootable before Vista, then it
will be easy. actually it is easy no matter... insert your XP install CD and
boot from it. once booted and you are at the install screen, choose "R" for
repair. this will put you into C: prompt then type "fixboot" then type "exit"
and the system will reboot. thats it you are done.
now you can select the drive from CMOS set up or from BOOT MENU if you have
it. if this did not work post with more info as to how you configured the
system originaly and such so peole here can get a better idea of what you
have.

 

[John Barnes]

Set up your Vista drive as the first in boot priority (so it is the System
drive) Run your vista install DVD and do a repair start (startup - don't
remember exact wording). Reboot and check out booting to Vista. Should now
work fine. Then reset the XP drive as the system drive and either download
VistaBootPro and reset to XP mbr, or using the XP install CD, as Confucious
above instructions indicate, except run fixmbr Reboot and you should now
boot xp from this setup and Vista when it is reset to be the System drive.

 

[Guest]

Set up your Vista drive as the first in boot priority (so it is the System
drive) Run your vista install DVD and do a repair start (startup - don't
remember exact wording). Reboot and check out booting to Vista. Should now
work fine. Then reset the XP drive as the system drive and either download
VistaBootPro and reset to XP mbr, or using the XP install CD, as Confucious
above instructions indicate, except run fixmbr Reboot and you should now
boot xp from this setup and Vista when it is reset to be the System drive.

hey john (not arguing!) why would you need to run "fixmbr" if XP was
installed first. the MBR should still be healthy is just the NTLDR that was
oberwritten by Vista, so doing a "fixboot" would just replace the NTLDR and
then make the drive bootable again with just a single entry in boot.ini for
XP ofcourse.
im not terribly familiar with Windows stuff so im just looking for info.

 

[John Barnes]

He is booting to Vista from the XP drive, that means that the XP mbr has
been overwritten to point to the Vista bootloader.

 

[Guest]

i need to stay out of responding, i thought i understood Windows more than i
do. i will have to find out how Vista rewrites the MBR. dont understand why
it would need to if it is backward compatible. it should be able to keep the
info from the MBR other than the NTLDR since it uses a new boot system.
unless i misunderstood. the MBR is a record for the OS to know what file
system is being used and how the drive is broken up (sector size and all).
which is why i thought just replacing NTLDR would be sufficient.
i guess i have some reading ahead of me.

thanks.

 

[John Barnes]

Don't stay out of responding. The sources I have read indicate the mbr is
different so I suggested adding that step. Very little information about
the Vista boot process seems to be available still, let alone authoritative.

 

[David Wilkinson]

Don't stay out of responding. The sources I have read indicate the mbr is
different so I suggested adding that step. Very little information about
the Vista boot process seems to be available still, let alone authoritative.

When XP alone is installed, the MBR on the first bootable disk points to
the boot sector of the XP partition. If you now install Vista on another
partition (perhaps on a different hard drive) then (as I understand it)
the boot files on the XP partition get modified, but the MBR still
points to the boot sector of the XP partition (as it has to, or nothing
would boot). Now there may be technical differences in the MBR after
Vista is installed, but the key information on where to look for the
boot files must be the same.

Otherwise, boot managers like Ranish ot BootIt NG (BING) would not work,
because they operate by modifying the MBR to a "standard MBR" which
points to the boot sector of the selected OS. Any other info in the MBR
(except the partition table of course) cannot therefore be crucial.

BTW, all these things are much easier to do if you use a third party
boot manager. I highly recommend BING. You can just forget about NTDLR
and the Vista boot loader and all that stuff. Each OS is installed
separately, and you can install or reinstall them in any order. I'm not
sure if BING can recover from a situation where both XP and Vista are
already installed, but it is possible. Certainly you can use it if you
already have one OS installed.

