dual boot

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jeff
  • Start date Start date
J

Jeff

Hello,
I tried a dual boot of xp pro sp2 and vista ultimate. xp on c: drive then I
made another partion with acronis disk director named v: drive and put vista
on that. This was to check out if my computer could handle the new vista
system as I am borderline with it. I found that I needed more ram and
decided to take vista off of my computer for now and return my computer to a
single boot machine as it was before. What happens now is that when I
deleted the vista partition when it boots it still askes me what operating
system do I want to select. It also left some unallocated space on that
vista partiton. How can I configure it like before. Just boots into xp
without asking and reallocate the unallocated space to go back into c:
drive.

Please need help
Regards,
J.P.Bach
(e-mail address removed)
 
The unallocated space is an acronis disk director responsibility.
If MBR is pointed at ntldr, the Vista stuff in C: root will be ignored.
BootItNG would be able to handle that - I don't know why disk
director isn't able to. Try acronis support?

If you had used Acronis's imaging program to save an image of XP
pre-Vista, you wouldn't be asking how to restore XP. Getting that
or an alternative imaging program is something to think about.
 
Jeff said:
Hello,
I tried a dual boot of xp pro sp2 and vista ultimate. xp on c: drive then I
made another partion with acronis disk director named v: drive and put vista
on that. This was to check out if my computer could handle the new vista
system as I am borderline with it. I found that I needed more ram and
decided to take vista off of my computer for now and return my computer to a
single boot machine as it was before. What happens now is that when I
deleted the vista partition when it boots it still askes me what operating
system do I want to select. It also left some unallocated space on that
vista partiton. How can I configure it like before. Just boots into xp
without asking and reallocate the unallocated space to go back into c:
drive.

Please need help
Regards,
J.P.Bach
(e-mail address removed)
Click to expand...
You'll need to boot from your XP CD and elect to Repair. When you get
into the Recovery Console type fixmbr at the prompt, Enter, and then try
to reboot the computer without the XP CD. If that doesn't take care of
the problem, completely, you may need to re-enter Recovery Console and
enter the command, fixboot. (It shouldn't really hurt anything to enter
both of these commands sequentially the first time you're in Recovery
Console.)
Once in XP, using Disk Management, make sure the V: drive is not marked
"active" (it shouldn't be since C: should be your only active partition
after the install you describe), and just delete it, reformat it, or
whatever you want to do to get it the way you like it. You will not be
able to get "the unallocated space to go back into the C: drive" without
a third-party application like Partition Magic, because, unlike Vista,
XP's Disk Management lacks the ability to resize partitions and logical
drives.
 
this is how my boot.ini looks now and it asks me what operating system do I
want

;
;Warning: Boot.ini is used on Windows XP and earlier operating systems.
;Warning: Use BCDEDIT.exe to modify Windows Vista boot options.
;
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT

now if I manually change it to this will it just boot to my xp pro without
asking

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /fastdetect




The unallocated space is an acronis disk director responsibility.
If MBR is pointed at ntldr, the Vista stuff in C: root will be ignored.
BootItNG would be able to handle that - I don't know why disk
director isn't able to. Try acronis support?

If you had used Acronis's imaging program to save an image of XP
pre-Vista, you wouldn't be asking how to restore XP. Getting that
or an alternative imaging program is something to think about.
 
No, because the Master Boot Record (MBR) points to a Vista
contraption, which points to ntldr via boot.ini when you select XP.

Your best bet is to follow the advice given by Ron Miller. In case
his reply to you got lost due to volume, click on this to see it:
news://msnews.microsoft.com/[email protected]

Jeff said:
this is how my boot.ini looks now and it asks me what operating system do I
want

;
;Warning: Boot.ini is used on Windows XP and earlier operating systems.
;Warning: Use BCDEDIT.exe to modify Windows Vista boot options.
;
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT

now if I manually change it to this will it just boot to my xp pro without
asking

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /fastdetect

The unallocated space is an acronis disk director responsibility.
If MBR is pointed at ntldr, the Vista stuff in C: root will be ignored.
BootItNG would be able to handle that - I don't know why disk
director isn't able to. Try acronis support?

If you had used Acronis's imaging program to save an image of XP
pre-Vista, you wouldn't be asking how to restore XP. Getting that
or an alternative imaging program is something to think about.

Jeff said:
Hello,
I tried a dual boot of xp pro sp2 and vista ultimate. xp on c: drive then
I made another partion with acronis disk director named v: drive and put
vista on that. This was to check out if my computer could handle the new
vista system as I am borderline with it. I found that I needed more ram
and decided to take vista off of my computer for now and return my
computer to a single boot machine as it was before. What happens now is
that when I deleted the vista partition when it boots it still askes me
what operating system do I want to select. It also left some unallocated
space on that vista partiton. How can I configure it like before. Just
boots into xp without asking and reallocate the unallocated space to go
back into c: drive.

