Reinstall XP in a dual boot situation

[Guest]

I have a single hard drive in dual boot configuration with XP Pro on C: and
Vista RC2 on D: All works great and (touch wood) have had no problems
whatsoever! Now, I know I can re-install RC2 without any problem... BUT how
about re-installing XP on then primary? This will obviously overwrite
"something" and loose the dual-boot! IS there a way round this without
having start over and re-install both O/S's?
The "something" is a technical term for "I don't know what it overwrites,
but I know it overwrites something". Bootstrap?" Sorry, but I'm dual-boot
virgin!!

Thanks,

Mike L

 

[Guest]

I have a single hard drive in dual boot configuration with XP Pro on C: and
Vista RC2 on D: All works great and (touch wood) have had no problems
whatsoever! Now, I know I can re-install RC2 without any problem... BUT how
about re-installing XP on then primary? This will obviously overwrite
"something" and loose the dual-boot! IS there a way round this without
having start over and re-install both O/S's?
The "something" is a technical term for "I don't know what it overwrites,
but I know it overwrites something". Bootstrap?" Sorry, but I'm dual-boot
virgin!!

Thanks,

Mike L

That "something" is called "Master Boot Record" it holds all the information
about how the disc is broken up and what is on the disc and where. you are
correct if you re-install XP you will have to fix the MBR because the XP boot
loader will not know what Vista is. this is the reason Vista (or any newer
version of MS) should always be installed last. so what will happen? when you
install XP it will wright the MBR to the drive and will not include Vista (it
may also damege Vista).
however it may be possible to re-install Vista's NTLDR (the boot loader) by
booting the computer with the Vista DVD. then when the screen that says
"begin install" comes up look at the bottom left of the screen and choose
"repair" from that point just follow the prompts and it should leave you with
Vista back as the one in control and have a boot entry for XP.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the correct terminology Alejo.

I think I follow... I still have a lot to learn. I think what I may do is
to try this idea whilst both installations are in a "NEW" state... ie nothing
to loose apart from time! I have plenty of that!

Many thanks for your help.

Mike L

 

[Guest]

Take it slowly Mike! 2 days ago a virus got through Avast on the XP partition
of my dual Vista/XP system. I reformatted the XP partition without thinking
enough about it and found I couldn't boot to Vista. Reason the Vista boot
information had been on the XP partition (don't ask me why it does that!).
Then I found I couldn't install XP because - although I had reformatted it -
it came up with a 'disk error' although there was nothing wrong with the
disk. The 'disk error' was something generated by Vista. The only solution
was to reformat the whole drive and create new partitions. After that I was
able to reload both XP and Vista. The maddening bit was that I hada 3rd
partition with lots of data on it which I lost. Colin

 

[John Barnett MVP]

How did you loose data from the third partition? Unless you 'physically'
formatted it yourself, neither XP or Vista would have made any alterations
to it. I have five partitions on my drives and have never lost one simply by
installing XP or Vista and i'm using a triple boot system, XP Home, XP pro
and Vista.

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

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[Guest]

Colin,
Thanks for the warning! I never did get round to trying it anyway!
Maddening is right when you lose a whole load of data! Only ever happened
once to me... I learnt from it! Were you not able to back-up the 3rd
partition before re-formatting? Daft question... you didn't have a
functioning O/S did you, so I just answered my own question!
Mike

 

[Guest]

John I assume you are asking me how I managed to lose data. As I said, even
though I reformatted the XP partition, I was unable to re-install XP because
I got a 'disc-error' which was a fake. I couldn't access the Vista partition
since the boot data had been in the XP partition. I tried ERD Commander but
that came up with a disc error too (a different one - the cd was faulty).
Thus I had no choice but to format the whole drive. I'm buying another drive.
In future I will have seperate drives for each operating system and for my
data. Yes, a fault like that is very rare - it has only happened once before
- a virus corrupted all my drives in such a way that no installation CD could
access them - only my Win98 boot floppy could.