More information at the bottom!
John said:
See at the bottom.
John said:
If there is only one boot path then all you have to do is set the
timeout= to 0 seconds. You can do it in msconfig or by deselecting
the "Display list of operating systems for..." in the System
Properties Startup and Recovery options. (Remove the check from the
box and the value will be adjusted accordingly).
John
gls858 wrote:
John John wrote:
How many boot paths are there in the boot.ini file? Maybe the
corresponding Vista entry is already deleted and all you want to do
is have no boot menu show at startup? If the pc boots to the
correct default Operating System then you can just change the
timeout= value in the boot.ini file. Paste the contents of your
boot.ini file here so we can have a look at it.
snip<
No floppy drive.
Well.. when I just let it boot up without making a selection I get a
black
screen saying there's been a serious error. Sure was I formatted the
partition where Vista was installed
Here's the boot.ini.
;
;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(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT
I searched the drive for bcdedit.exe but no luck. Guess I could always
reload Vista and see if I could make the change before I blow it away.
Probably should be asking these question in a Vista beta group.
Thanks for the help
gls858
The file entries look correct. Go in the System Properties Startup and
Recovery options and re-select "Microsoft Windows XP Professional"
/NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT as the Default operating system again. That
is what the file seems to point to but lets try to tell it again and see
what happens.
bcedit will not be of any use for XP. The Vista boot configuration is
stored in a different location and contains different information and
bcedit is used to work these settings. In a multi-boot environment with
Vista and older NT operating systems the boot.ini file is still needed
to start the older operating systems.
John
Well, this thing had me scratching my head for a bit, I couldn't
understand why the boot.ini file seemed to not work properly so I
thought that the reason would be that ntldr was changed by Vista and
that the new version was buggy, so, one should be able to replace the NT
Loader with the XP version and the problem would be fixed... Being that
I haven't used Vista I thought I better do some research before I post
the suggestion. Surprise, surprise! The new Vista releases no longer
use ntldr! Microsoft has given Vista a new completely different boot
manager, and from my initial reading and research my first impression is
that I don't like it one bit! My old advice of using third party boot
managers to do multi-boot has only strengthened.
So, how to fix the problem? From the information that I have found all
over the web, some of which made no sense at all, I have four solutions
that seem to be the most plausible but I have no Vista installation to
test so you will have to do the testing for us. The boot information
and the Vista boot tools are now in the boot folder on the system volume
(C:\boot). Here are the possible fix that I have found, in order that
seems to be from easiest or most plausible to hardest:
1- Use the BootSect.exe utility found in the Boot folder or on your
Vista DVD.
Use option /nt52 to restore the ntldr boot loader
2- Use fixntfs.exe (in the boot folder) to remove the Vista boot
loader. You should be able to access the tool from a command prompt
while in XP. Issue command:
fixntfs.exe -xp
Alternatively one suggestion was to run it from command.com (instead of
cmd.exe, don't ask me why) and issue:
fixntfs -xp -all
These commands have to be run from the C:\boot folder.
3- Boot to the XP Recovery console and issue commands:
fixmbr
and if necessary fixboot
That should restore the XP ntldr boot manager. After doing the fix
clean up the boot.ini file if necessary. One could also use the Bootcfg
/rebuild command in the Recovery Console to rebuild the boot.ini file.
4- This is the long way out if nothing seems to work. On some sites I
have read that the other methods don't work and that this alternative
has worked for these folks. Simply boot with your Windows XP cd and
install a new copy of XP on another free partition (like where Vista
was). DON'T INSTALL IT WHERE YOUR CURRENT XP IS INSTALLED! You can
then, from your first XP installation, format the new installation edit
the boot.ini file accordingly.
Please let us know how you fixed the problem as I am sure that the
question will be asked frequently once Vista is officially released to
the general public.
Regards;
John