Please need help
Regards,
J.P.Bach
(e-mail address removed)
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
I deleted the vista partion already and when booting it asks which system
do I want I choose old versions and xp boots up

so know that vista is out there is still a part of it in there that pionts
to ntldr? if so how do I get the vista stuff out and back to my old boot.ini
without asking me which system I want.





No, because the Master Boot Record (MBR) points to a Vista
contraption, which points to ntldr via boot.ini when you select XP.

Your best bet is to follow the advice given by Ron Miller. In case
his reply to you got lost due to volume, click on this to see it:
news://msnews.microsoft.com/[email protected]

Jeff said:
this is how my boot.ini looks now and it asks me what operating system do
I
want

;
;Warning: Boot.ini is used on Windows XP and earlier operating systems.
;Warning: Use BCDEDIT.exe to modify Windows Vista boot options.
;
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT

now if I manually change it to this will it just boot to my xp pro without
asking

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /fastdetect

The unallocated space is an acronis disk director responsibility.
If MBR is pointed at ntldr, the Vista stuff in C: root will be ignored.
BootItNG would be able to handle that - I don't know why disk
director isn't able to. Try acronis support?

If you had used Acronis's imaging program to save an image of XP
pre-Vista, you wouldn't be asking how to restore XP. Getting that
or an alternative imaging program is something to think about.

Jeff said:
Hello,
I tried a dual boot of xp pro sp2 and vista ultimate. xp on c: drive then
I made another partion with acronis disk director named v: drive and put
vista on that. This was to check out if my computer could handle the new
vista system as I am borderline with it. I found that I needed more ram
and decided to take vista off of my computer for now and return my
computer to a single boot machine as it was before. What happens now is
that when I deleted the vista partition when it boots it still askes me
what operating system do I want to select. It also left some unallocated
space on that vista partiton. How can I configure it like before. Just
boots into xp without asking and reallocate the unallocated space to go
back into c: drive.

Please need help
Regards,
J.P.Bach
(e-mail address removed)
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
You do not need to get the vista stuff out. If the MBR doesn't point
to the vista stuff, the vista stuff just sits there doing nothing at all.
Getting rid of the Vista multi-boot files without changing the MBR will
leave you with a computer which won't boot from the hard drive.

Vista setup put multi-boot material in XP's root but did nothing to
boot ini other than dropping a non-operating comment into boot.ini,
so that XP starts normally when boot.ini is invoked by your selecting
old version. I knew that XP could fix that, but wasn't sure how, so I
suggested that you find out if and how acronis could fix it. Ron Miller
knew how XP could fix it and here is what he told you to do:

<quote>
You'll need to boot from your XP CD and elect to Repair. When you get
into the Recovery Console type fixmbr at the prompt, Enter, and then try
to reboot the computer without the XP CD. If that doesn't take care of
the problem, completely, you may need to re-enter Recovery Console and
enter the command, fixboot. (It shouldn't really hurt anything to enter
both of these commands sequentially the first time you're in Recovery
Console.)
Once in XP, using Disk Management, make sure the V: drive is not marked
"active" (it shouldn't be since C: should be your only active partition
after the install you describe), and just delete it, reformat it, or
whatever you want to do to get it the way you like it. You will not be
able to get "the unallocated space to go back into the C: drive" without
a third-party application like Partition Magic, because, unlike Vista,
XP's Disk Management lacks the ability to resize partitions and logical
drives.
</quote>

I explained what has to happen. The MBR has to be changed back
not to point to the Vista multi-boot but to point to boot.ini instead.
Windows won't let you get to the MBR. Acronis can change it, and
so can Windows XP, as Ron Miller explained. Either find your XP CD
and follow his advice, or ask Acronis, or tolerate the annoyance.
 
I went into recovery console and did the fixmbr and it did nothing then i
went back in and did fixboot and it said it could not find the drive. I then
rebooted and it came up the same ...choose which system you want to start.
Now what can I do?




You do not need to get the vista stuff out. If the MBR doesn't point
to the vista stuff, the vista stuff just sits there doing nothing at all.
Getting rid of the Vista multi-boot files without changing the MBR will
leave you with a computer which won't boot from the hard drive.

