Another XP/Vista Dual Boot Question

Tom84

Tom84

Tom84

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Ok had this working perfectly fine before one 2 separate drives (when I only had a trial of Vista) but what I did then isn't working now :confused:

Basically as everyone else I've been using XP and yesterday added a second drive to install Vista on but I cant get the dual boot menu up when posting my machine, it just goes straight to XP. Do I have to change the boot order to the Vista drive as the primary or is it something else?

Also while I'm here any ideas as to why Vista isn't recognising my 4gb of Ram? It's only seeing 3.25gb the same as XP does. Is it simply the same as XP in that it using some for PAE?

Many thanks :)
 
Tom84 said:
yesterday added a second drive to install Vista on but I cant get the dual boot
Click to expand...
I you saying you installed a new copy of Vista on the new hard drive or since installing this new hard drive you cannot see the old trial of vista?
 
sWiZzLe said:
I you saying you installed a new copy of Vista on the new hard drive or since installing this new hard drive you cannot see the old trial of vista?
Click to expand...

No no forget me being able to dual boot in the past that's a moot point

New version of Vista on a new drive and cant dual boot with my old XP drive ;)
 
marc2003 said:
was the xp drive plugged in when you installed vista? if it was you shouldn't have this problem...... :confused:
Click to expand...

Erm........ no it wasn't wanted to avoid any possible mishaps. That me problem then?
 
Tom84 said:
Erm........ no it wasn't wanted to avoid any possible mishaps. That me problem then?
Click to expand...

er yes. how else is vista going to know to setup a dual boot menu...... :p

and there's nothing to worry about. provided you don't pick/format the wrong drive/parition during setup, dual booting always works. never had a problem myself and i've done it dozens of times.
 
marc2003 said:
and there's nothing to worry about. provided you don't pick/format the wrong drive/parition during setup, dual booting always works. never had a problem myself and i've done it dozens of times.
Click to expand...

Well yeah I ghost drive to drive all the time at work and never get it wrong, bit different when it's your own machine though eh. Better to be safe than sorry haha.

Cheers for the help though I'll re-do it :)
 
one thing to try first..... press f8 just as your bios screen comes up. your motherboard might let you select which drive to boot. :)
 
You said you installed another drive 'to install vista', you never said you had installed Vista ;)

My Computer - Properties - Advanced - Settings - Startup & Recovery - Settings: Is Vista listed in the Default operating system's dropdown?

If it is then just select a time to display operating system.
If not click Edit and try adding an entry.
Copy the bit that looks like this: multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="XP32" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Then paste it in below and edit the entry, like mine for example:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="XP64" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

The entries in Bold are all you need to edit
 
sWiZzLe said:
You said you installed another drive 'to install vista', you never said you had installed Vista ;)

My Computer - Properties - Advanced - Settings - Startup & Recovery - Settings: Is Vista listed in the Default operating system's dropdown?

If it is then just select a time to display operating system.
If not click Edit and try adding an entry.
Copy the bit that looks like this: multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="XP32" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Then paste it in below and edit the entry, like mine for example:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="XP64" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

The entries in Bold are all you need to edit
Click to expand...

sorry but that's useless. vista doesn't use boot.ini :)
 
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