Dual boot system, XP won't boot

  • Thread starter Thread starter PB999
  • Start date Start date
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PB999

I have installed Vista on the second of my two SATA hard drives, XP is
installed on the first, and was working fine up until now.

Vista works fine, but now XP won't boot, it briefly shows the XP startup
screen then immediately reboots the system.

The boot order in BIOS has the XP drive first, then the Vista drive.

I intend to move over to Vista full-time, but I still need to be able to
access my old XP installation once in a while until it is all set up as I
want it.

Prior to installing Vista I had Ubuntu linux on the second drive, but I had
so many problems with that (video drivers) that I gave up and went for Vista
instead. It did cross my mind that maybe some part of GRUB has been left
behind on the primary disk, but how would I find it and eliminate it?

Thanks,
 
No. I would just type the fixboot and fixmbr without the rest. This will
only write on the system disk, which is XP. Fixmbr shouldn't be necessary
as you are obviously reading the active partition from the mbr (unless you
are booting with the Vista disk in the DVD drive)

PB999 said:
Thats very true, but won't that process also kill the Vista bootloader?
Click to expand...
 
OK, well I tried that, and now XP boots fine, but as I wondered, I now don't
get the Vista boot menu, so I can't boot to Vista.

Can I just use Vistabootpro to re-install the Vista Bootloader?

Thanks,

John Barnes said:
No. I would just type the fixboot and fixmbr without the rest. This will
only write on the system disk, which is XP. Fixmbr shouldn't be necessary
as you are obviously reading the active partition from the mbr (unless you
are booting with the Vista disk in the DVD drive)
Click to expand...
 
Since you eventually want to boot Vista, I would first set the Vista drive
as first in boot priority. Then run the Vista startup repair from the
install DVD. Do you have a boot.ini file on your XP drive? Does your BIOS
give you the opportunity to access a drive priority boot menu from POST. If
so, and you don't expect to use XP often or for long, you can use that boot
menu to boot as you will then have two independently bootable drives. If
you want to have the Vista boot menu for both systems, then run the
VistaBootPro the way you are currently set up and reinstall the Vista
bootloader and if necessary add the XP system as a legacy drive entry.
 
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