Vista setup put multi-boot material in XP's root but did nothing to
boot ini other than dropping a non-operating comment into boot.ini,
so that XP starts normally when boot.ini is invoked by your selecting
old version. I knew that XP could fix that, but wasn't sure how, so I
suggested that you find out if and how acronis could fix it. Ron Miller
knew how XP could fix it and here is what he told you to do:

<quote>
You'll need to boot from your XP CD and elect to Repair. When you get
into the Recovery Console type fixmbr at the prompt, Enter, and then try
to reboot the computer without the XP CD. If that doesn't take care of
the problem, completely, you may need to re-enter Recovery Console and
enter the command, fixboot. (It shouldn't really hurt anything to enter
both of these commands sequentially the first time you're in Recovery
Console.)
Once in XP, using Disk Management, make sure the V: drive is not marked
"active" (it shouldn't be since C: should be your only active partition
after the install you describe), and just delete it, reformat it, or
whatever you want to do to get it the way you like it. You will not be
able to get "the unallocated space to go back into the C: drive" without
a third-party application like Partition Magic, because, unlike Vista,
XP's Disk Management lacks the ability to resize partitions and logical
drives.
</quote>

I explained what has to happen. The MBR has to be changed back
not to point to the Vista multi-boot but to point to boot.ini instead.
Windows won't let you get to the MBR. Acronis can change it, and
so can Windows XP, as Ron Miller explained. Either find your XP CD
and follow his advice, or ask Acronis, or tolerate the annoyance.
 
You did not insert the Windows XP CD, but used the Vista Boot
Manager's recovery console to return the MBR to what it ought
to be. It could not find Vista on V: and complained about that.
Since the MBR was pointing at bootmgr, not ntldr, the Vista
recovery console was satisfied that things were OK that way.

Jeff, my appetite for absurdity is completely satisfied. You have
a working Windows XP which boots from the hard drive. You
have to do things your way, not how anyone tells you. Guessing
what you did and why ought to be interesting, but it isn't any more.
 
I did not say that I used the vista cd. "wrong". I did use the xp cd and
went to the recovery console. and that did not work. I finally went and made
a disc from another computer that I have running here and loaded the
boot.ini ntldr.dll ntdect.dll and hal.dll and that did the trick. I hope
that was interesting enough for you.
I did appreciate the help getting me in the right direction though.

thank you andregards,
Jeff




You did not insert the Windows XP CD, but used the Vista Boot
Manager's recovery console to return the MBR to what it ought
to be. It could not find Vista on V: and complained about that.
Since the MBR was pointing at bootmgr, not ntldr, the Vista
recovery console was satisfied that things were OK that way.

Jeff, my appetite for absurdity is completely satisfied. You have
a working Windows XP which boots from the hard drive. You
have to do things your way, not how anyone tells you. Guessing
what you did and why ought to be interesting, but it isn't any more.
 
Jeff said:
I did not say that I used the vista cd. "wrong". I did use the xp cd and
went to the recovery console. and that did not work. I finally went and made
a disc from another computer that I have running here and loaded the
boot.ini ntldr.dll ntdect.dll and hal.dll and that did the trick. I hope
that was interesting enough for you.
I did appreciate the help getting me in the right direction though.

thank you andregards,
Jeff
Click to expand...
Whew! I'm glad you got it working, but you were pretty lucky to copy a
boot.ini file from another computer and have it work.

Many of us have used the Recovery Console innumerable times to restore
the MBR and correct boot.ini with no problems. This is a standard
procedure for doing what you wanted to do. I cannot imagine why it
wouldn't have worked for you if you used an XP CD, unless you somehow
had deleted some of those files you copied. By the way, how did you
copy them? Did you boot back into Recovery Console or did you have a
FAT32 drive that allowed you to use a boot floppy?
 
Jeff said:
I did not say that I used the vista cd. "wrong". I did use the xp cd and
went to the recovery console. and that did not work. I finally went and made
a disc from another computer that I have running here and loaded the
boot.ini ntldr.dll ntdect.dll and hal.dll and that did the trick. I hope
that was interesting enough for you.
I did appreciate the help getting me in the right direction though.

thank you andregards,
Jeff
Click to expand...
To clarify further, the boot.ini file is machine-specific. For you to
have succeeded in correcting your problem as you did, the computer you
copied from would have had to have exactly the same HD, partition, and
logical-drive setup as the computer to which you copied it. That
situation is obviously not impossible (you succeeded), but it's not
statistically very likely, so doing what you did is definitely NOT the
recommended procedure.
 
To clarify further, the boot.ini file is machine-specific. For you to
have succeeded in correcting your problem as you did, the computer you
copied from would have had to have exactly the same HD, partition, and
logical-drive setup as the computer to which you copied it. That
situation is obviously not impossible (you succeeded), but it's not
statistically very likely, so doing what you did is definitely NOT the
recommended procedure.