David Wilkinson

 

[John Barnes]

The mbr looks up in its tables the active partition and reads the boot
sector for the bootloader, which has to be on that (system drive) for
Windows. If it is XP it points to ntldr, if Vista to the boot file. As far
as ntldr is concerned, that performs several functions one of which is to
read the boot.ini and either goes driectly to the boot drive in the boot.ini
or presents the menu to select from multiple boot drives. On the boot
partition it loads the ntoskrnl.exe and hal.dll starting XP. Don't know
the process for Vista.

 

[David Wilkinson]

The mbr looks up in its tables the active partition and reads the boot
sector for the bootloader, which has to be on that (system drive) for
Windows. If it is XP it points to ntldr, if Vista to the boot file. As far
as ntldr is concerned, that performs several functions one of which is to
read the boot.ini and either goes driectly to the boot drive in the boot.ini
or presents the menu to select from multiple boot drives. On the boot
partition it loads the ntoskrnl.exe and hal.dll starting XP. Don't know
the process for Vista.

The MBR does not load a file on the active (boot) partition; rather it
transfers control to some address in the boot sector of the active
partition. It seems to me that this address must be the same for a
machine that has only XP on it, and one that has only Vista, and one
that has both. That is why the MBR can be (essentially) the same for
different OS's.

David Wilkinson

 

[John Barnes]

I didn't say the mbr loads a file. From its tables it determines the active
partition and reads the boot sector of that partition for the bootloader
info. But my wording wasn't real clear.

 

[churin]

Thanks everyone responding to my post.
Let me modify my original post as follwos:

Master drive WXP D: System
Slave drive WVT C: Boot

Note the drive names(D:,C, "System" and "Boot" as above are those
shown on Disk Management display of WVT. Another word when WXP is let
boot its drive name becomes C: and the display of "Boot" disappears from
WVT drive.

I know that the original WXP boot sector can be recovered by FIXBOOT but
files for booting WVT called "System" files are still left in the root
of WXP drive. Thus my first question:

1) How can I remove those WVT system files from the WXP drive?

If the boot secter of the WXP partitition is reverted back as above,
then WVT no longer boots. Thus my second question:

2) How can I add the WVT's "System" files to the installed WVT so that
WVT's boot process do not have to go through the WXP?

 

[John Barnes]

Go into your BIOS and change the boot priority so that your Vista drive is
the first HDD in boot prioriry. Then using your Vista install DVD run a
repair of the startup. This will install all the files you need on the
Vista drive.

 

[churin]

You did not answer my question 1) but the problem is that if WXP drive
is left as is then the WVT's "system" files in there are used when the
WVT boots even if the WVT installation is repaired by whatever means.

Maybe there is something wrong with this hardware system. I wonder why
the WVT's "System" files are installed in WXP's drive. The WXP was on
the master drive. The first boot priority drive was swithed from the
master to the slave, then the WVT was installed. Drive name for the WVT
is correctly assigned as C: but the WVT's "System" files went into WXP
drive instead of WVT drive which is contrary to what I expected.

 

[John Barnes]

When you installed, you had the XP drive as your system drive, therefore the
Vista boot files were placed there.
If you want to restore the XP drive booting, download VistaBootPro
http://www.vistabootpro.org/ and with your xp drive as the boot priority
drive, restore XP boot.

 

[Guest]

My hardware system has two physical drives and WXP is on the first drive
and WVT(Windows Vista) is on the second drive respectively. The physical
drives, the OSs, the drive names, and the location of WVT's "System"
files and "Boot" files are as follows:

1st Physical drive WXP D: System
2nd Physical drive WVT C: Boot

Note that the drive names shown above are those assigned when WVT is
booted.

My question: How can I remove the WVT's "System" files from WXP, AND
properly add them to WVT's installation? I want each of multiple OS's
installed to be a self-standing installation.

@John Barnes: your last suggestion is EXACTLY the same as doing what i
originaly posted and what churin knew from the beginning, which is doing
"fixboot".

