I had to dual boot a friend's new laptop that shipped with Vista (He
needed XP because some of his external audio devices doesn't have vista
drivers). I partitioned his hard drive, installed XP on the 2nd partition
and installed Vistaboot pro because I had lost the ability to boot into
Vista after installing XP. After restoring Vista's bootloader with
Vistaboot pro, I could boot into Vista, but not XP. I would get an error
about not being able to locate the ntldr file when I tried to boot into XP.
The only way I could fix it was by booting into Vista and copying the
boot.ini, ntldr, and Ntdetect.com to the Vista partition. Vista doesn't use
these files for booting, but Vista's bootloader couldn't locate them for me
while they were only on the XP partition. After copying them to the Vista
partition, Vista's bootloader would now allow me to boot into XP. Don't
know why that worked, but it did.
If Vista was installed second, it normally would not reside on the first
partition.
If Vista was the second installed o/s to a primary partition or
unallocated space, should not the boot.ini, ntldr, Ntdetect.com reside on
an only on the XP partition.
I've looked at about a dozen dual boot systems in the last 2 months with
Vista full versions installed as the second o/s to XP and have yet to
see these files on the Vista drive.
If done properly, when using Vista to access the Boot.ini file on the XP
drive should require a permission change to modify.
The boot.ini may also have a few remarks added by Vista about bcdedit.
;Warning: Boot.ini is used on Windows XP and earlier operating systems.
;Warning: Use BCDEDIT.exe to modify Windows Vista boot options.
..winston
: You need to put boot.ini, ntldr, and ntdetect.com on the vista partition
: also. Boot into vista, go to the XP partition and find these files (make
: sure you uncheck 'hide protected operating system files' under folder
: options). Copy these files to the vista partition. They will need to be
in
: the root directory of the Vista partition just like they were under the
XP
: partition. You will probably have to edit your boot.ini to point to the
: correct XP partition. If you have Vista on the first partition and XP on
the
: 2nd, your boot.ini will look like this:
:
: [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
:
:
: If your computer also has a recovery partition (right click on
'Computer' go
: to 'manage' and check out your Hard disk under 'disk management' to see
if
: you have a recovery partition) then your boot.ini will have to point to
the
: 3rd partition. It would then look like this:
:
: [boot loader]
: timeout=30
: default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS
: [operating systems]
: multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
: Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
:
: Your pc should now see the XP partition!
:
:
:
: : > Installed Vista on a seperate partion so I could multiboot VISTA/XP.
Vista
: > boot loader gives me two options, VISTA or Legacy. Vista boots ok but
if I
: > try Legacy (XP) it won't boot. The message is something about nt
loader or
: > something like that. I was able to restore my XP installation by using
: > Vistaboot Pro. How do I correct this problem. I have to try some
programs
: > out
: > on Vista before I can make a complete switch.
: > --
: > Wayne
:
