Vista install changed drive order....any idea ?

[Someone]

Hi,

I have Vista home premium installed on my C: drive. I picked up a OEM
version of Ultimate, so I wanted to dual boot till I moved all my settings
over to the new install (my Prem install was having problems anyway). So, I
installed the Ultimate version to my "D:" drive.

When Ulitmate boots up, it changes the "D:" drive to "C:"(switches them
around). When I load up Premium, it puts them in the right order C is C and
D is D (as when I setup this system).

So, now I am going to Nuke the Premium install and free up the harddrive
space. The big question I have about this is... If my Ulitmate install runs
into problems, not able to boot, is this going to cause me a problem trying
to "fix"my system ? Or should I just Nuke it on my D drive and reinstall to
the old "C" drive ???

Just want to make sure I am not asking for trouble later.

Thoughts ?

 

[peter]

As soon as you format the C drive you will not be able to
boot.......Ultimate placed its boot files there thats how you get the option
of which Vista to start with when you boot.You can do a Repair with the
Vista Ultimate DVD and it will repair the boot files on the C drive.
but again the boot files will be on the C drive and the OS on the D
drive...as you called it.
Do a google for VistaBootPro..........it allows you change the Vista boot
loader plus more
peter

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Someone.

Vista didn't "change" the order of your drives. Home still sees them as it
always has. But Ultimate doesn't know what letters Home has assigned unless
you run its Setup.exe from within Home, so it starts from scratch and
assigns its own letters to those same partitions. It starts by assigning C:
to its own "boot volume", where you told Setup to install it - the first
partition on the second HD. Then it can't assign that same letter to the
first partition on the first HD, so it assigns D: to that one. But these
letters apply only within Ultimate, not in Home.

We can control letter assignments when installing a second Vista by running
the second Setup from within the first installation. In other words, if you
had booted into Home and used Disk Management to create a partition on your
second HD and assigned it the drive letter U: (for Ultimate?), then inserted
the Ultimate DVD and run Setup from within Home, you could have installed
Ultimate into U: and left C: assigned to the System Partition. I've used
this method often when installing multiple versions of WinXP/Vista,
especially during the Vista beta.

If I understand you correctly, you should be able to boot into Ultimate and
nuke D:\Windows, which will get rid of Home. But your boot process will
still start on that first HD, since it holds the System Partition, and then
find and load Ultimate from C:\Windows. If you want to retire the first HD
and boot from the second, then you will need to install the BCD (Boot
Configuration Data) onto that second HD. You can do this by booting from
the Vista DVD and using its Repair option, or you can use something like
EasyBCD from NeoSmart: http://neosmart.net/

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail beta in Vista Ultimate x64)

 

[Possum]

I have a similar question.

I have a license for Vista Home Premium 32-bit and for Vista Ultimate
64-bit. Premium 32-bit came with the computer and I imaged the installation
using Acronis True Image. I then installed Ultimate 64-bit and imaged that
installation.

Question: If I restore the Ultimate image to an empty partition (F:\), there
obviously will be no Ultimate boot files on C:\. Can I use Vista Boot Pro to
set up the dual boot? Am I asking for trouble here?

 

[peter]

I dont really like VistaBootPro but it serves its purpose.......and I have
no idea if it will do what you intend so here is an option.
If your Mobo is capable of displaying a choice of drives to boot from when
you push an F? key after the Bios Splash Screen I suggest you rstore that
image to the F drive....this would include the Vista boot loader...so that
upon boot up by means of the F? key you would get a choice of which HD to
boot from...C or F.This does not set up a Vista Dual Boot.Each drive has its
own boot loader.If at anytime you chose to run only one OS...delete the
other OS or format the other drive..you would still be able to boot into the
unformatted drive without any modifications to the Vista boot loader....you
have 2 bootable HD each with their own OS.
The other way of coure is to just do a fresh install and the dual boot will
be created...why make life tough??
peter