Cant dual boot? XP + Vista Prem

Ok, I have been asked to throw Vista onto a PC for a mate. This is the plan.

Currently XP on an 80GB, only the 1 partition.

Add a new 250GB and put Vista onto that.

Ok fine.

So, I give it a shot and it kind of gets nearly all *** way through and on the very last part, it sort of hangs ( Mouse still moves, but the procedure stays where it is with no messages )

Anyway, I left it alone for some time ( Few hours to be precise ) and went back to it, where there is a dialog box saying that the install failed and cannot carry on, and I needed to restart the install.

I did this... 3 times to be exact and its till doing it???

Ok, just to check a few things, I took the 80GB out and threw Vista directly onto the 250GB while the 250GB was the only HD and the install went on just fine?

Tried it again with the 80GB in but again, it failed at the same place!!!

Ok, so, put them both onto the 80GB then perhaps....

The thing is now, its tellign me that because XP is on there, it will rename the folders... This will obviously kill off the XP install, but will allow access to the files!!!

This is NOT what we want.

We want a dual booting system.

Any clues?

The PC in question is :-

Gigabyte S3
Conroe 6600
8800GTS
2x2GB Corsair
Maxtor 80GB in SATA 0 ( Top orange )
Maxtor 250GB in SATA 1 ( Also tried other Sata Ports "JUST IN CASE" )

BIOS F8

Anything that can help would be great.

if you've managed to install vista on a separate drive by itself, try pressing f8 just when the bios screen flashes up. it *might* let you choose which hard drive to boot -in effect giving you dual boot. this depends on your motherboard though - not all support this.

LOL

That option has certainly been flashing in my mind, but the guy Im doing this for simply has not got a clue about anything technical.

I doubt that option will be a good one.

I have swapped RAM, the DVD Media disk, and the DVD Drive used to install it and it hangs in the very same spot.... The completing install bit.

My system boots to a screen and then asks me what windows I would like to boot to.
I did nothing to make this work just installed vista to another drive.

try this, when you install Vista at the first reboot of install, boot of the Vista disc, and look for an option to repair, it will fix the boot sequence, this causing part of the problem. it will fix the Vista drive to install on the partition along with XP, i am almost certain this will work. Let me if this worked.

FatRakoon said:

LOL

That option has certainly been flashing in my mind, but the guy Im doing this for simply has not got a clue about anything technical.

I doubt that option will be a good one.

I have swapped RAM, the DVD Media disk, and the DVD Drive used to install it and it hangs in the very same spot.... The completing install bit.

Click to expand...

you obviously misunderstand me. what's hard about pressing f8 and choosing a drive to boot from? you don't even go into the bios - you just get a list of a bootable devices.

marc2003 said:

you obviously misunderstand me. what's hard about pressing f8 and choosing a drive to boot from? you don't even go into the bios - you just get a list of a bootable devices.

Click to expand...

It think he means it doesnt list XP as an option in f8 option, sometimes the Vista boot loader can be aggresive and bypass XP altogether. I know I have had a nightmare installing both Vista 32 and 64, only by repairing the Vista Boot seqence via the Vista disc repair setting, that it does something odd to the Partioning system. Part of my problem is I have some many drives, I had to unplug all drive's apart from one Sata DVD drive and one HD and the repair option to get it to work. Its not always too simple with Vista unfortunately.

No, I know exactly what you mean... Some motherboards give you an option to force the system to boot from a specific device ( HD / Floppy / IDE0 / IDE1 etc ) without going into the BIOS.. I know about that, the problem is, that it is too close to the SAFEMODE etc options. This geezer will come across that menu and then I will get another phone call askign for help...

This guy lost the plot and phoned me up when he accidentally changed the theme in XP, so trust me when I say that the F8 Menu at the start is NOT an option that I can use.


No, I would rather just have a simple Menu that comes up without needing to press any buttons that gives me a simple selection of 2 choices

1 - XP
2 - VISTA

No more, no less

The last thing I need is

FDD
IDE0
IDE1
IDE2
IDE3
CDROM
DVD
DVDRW
SKODA!

or if the timing is not exactly right...

SafeMode
Last known good config
Your mom

Cos this guy will be asking me every time he starts up

As I said before Rakoon, follow the instruction above and it should work, the Vista Boot loader will repair itself to give you XP/ Vista option which you are looking for.

Regards

Vic

AHA!

Sorted... I knew it wasnt me... It was the ****** Media.

I used my own disk to install it and just entered the PREMIUM number in instead of the Ultimate one and it went on no messing.

When you select XP, it comes up with XP on C: and the Vista Drive is D: and when you select VISTA, that comes up on C: with the XP Drive as D:

EXACTLY as I need it

Many thanks all.

Now, all I need to do, is find out how to get rid of 11 VISTA entries in the boot loader ( 6 of which are failed repairs ) LOL

two prgrams out there will do the job..... Vista bootloader Pro and BCD Edit also... just be careful with it.