Problems by booting (dual-boot)

[Antonio]

I had a dual boot system (both XP) which worked perfectly. Then I
decided to try Windows Vista, and installed it on the "second" XP. No
upgrade, I just installed it on the same partition after formatting it.
Since then, something happened with my MBR, and every try to install a
second OS (which I use to try new software and play games) would fail.
Everything seems to work fine during the installation, but at the first
reboot, at the time it should load the OS, I get the following error
message : A DISK ERROR OCCURED, press Ctrl + Alt + Del to restart. Of
course pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete won't help, OK the PC reboots, but only
till the same point.
I canceled an attempt to fix the problem using the Recovery Console (I
wanted to try fixmbr or fixboot) because i got a message sounding like
"you have a non-standard or invalid mbr, if you run fixmbr you may not
be able to boot Windows again".
Can anybody help? How can I fix my MBR in order to run a dual-boot
system again?

My machine: Asus P5GD2 Mainboard, Intel P4 640 3.2 Ghz, 2 GB Ram, 3
HDDs (250 GB Sata, on which I have my XP installed, divided in 4
partition), 250 GB IDE - 2 partitions - Primary Master - on which I
tried to install Vista, 120 GB IDE - Primary Slave - Data

 

[Guest]

You'll need to run fixmbr for XP As for Vista I've both heard and read that
it really doesn't like to dual boot. But it can be done:
http://www.lifehacker.com/software/...-boot-windows-xp-and-windows-vista-179906.php
You can find more information on it by searching the web for 'dual booting
vista' without the quotes. If you dual boot with Vista then you'll have to
use Vista's boot loader to boot into XP.

fixmbr on the windows website:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/.../proddocs/en-us/bootcons_fixmbr.mspx?mfr=true

-Dan

 

[Antonio]

It's not something concerning only Vista, it happens even if I try to
install a second XP in another partition. I think I destroyed the MBR
in some way. What about this error message displayed when I tried to
run "fixmbr" from the Recovery Console? Is there some way to get a
"virgin" MBR?

By the way,when I installed Vista for the first time, I did exactly
like described in the link you gave
me:http://www.lifehacker.com/software/...-boot-windows-xp-and-windows-vista-179906.php
But at the first restart during the installation I got the "disk error"
message.

 

[Guest]

OK, you might be getting the disk error because it's possible that both XP
and Vista are both trying to boot at the same time and the computer doesn't
like it.

You can however download and set up XP boot disks (I think that you'll need
6 disks):
Go here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310994
Find whichever download you need for your version of XP, download it, run
it, get your disks set up.
when you boot with these disks you should be able to use fixmbr from them (I
don't actually remember if the XP boot disks contain fixmbr).
If they don't have fixmbr then you can probably use a Windows 98 boot disk
(these I know have fixmbr on them).
You can then run fixmbr from the boot disks.

If the floppy boot disks are too much of a pain then you can get the
Ultimate Boot CD for Windows: http://www.ubcd4win.com/
This actually creates a live bootable Windows XP CD, and is very useful for
fixing a system you can't get into, retrieve files and applications from a
dead system, etc.

There is also BartPE which does the same thing, it just doesn't have as much
included software with it: http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

-Dan