Needing Vista disk to boot?

[John R Rybock]

After many headaches, I finally installed Vista on my desktop. Due to
some problems, I had to do a clean install over XP, then upgrade
(since that was what my key was for).

Now, it runs great. But booting is screwed up. Without the
installation disk, it tries to boot to XP, which is gone (it has a
menu for XP Home or Windows Recovery, which it flashes through unless
I hit a key at the right point, and the menu stays up until I make a
selection). But, with the Vista disk in the drive, it loads fine. It
gives the "press any key to boot from CD" prompt, which I don't do,
then boots into Vista (unless it tried to boot XP, in which case it
offers the Safe Mode options).

This isn't making sense to me. I would think the clean install would
get rid of XP references in the boot. And it doesn't appear to try to
access the drive with the Vista disk, but it has to be there to boot.

Any suggestions?

 

[Guest]

Hi John,

You have obviously still got remnants of XP in your system. When you clean
install an operating on a computer, you need to make sure that there is
nothing on the hard disk that you are going to use. At an early point in the
process, you will come across a screen which allows you to select where you
want to install Vista. On this screen will be the options to create and
delete partitions and also to load storage drivers (usually only necessary if
you plan to use a RAID array or if your storage system isn't recognised by
Vista). You need to select the option to delete any partitions that are
present. Once you have done that, you will effectively be left with a blank
hard disk. At this point, there will be no operating system present. Restart
your machine and follow the instructions in my post 'Clean Install Windows
Vista Using Upgrade Media' in the newsgroup 'Windows Vista Installation and
Setup', (dated 9/21/2007).
Dwarf

http://www.microsoft.com/communitie...2be7&mid=c2e2a2bd-c0ed-4c78-ae89-5eb74dcf2be7

 

[John R Rybock]

Hi John,

You have obviously still got remnants of XP in your system. When you clean
install an operating on a computer, you need to make sure that there is
nothing on the hard disk that you are going to use. At an early point in the
process, you will come across a screen which allows you to select where you
want to install Vista. On this screen will be the options to create and
delete partitions and also to load storage drivers (usually only necessary if
you plan to use a RAID array or if your storage system isn't recognised by
Vista). You need to select the option to delete any partitions that are
present. Once you have done that, you will effectively be left with a blank
hard disk. At this point, there will be no operating system present. Restart
your machine and follow the instructions in my post 'Clean Install Windows
Vista Using Upgrade Media' in the newsgroup 'Windows Vista Installation and
Setup', (dated 9/21/2007).
Dwarf

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?&l...








- Show quoted text -

I think your advice on how to use upgrade media to do a clean install
is what prompted me to try this.

From my understanding, the install moved all XP files to a windows.old
directory, where they sat, though unable to use. It appears it also
moved all my documents there, too, though I had made backups. So I
deleted windows.old (it took up some 120GB).

After all the headaches, I am a little hesitant to reinstall Vista
twice more, especially as I did a bunch of customization and
installations before realizing the problem. So, is there any place to
look to in order to fix the problem without a complete reinstall? I've
found, through Vista, the boot settings, and there is nothing about XP
there. Any ideas, even long shots, on how I can avoid wiping the whole
partition and starting from scratch?

 

[Guest]

You can do an "upgrade" clean install over your current Vista OS which will
eliminate any traces of XP. Details in tutorial.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/68767-clean-install-upgrade.html

 

[John R Rybock]

You can do an "upgrade" clean install over your current Vista OS which will
eliminate any traces of XP. Details in tutorial.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/68767-clean-install-upgrade.html








- Show quoted text -

As I mentioned, I already did that, which is how I got to where I am.

Here'e the curious parts, for me at least:

- there must be code somewhere which, when I boot without anything in
the CD drive, the computer sees on my C: drive which tells it to try
to start XP (or at least to go to a menu offering XP and Windows
recovery as options; though they seem to point to no where, as the
screen goes black and the computer stops responding no matter what I
choose).

- If there is a Vista disk in the drive, it offers up the "Press any
key to boot from CD or DVD" line, which I do not do. After about 5
seconds it goes to boot from the HD. (Boot priority is CDROM, HDD; the
priority for each is A, then B; where A is the "main one", ie the
better DVD drive which I am putting Vista disk into, and the C: drive)


- With no bios changes between boot ups, it should then be going to
the main drive to find an OS, and as such, it should then be finding
the same code as it does without the disk in drive. But, for some
reason, it is seeing something else, and starting into Vista normally.

That last part is the piece that makes no sense to me, and if I can
figure out what exactly is going on, it seems it might be an easy work
around to get a regular, non-disk boot to look in the same place as
the with-disk boot.