vista xp dual boot help

ants83 · 1 Sep 2007 at 16:43

got vista on one drive xp on the other- i have installed xp again vista is still on the other drive but there is no option at start up for dual boot?can anyone help me out?

Tripnologist · 1 Sep 2007 at 17:54

If you have them on different drives, you'll have to change the boot drive to whichever one you want to boot from. Most motherboards have a shortcut as well to bring up boot priority.

If they're on the same drive, then it'll bring up a screen to let you select which one you want to boot from.

ants83 · 1 Sep 2007 at 17:55

so i cant get the dual boot screen back?

flying grouse · 1 Sep 2007 at 19:34

have a look at this magazine http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp

Ascendancy · 1 Sep 2007 at 20:22

The problem is, you installed XP again, it overwrote vista's bootloader, and XP is older than vista so it has no idea what vista is

Read this for how to sort it.

Microsoft said:
RESOLUTION
To resolve these issues, follow these steps.

Note You can run the commands in the following procedure by using the command prompt. If you run these commands in Windows Vista, run them at a command prompt that has elevated user rights. To do this, click Start, click Accessories, right-click the command-prompt shortcut, and then click Run as Administrator.

1. Use Bootsect.exe to restore the Windows Vista MBR and the boot code that transfers control to the Windows Boot Manager program. To do this, type the following command at a command prompt: Drive:\boot\Bootsect.exe /NT60 All

In this command, Drive is the drive where the Windows Vista installation media is located.

Note The boot folder for this step is on the DVD drive.
2. Use Bcdedit.exe to manually create an entry in the BCD Boot.ini file for the earlier version of the Windows operating system. To do this, type the following commands at a command prompt.

Note In these commands, Drive is the drive where Windows Vista is installed.
• Drive:\Windows\system32\Bcdedit /create {ntldr} /d "Description for earlier Windows version"

Note In this command, Description for earlier Windows version can be any text that you want. For example, Description for earlier Windows version can be "Windows XP" or "Windows Server 2003".
• Drive:\Windows\system32\Bcdedit /set {ntldr} device partition=x:

Note In this command, x: is the drive letter for the active partition.
• Drive:\Windows\system32\Bcdedit /set {ntldr} path \ntldr
• Drive:\Windows\system32\Bcdedit /displayorder {ntldr} /addlast
3. Restart the computer.

Shamlessly stolen from this Microsoft Knowledgebase article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919529/en-us

Hope this helps.