Ron:

Boot.ini is not machine specific, though it does need to correctly reference
adapter, disk, and partition numbers for the machine it is run on.

The following boot.ini file should work on any computer with a single
non-SCSI hard disk with XP in the first partition:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home
Edition" /FASTDETECT=OPTOUT
 
CZ said:
have succeeded in correcting your problem as you did, the computer you
copied from would have had to have exactly the same HD, partition, and
logical-drive setup as the computer to which you copied it. That
situation is obviously not impossible (you succeeded), but it's not
statistically very likely, so doing what you did is definitely NOT the
recommended procedure.

Ron:

Boot.ini is not machine specific, though it does need to correctly
reference adapter, disk, and partition numbers for the machine it is run
on.

The following boot.ini file should work on any computer with a single
non-SCSI hard disk with XP in the first partition:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home
Edition" /FASTDETECT=OPTOUT
Click to expand...
Well, that's really what I mean. Your sample boot.ini is specific, as I
understand the word, "specific," for a computer with a single non-SCSI
hard disk with XP in the first partition. That's why it's NOT
recommended that one try to fix boot.ini files by copying one from
another computer as Jeff did. It might work, as I said in the last
post, but it's much more likely NOT to do so, because that boot.ini was
written by Windows Setup for the hardware on that other computer.

Semantics? "It's better to be lucky than to be right?"

Ron
 
CZ said:
have succeeded in correcting your problem as you did, the computer you
copied from would have had to have exactly the same HD, partition, and
logical-drive setup as the computer to which you copied it. That
situation is obviously not impossible (you succeeded), but it's not
statistically very likely, so doing what you did is definitely NOT the
recommended procedure.

Ron:

Boot.ini is not machine specific, though it does need to correctly
reference adapter, disk, and partition numbers for the machine it is run
on.

The following boot.ini file should work on any computer with a single
non-SCSI hard disk with XP in the first partition:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home
Edition" /FASTDETECT=OPTOUT
Click to expand...
Well, that's really what I mean. Your sample boot.ini is specific, as I
understand the word, "specific," for a computer with a single non-SCSI
hard disk with XP in the first partition. That's why it's NOT
recommended that one try to fix boot.ini files by copying one from
another computer as Jeff did. It might work, as I said in the last
post, but it's much more likely NOT to do so, because that boot.ini was
written by Windows Setup for the hardware on that other computer.

Semantics? "It's better to be lucky than to be right?"

Ron
 
Just a note, I do not believe the boot.ini file is used in Vista.
If this was an XP comment or question please use an XP news group.
If it is a Vista question search the Boot Configuration Data file

Carl F

Ron said:
CZ said:
To clarify further, the boot.ini file is machine-specific. For you to
Click to expand...
have succeeded in correcting your problem as you did, the computer you
copied from would have had to have exactly the same HD, partition, and
logical-drive setup as the computer to which you copied it. That
situation is obviously not impossible (you succeeded), but it's not
statistically very likely, so doing what you did is definitely NOT the
recommended procedure.

Ron:

Boot.ini is not machine specific, though it does need to correctly
reference adapter, disk, and partition numbers for the machine it is
run on.

The following boot.ini file should work on any computer with a single
non-SCSI hard disk with XP in the first partition:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home
Edition" /FASTDETECT=OPTOUT
Click to expand...
Well, that's really what I mean. Your sample boot.ini is specific, as I
understand the word, "specific," for a computer with a single non-SCSI
hard disk with XP in the first partition. That's why it's NOT
recommended that one try to fix boot.ini files by copying one from
another computer as Jeff did. It might work, as I said in the last
post, but it's much more likely NOT to do so, because that boot.ini was
written by Windows Setup for the hardware on that other computer.

Semantics? "It's better to be lucky than to be right?"

Ron
Click to expand...
 
Well, that's really what I mean. Your sample boot.ini is specific, as I
understand the word, "specific," for a computer with a single non-SCSI
hard disk with XP in the first partition. That's why it's NOT
recommended that one try to fix boot.ini files by copying one from
another computer as Jeff did. It might work, as I said in the last
post, but it's much more likely NOT to do so, because that boot.ini was
written by Windows Setup for the hardware on that other computer.
Semantics?

Ron:

A better phrase may be "setup specific", rather than "machine-specific".

Copying a boot.ini file between two computers with the same setup should
work period.

My boot.ini file:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home
Edition" /FASTDETECT=OPTOUT
 
Just a note, I do not believe the boot.ini file is used in Vista.

Carl:

If you boot into Vista, a boot.ini file is not used.
If you use Vista's boot mgr to dual boot into XP, the boot.ini file is used
in booting XP.
 
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