Vista Boot after XP installation

[Guest]

Hi there,

I have the following issue:

I just bought a new notebook and had Windows Vista RC1 running fine for 4
weeks on it.

Now i needed to install Windows XP on a second partition. Vista ios on c:
and xp is on d:

After I installed Windows XP on the second partition I don't get Windows
Vista in my boot menu any more. Only XP starts. I manually added Vista to the
boot.ini but it doesn't boot.

Does anyone know what to do to get a working boot menu?

Thanks a lot
Scapin

 

[John Barnes]

Download VistaBootPro and use it to restore the Vista boot process.
Boot.ini is not used to boot Vista, so get rid of the Vista entry. After
you restore the Vista boot process, it will be necessary to set up a legacy
boot entry for XP, also via VistaBootPro.

 

[Guest]

Thanks John. I will try to do that.

Just for interest... How does boot work under Windows Vista instead of using
boot.ini ?

 

[Guest]

Hi John,

unfortunately it doesn't work.

When I openeded VistaBootPro, there was an entry for Windows Vista. So I
added a second one for Windows XP as "Windows legacy".

But still, it does not show a boot menu. It directly starts Windows XP as if
no changes where made.

Hm. Is it because I installed Windows XP after I had Windows Vista running?
It seems it is still booting from ntdlr and not from winload.exe (Vista).

Cheers
Scapin

 

[Roy Coorne]

Hi John,

unfortunately it doesn't work.

When I openeded VistaBootPro, there was an entry for Windows Vista. So I
added a second one for Windows XP as "Windows legacy".

But still, it does not show a boot menu. It directly starts Windows XP as if
no changes where made.

Hm. Is it because I installed Windows XP after I had Windows Vista running?
It seems it is still booting from ntdlr and not from winload.exe (Vista).

Yes, seems so, indeed. I had the same problem and booted from the
Vista RC2 (b 5744) DVD hoping I would be offered a repair install as
in XP - in vain. I had to do a fresh install of Vista which put the
old Vista installation into 'Windows.old' (which I deleted).

Roy

 

[David Wilkinson]

Hi John,

unfortunately it doesn't work.

When I openeded VistaBootPro, there was an entry for Windows Vista. So I
added a second one for Windows XP as "Windows legacy".

But still, it does not show a boot menu. It directly starts Windows XP as if
no changes where made.

Hm. Is it because I installed Windows XP after I had Windows Vista running?
It seems it is still booting from ntdlr and not from winload.exe (Vista).

ScapinVS:

It would certainly have been easier for you if you had installed XP
first. But I thought VistaBootPro was supposed to be able to fix things up.

Personally, I use a 3rd party boot manager, BootIt NG, which I strongly
recommend. It allows you to install different OS's completely
independently of each other and in any order. You do not need to know
anything about the different boot process of the different Window OS's
(95/98/Me, NT/2000/XP, Vista). I'm not exactly sure how it would help
you to recover from your situation, but it probably is possible.

David Wilkinson

 

[John Barnes]

In VistaBootPro, go to the bootloader section and select reinstall the Vista
Bootloader. That should give you the Vista boot. You may have to play
around with the XP files to get it to load after that.

 

[Kerry Brown]

Scapin

I have done this a few times and it works. Follow John's advice to restore
the Vista boot sector. Boot into Vista and install VistaBoot Pro there as
well. From within Vista add a Windows Legacy option but make sure you pick
the drive where the boot.ini file is which is not necessarily the same drive
where XP is. Given the scenario you have described the XP boot files are on
drive C: so this is the drive you would specify for the legacy boot.

 

[Guest]

Ok, Thanks John and Kerry. Both your answer helped me a lot.

This is how I've fixed it:

- Installed VistaBootPRo under XP
- Used VBP to reinstall boot loader
- Added Windows Vista entry and Windows Legacy entry for XP (both on C:\,
where I found the boot.ini)

Now everything works well.

Cheers
Scapin

 

[Kerry Brown]

Glad to hear you got it working. It took me a while the first time I did
this to figure out I had to specify c: for the legacy boot drive. Once I
stopped to think a bit it was obvious but the stopping and thinking about it
is often the hardest part of solving a problem

 

[Rich Milburn [MVP]]

You can use those things but there is a built-in tool to do this.

Boot off the Vista DVD, choose your language, and then instead of clicking
Install Now, choose Repair your computer. The next screen shows options for
Startup Repair. I haven't tried this one myself for your issue, but I
believe that is one of the things it's supposed to fix. What I have tried,
however, is the following:
choose Command Prompt
you will be in X:\Sources. you need to be in the DVD\boot folder, this will
usually be D: or E:
so for me, E:
cd boot
then run bootsect /nt60 ALL
that will restore your boot sector with its pointers to the boot folder on
your hard drive. This without downloading 3rd party tools, as good as they
may be.

Rich Milburn
MVP - Directory Services

 

[Kerry Brown]

Thanks for that. I wasn't aware of the ALL switch. I knew you could restore
the Vista boot loader that way but not automatically find and add other
Windows boot loaders as well.