Vista boot issue.

slipd · 2 Jun 2008 at 18:07

Guys,

I’ve introduced my old XP backup drive to my Vista build and I’m now confronted with a dual-boot screen at start up? All the drive has on it is data, it has never had an os installed?

My options are:

An earlier version of Windows or
Windows Vista

If I switch on and walk away, the first option is selected and the machine goes round in circles, unable to boot any os…

In Windows I wanted to change the drive letter (its oddly set to F

but it won’t let me – it says its not possible

What can I do to be able to lose the boot screen and be able to change the drive letter – its really starting to frustrate me

Cheers,

SW.

paradigm · 2 Jun 2008 at 18:10

BCDEdit is what you need to edit Vista Boot Menus.

VistaBootPRO is a good GUI version of this CLI command

slipd · 2 Jun 2008 at 18:15

Cheers mate - any idea why it is happening though?

And will I then be able to change my drive letter

SW.

EDIT: Isn't easybcd pretty good too - i think I've used that in the past?

paradigm · 2 Jun 2008 at 18:33

Changing the system drive letter is not a recommended procedure, but it can be done:

You need to change the registry entry "\DosDevices\X:" (where X: is the current letter of your system partition), to be "\DosDevices\C:" ,in:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices\

And reboot.

Just make sure that "\DosDevices\C:" isn't already taken up by another drive. If it is, rename that to something unused first.