Moving boot files from one drive to another.

[david manvell]

I have two hard drives (Physical drives). one drive was installed first and
has windows xp pro x64 on it. I later bought the upgrade to windows vista
ultimate x64. When I installed vista x64 on the 2nd drive the plan was to
duel boot till I was certian vista was working fine then remove the first
hard drive (The one containing xp64) from the computer. When I do so the
system will not boot up as the boot stuff appears to be on the original drive.

How can I move the boot files from the first drive (Windows xp64 drive) to
the second one (Windows vista ultimate x64 drive) so I can remove the first
hard drive?

 

[david manvell]

If the partition with XP on was set as the Active partition when you
run the Vista installer, it will have written Vista's boot files on
that partition. If you format or remove the XP partition, you lose
Vista's ability to boot.

I don't know if you can copy the bootmgr and boot folder in the way you
are suggesting, as I've never tried it...perhaps someone else does .

The normal way to replace Vista's bootloader ( sometimes because it has
been replaced by replaced by XP's - if it's installed after Vista ) is
to use the MS install dvd to do startup repair - you might try that
with just the second hd attached and the Vista partition set to active.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/91467-startup-repair.html

Or, as this is a recent Vista install , you may prefer to reinstall
from scratch just using the second hd.

I believe you can't "upgrade " in the sense of doing an upgrade install
when going from XP pro x64 to Vista - you have to do a clean install. In
which case tho. you may have paid an "upgrade" price , you actually have
the full version dvd ?

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/117366-clean-install-full-version-vista.html

Hope this helps

SIW2

Both my XP64 and my Vista 64 partitions are listed as Active partitions. I
can try to do the repair and see how it goes. Always scary you will lose
everything when messing with that stuff.

When you go from xp64 to vista 64 it is counted as an upgrade from a
licensing stand point as I had to have the xp64 on my system in order for the
upgrade to proceed but it only does the upgrade as a clean install. It would
not overwrite the xp64 when it did it.

 

[AJR]

David - in a dual bootsetup - XP uses boot.ini and Vista does not (it uses
BCDStore) as a boot manager. Boot.ini XP partition/drive boots XP or refers
selection to the Vista boot manager on the Vista partition.\drive.

Your problem is very common - download a third party boot manager such as
VistaPro or EasyBCD - follow provided instructions for solution.

 

[david manvell]

David - in a dual bootsetup - XP uses boot.ini and Vista does not (it uses
BCDStore) as a boot manager. Boot.ini XP partition/drive boots XP or refers
selection to the Vista boot manager on the Vista partition.\drive.

Your problem is very common - download a third party boot manager such as
VistaPro or EasyBCD - follow provided instructions for solution.

I'm making some progress.

Right now VistBoot pro 3.3 is telling me the following:

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

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {current}
device partition=J:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate x64
locale en-US
inherit {bootloadersettings}
osdevice partition=J:
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {c98a4d4c-b9c3-11dc-9554-c22fb0668d69}
nx OptIn


So I have successfully removed the older Windows XP64 off of the boot loader
but the Boot manager is still on the C: drive instead of the J: Drive where
Windows Vista x64 is located. I cannot seem to find a way to move the Boot
Manager to the J: so I can yank the C: drive out completely. If VistaBoot pro
3.3 will do that or not i have not figured out how.

I cannot find my original Vista disks anywhere to do a system repair. Is
there a way to recreate or move the Boot Manager to the J: drive without the
Windows Vista disk or can I get a replacement copy of my Vista disk from
microsoft?

Can I use my older Windows XP Professional x64 disks to do a repair and
create a Boot manager on the J: ?

 

[david manvell]

Hi,

MS provide replacement media for about $10 - you will need your product
key though

'Windows Vista Alternate Media'
(http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/1033/ordermedia/default.mspx)

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/85023-product-key-number.html

Hope that helps

SIW2

"We're sorry, the following error(s) have occurred:
The Product Key you have entered is invalid. Please try again."

Any suggestions?

 

[david manvell]

"We're sorry, the following error(s) have occurred:
The Product Key you have entered is invalid. Please try again."

Any suggestions?

Bah I called Microsoft directly and after an hour of haggling with them
finally got them to send me a replacement disk. $50.40 ($25.00 was to have it
shipped 1-3 days instead of the 10 day shipping method).

Now just have to wait for the disk to get here.

There is no other way to have the Boot manager written to the J: drive
without the windows installation disk?

 

[david manvell]

The alternative is to download a free recovery disk image and burn it
to cd . I believe it gives the same startup repair options as the MS
dvd. (When you find your MS dvd , use isorecorder to make a bootable
back-up copy)

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/141820-create-recovery-disc.html

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/91467-startup-repair.html

'ISO Recorder v3' (http://alexfeinman.brinkster.net/Vista.htm)

Your XP disk won't be able to do this.


Hope that helps

SIW2

Arrrgh! I just cant win. Downloaded the Bit Torrent file and no one else out
there currently has it for upload so there are no sources to get it from.
It's still searching...

 

[david manvell]

Arrrgh! I just cant win. Downloaded the Bit Torrent file and no one else out

there currently has it for upload so there are no sources to get it from.
It's still searching...

Hah! it found 1 source. Downloading now.

 

[david manvell]

I'm running the Windows Repair utility and it wants to know what OS I have
nstalled that it shoudl fix and no Operating systems are listed in the
window. It says to insert a disk with the drivers for the hard drives so it
can load the hard drives to look for OSs. Any idea how I can get drivers for
the hard drives onto a disk? I have no idea where the drivers are located nor
how to get them onto a disk.

Odd that it would list the drives found as being the floppy, both CD/DVDs
and my external 1T USB drive but it does not see the scsi drive.

I tried just hitting next to bypass that requestor and have it fix it anyway
.. When I do it allows me to fix the problem but it says it needs to reboot
and when i do its just an endless loop. It never fixes it.

 

[david manvell]

I'm running the Windows Repair utility and it wants to know what OS I have
nstalled that it shoudl fix and no Operating systems are listed in the
window. It says to insert a disk with the drivers for the hard drives so it
can load the hard drives to look for OSs. Any idea how I can get drivers for
the hard drives onto a disk? I have no idea where the drivers are located nor
how to get them onto a disk.

Odd that it would list the drives found as being the floppy, both CD/DVDs
and my external 1T USB drive but it does not see the scsi drive.

I tried just hitting next to bypass that requestor and have it fix it anyway
. When I do it allows me to fix the problem but it says it needs to reboot
and when i do its just an endless loop. It never fixes it.

OK I found the driver on Dell's website and after several more reboots and
fixes it is working now. I can now boot up totally from the J: drive and
remove the old hard drive completely.

Thanks for everyone's help.

 

[david manvell]

Hello David,

Might help others in the future if you could let me have a little info.

You say you got the hd drivers from DELL.

Did you have a Dell desktop that came with XP preinstalled and a
product key stickered on the side ?

Then when you got the "upgrade" dvd, did you get it from Microsoft and
did they give you a different product key ?

Thanks

SIW2

The Dell came with XP 64 preinstalled and I went to Dell's website and they
allow you to put in your service tage (From the machine) and it then lists
all the configuration of your machine and allows you to download all the
drivers and such that originally came with the system.

Unfortunately since this unit came out before vista they dont have vitsa
drivers listed but I used the xp64 drivers and it worked. I have not been
able to find vista 64 drivers for anything directly from their website.


As for the replacement upgrade dvd from microsfot. it arrive and it has a
differnet product key.