@churin: this is what i understand: you want to be able to have two bootable
drives being only accesable from "Boot Mneu" or "CMOS" so as far as the OS's
are concerned there is only one. this is very easy and you already know how
to do it.
first start with the XP drive, and do "fixboot" that will make that drive
bootable again just like the first time you installed XP.
second: shut down and unplug the XP drive and boot Vista with the DVD, then
at the second screen (install screen) at the bottom left choose repair. then
at the dialog box highlight your Vista installation and choose next, then
choose "Repair Sart up" at the top of the next dialog box then choose next.
once completed choose finish and the system will reboot. if it did not work
the first time try again. for me twice has been the magic number,but others
have had to do it three times.

thats it now you will have to select each system through Boot Menu or CMOS.
this is the way i run my system no need for "Dual Booting"

hope that helps

 

[churin]

When you installed, you had the XP drive as your system drive, therefore the
Vista boot files were placed there.

I assume that you mean to say:

"When you installed WVT, you had the WXP drive as your system drive,
therefor the WVT "System" files were placed there."

It appears that the "System" file of WVT went to the WXP's drive but I
do not understand why the above is the reason. Please review how I
installed WVT in my previous post.

If you want to restore the XP drive booting, download VistaBootPro
http://www.vistabootpro.org/ and with your xp drive as the boot priority
drive, restore XP boot.

Using VistaBootPro, can I remove all WVT related files from WXP
installation so that what are to be done is not the same as FIXBOOT
under WXP's Recovery Console?

 

[John Barnes]

I assume that you mean to say:

"When you installed WVT, you had the WXP drive as your system drive,
therefor the WVT "System" files were placed there."

Yes


Use WXP Recovery console and do the fixboot (make sure that xp is your
system drive or you will mess up Vista - or if you know how to do it
determine the drive as enumerated in RC by using map and determine the xp
drive, then add that drive letter to the fixboot command see fixboot /? for
info). You will have to remove any Vista files manually. There in nothing
that I know of to remove them, only render them inactive (bypass-ignore, you
pick the word you like)

 

[churin]

@John Barnes: your last suggestion is EXACTLY the same as doing what i
originaly posted and what churin knew from the beginning, which is doing
"fixboot".

@churin: this is what i understand: you want to be able to have two bootable
drives being only accesable from "Boot Mneu" or "CMOS" so as far as the OS's
are concerned there is only one. this is very easy and you already know how
to do it.
first start with the XP drive, and do "fixboot" that will make that drive
bootable again just like the first time you installed XP.
second: shut down and unplug the XP drive and boot Vista with the DVD, then
at the second screen (install screen) at the bottom left choose repair. then
at the dialog box highlight your Vista installation and choose next, then
choose "Repair Sart up" at the top of the next dialog box then choose next.
once completed choose finish and the system will reboot. if it did not work
the first time try again. for me twice has been the magic number,but others
have had to do it three times.

thats it now you will have to select each system through Boot Menu or CMOS.
this is the way i run my system no need for "Dual Booting"

hope that helps

Sorry for this late reply. My internet connection was down this afternoon.

You are right I do switching among multiple OSs by changing boot
priority and/or active drive. The system is more reliable and OS drive
letter is always C:

Back to the topic:
The reason why question 1)is that even the WVT is fixed(I did fix) as
long as the "System" files of WVT are left in WXP installation, then
when booting WVT the "System" files of WVT in the WXP apppears to be
used according to what Disk Management says. Besides, if I attempt to
remove drive letter from WXP, error message says "It can not be removed
because it is being used".

 

[churin]

Yes


Use WXP Recovery console and do the fixboot (make sure that xp is your
system drive or you will mess up Vista - or if you know how to do it
determine the drive as enumerated in RC by using map and determine the xp
drive, then add that drive letter to the fixboot command see fixboot /? for
info). You will have to remove any Vista files manually. There in nothing
that I know of to remove them, only render them inactive (bypass-ignore, you
pick the word you like)

You say "You will have to remove any Vista files manually" but my
question 1) in the origianl post is "How to do it" because I was unable
to do it. I attempted to do from another WXP which is installed in the
same hardware system but to no avail.