Dual booting Vista & XP Problem

Garyj881

Garyj881

Garyj881

Associate
Joined
29 Sep 2006
Posts
2,164
Location
West Yorks
A friend bought a new rig 2 weeks back ready to play all the new DX10 games.

Spec
C2D E6600
4gb of geil ull 800
956P-DS3P mobo
Corsair 620w
BFG 8800gts320
500gb sata Samsing spinpoint (partioned 100 / 365)
160gb sata spinpooint

Right we firstly installed Vista which worked fine until a few days later he wanted to play Rise & Fall Civilizations at War, it installed ok until the end where it complained about some security drivers, so after a lot of messing about he decided to install XP as well and dual boot.

So at this point he has Vista on the 500gb (100gb partition) and we installed Xp on the 160gb drive.

Heres where the problems started, after installing XP we expected to get the operating system choice menu on boot up but nothing there only a quick flash of an error message beofre loading Vista, tried again and again and no dual boot option.

So we disconnected the Vista sata cable and it found XP so at this point had no idea what could be wrong.

So remembering the quicke error message we paused it to write it down.

It says

Booting GRLDR
Resetting the boot drive...
Turning on gate AZO...Sucess.
Hard drives 3, int13:f0009BAO,intl5:f000F859
Bla, Bla, Bla goes on like that for about 10 lines then says this

Warning unrecognized boot partition table for drive 82
Please rebuild it using a microsoft compatible FDISK tool (err=28)

Then rambles a bit more.

Only thing i can try is installing both XP and Vista on the same drive but on 2 partitions.

Any help would be great, otherwise he will have to unplug the sata drive to use Xp.
 
Hey Garyj881, reconnect everything up as it would normally be, including both Hard Drives.

First insert the Vista DVD in to the DVD-Drive and restart the machine. Vista will load the GUI files, and then display the loading splash screen. Click "Next" on the first screen then once the "Install Now" menu appears (do not click Install Now) choose "Repair Your Computer". You will be prompted to choose the OS to repair, so click on Microsoft Windows Vista and click next.

Now choose to open a "Command Prompt" and then type the following:

Bootrec.exe /fixMBR (Press Enter)

Bootrec.exe /fixBoot (Press Enter)

Close the prompt and restart the machine.

Now log into Windows Vista and open up the Command Prompt with Administrator`s privilages (Right-click and choose "run as administrator")

Note the following 2 answers from bcdedit for each item are acceptable:

"The Operation Completed Successfully"

"The Specified Entry Already Exists"

Be sure to type each line carefully (replace C in the first line with the drive containing your Vista installation):

bcdedit –set {ntldr} device partition=C:
bcdedit –set {ntldr} path \ntldr
bcdedit –displayorder {ntldr} –addlast
bcdedit -set {ntldr} description "Microsoft Windows XP"

This will correctly add XP to your boot sequence, and even name it properly instead of "Earlier Version of Windows"

If all done properly, XP and Vista will dual boot properly. :)
 
Last edited:
OMG i thought no one would be able to sort that out, ill go over to his tomorrow to try it.

Thanks ever so much, is this a know Vista issue then?
 
Garyj881 said:
OMG i thought no one would be able to sort that out, ill go over to his tomorrow to try it.

Thanks ever so much, is this a know Vista issue then?
Click to expand...

Hey Gary, its not really an issue, its just that Vista and XP use different boot loader utilities in the MBR (Master Boot Record) of your hard drive.

XP does not recognize Vista, but Vista will recognize XP, so we need to remove the boot loader that XP just put in with the old Vista boot loader.

Thats why its best, when setting up a Dual Boot configuration to install XP first and then Vista. :)
 
Ok thanks all the same, its strange though because it worked fine on my rig which uses the same mobo etc.
 
Last edited:
Ok ive done the above and now hen i boot up i ge the choice between XP and Vista.

Vista is fine but when i choose to boot Xp i get the following error message.

--------------------------------------
WINDOWS BOOT MANAGER
--------------------------------------

Windows failed to start.
A recent hardware or software change might be the cause. To fix the problem:

1.Insert your windows instalation discand restart the computer.

2.Choose language settings and click next.

3.Click repair your computer


If you do not have the disc contact your system administrator or computer manufacturer for assistance.

File:intldr
Status: 0xc000000f
Info:The selected entry could not be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt.

Heeeeeeeeelp!
 
Post #2 fixed my problem.
Had Vista Ultimate installed on c: drive (4/5ths of HDD space). Left 1/5th of HDD space incase I needed to install XP for apps which wouldn't run with Vista.
Couldn't get app to work in Vista so reached for my XP CD and naively put it in the DVD drive and booted from it expecting to be able to create second partition on remaining 1/5 of HDD. I received a message informing me there already existed a directory named 'windows'. I didn't want to install over Vista so quit the installation.
On restarting the PC, I received the message 'error loading operating system' and the system stopped.
I did a lot of trawling around the net to try and find a solution and saw post #2.

I carried out the following:
Booted from Vista DVD.
Executed the 'Repair Your Computer' tool (which informed me no problems had been detected).
Opened a command prompt (listed in the same menu as 'Repair Your Computer')
Executed 'Bootrec.exe /fixMBR'
Executed 'Bootrec.exe /fixBoot'

Restarted PC and Vista booted successfully.
 
For future reference if you want to dual boot XP and Vista you have to install XP first and then Vista so you can get the boot manager to choose which OS you want to boot into. If you install Vista first you dont get the boot menu but you can use Vista Boot Pro to help you dual boot different opterating systerms if you have installed vista first.
 
option to consider, is to install XP onto one HD and Vista onto another and use the Motherboards BOOT MENU ( Many boards have one ) to chose the O/S on startup.

This very issue happened before and I told a friend that he can add any version of Windows as long as the newer one is always installed after the older one.

But, he did VISTA then XP.

I cured it a quick hack way, by simply killing off the XP setup that he messed up, and used another D so on boot up, he gets an option to boot from HD0 or HD1.


Alkso if its worth mentioning, but I am running a few experiments right now, and I have 2 HDs and on each HD is two OSes.

Im running XP32 and 64Bit and Vista32 and Vista64

I Installed XP32 onto Partition 1 on HD1 then XP64 onto Partition 1 on HD2
Then Vista32 onto Partition 2 on HD 1 and then Vista64 onto Partition 2 on HD2

I get a boot menu with

OLDER WINDOWS
VISTA 32
VISTA 64
And if I select the older Windows, it gives me the old BOOT.INI options of 32 or 64 Bit XP
 
I've a question relating to this, kind of... If you already have a dual boot XP/Vista system working OK but reach the point where XP needs a fresh install (as it does every now and then) how do you do it without breaking the vista MBR?
 
I'm having the same problems as post number 2 in this thread, an clues as to the fix?

I don't have the Vista DVD to boot from (pre-install)

I initially used VistaBoot 3.3 to boot back into vista whenit wasloading straight into XP, now I can't get back into XP?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom