Fixing the multiboot

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Guest

Alright, here is my _. I had XP installed on my 80g drive, and then i
formatted and installed Vista onto my 30g. Everything was fine and all, but i
realized that I was missing a full 10gigs on my 80g drive. It had completely
dissappeared. So i reformatted it, and reinstalled XP. I got the space back,
but it destroyed my multi-booting. Now to boot into Vista, I have to swap the
jumpers on the drives to change which is the master. (they are both on the
primary IDE channel)

So i looked up the help topic where it told me to run some ntfsfix and then
some bcdedit commands, and as I tried to run them from my XP, it didn't work.
I couldn't run the bcdedit either, so i made shortcuts on my desktop and
added the commands at the end of it, but that didn't work either.

I tried just doing them from my vista, but it said there was already an
entry for the {Legacy}. I didn't want to mess anything up, so i stopped
messing with stuff until i can get some advice from someone who knows.

So anyone help me out? And if you need more info, I should be able to
provide it. meanwhile i'll scout some more see if i can't find a thread that
helps.
 
First, you should be able to change which system boots by changing the boot
order in the BIOS. Lots faster than changing jumpers.
Second, what do you get for a boot screen when you start the Vista drive. A
boot screen with the Vista system and a legacy entry?
If you have that screen, what happens when you select legacy.
If you go straight to Vista, Download VistaBootPro from here
http://www.pro-networks.org/vistabootpro/
its free. There you can add in a legacy drive.
Basically, you need three things to have dual boot from Vista work
1 Boot files on the Vista drive with the Vista drive first in boot priority
in the BIOS Both Vista and legacy entries in the boot file.
2 ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini files on the vista drive.
3 the correct RISC entries on the boot.ini file. in your case if you only
have XP on the one drive, the drive number should be 1 and partition number
1 (Vista should be on drive 0 partition 1 with this boot priority, but with
no entry in the boot.ini file)
 
zaybertamer - Did installing Vista cause you to loose 10 GB from your XP hard
drive? If not, why not reinstall Vista? If you do not want to reinstall
Vista and get your 'dualboot' back, you can make a floppy disk that will boot
XP when it is installed; when it is not installed, Vista will boot...Vaughn
!:-)
 
I have gone to the page that AJR suggested, and tried to do the steps waay
down the page that was titled "To install a previous version of Windows onto
a computer running Windows Vista" And tried to do that, but of course i could
not run bcdedit fromt he command line, or ntfsfix.

On the subject of booting, Since i had formatted my XP drive after vista had
been installed, I lost the multi-boot menu i had before. Now, whichever OS
boots depends on which drive is the master on the cable. I have no Multiboot
menu on startup for either OS. Its utterly gone.

I tried installing the VistaBootPro, but upon running it (with admin
privileges) I was bombarded with errors. I don't have any of the folder,
ntrdl or the ntdetect.com, they might have been on my other drive, before the
format.

The missing 10gigs came from When the first time I installed vista onto my
main 80g. It was running horribly, and i couldn't play any games, so I
reformatted and went back to XP on that one, But i guess it didn't get
everything back.

I could just reinstall vista again, but it just takes soooo long.
 
ntldr etc are system files and won't show unless you have set it to do so in
the folder options advanced options.
If they weren't there, you couldn't boot to XP, period.
 
I didn't see the ntldr, but there was the boot.ini, and it booted to xp just
fine, as if Vista didn't exist at all. I just went ahead and reinstalled
vista again. I had tried to run a repair option, and it found an error, but
it couldn't repair it.

Anyways, problem solved, so thanks to all you guys for trying to help. =)
 
FWIW FYI When you switched back to having your XP drive as the first in
boot order, when you reinstalled Vista, you installed the Vista Boot file on
the drive with the ntldr etc, instead of moving them to the other drive.
Glad you got it working.
 
Also, remember you now have the Vista mbr on both of your drives so if you
decide to get rid of Vista you will have to restore the XP mbr.
 
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