Replacing boot hard drive?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Gareth
  • Start date Start date
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Gareth

Hopefully someone can help.

I have a dual boot system - XP on the boot drive and Vista on a slave drive.

The boot drive is failing (clicking on boot and often preventing the
computer from passing the bios splash screen).

The Vista install modified the boot header on the XP boot drive.

This means that I cannot just buy a new boot drive and install XP on it
because the boot information allowing for dual boot will need to be
re-written to it.

How do I do this?

Is it possible for me to make a backup of the dual boot information
installed by Vista so that when I replace the boot drive I can copy at least
some parts of the information to the boot drive?

Will I have to reinstall both XP and Vista on the slave drive?

It has taken me ages to get a stable Vista install on the legacy mobo and I
have finally managed it - I wouldn't want to reinstall Vista from scratch
just because the boot drive which contains XP and the dual boot information
is dying.
 
Rick Rogers said:
Hi,

Replace the drive, install XP. Then boot with the Vista disk and follow
the steps here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919529
Click to expand...

Thanks for this.

I lose it at step 2 - not sure what the argument is for a basic two drive (1
partition per drive plus a small rescue partition per drive). What would "x"
be when XP is on the "c:" drive (which has perhaps only 1 partition)?

Would using a third party boot manager (such as Acronis) be easier?
 
Gareth said:
Hopefully someone can help.

I have a dual boot system - XP on the boot drive and Vista on a slave
drive.

The boot drive is failing (clicking on boot and often preventing the
computer from passing the bios splash screen).

The Vista install modified the boot header on the XP boot drive.

This means that I cannot just buy a new boot drive and install XP on it
because the boot information allowing for dual boot will need to be
re-written to it.

How do I do this?

Is it possible for me to make a backup of the dual boot information
installed by Vista so that when I replace the boot drive I can copy at
least some parts of the information to the boot drive?

Will I have to reinstall both XP and Vista on the slave drive?

It has taken me ages to get a stable Vista install on the legacy mobo
and I have finally managed it - I wouldn't want to reinstall Vista from
scratch just because the boot drive which contains XP and the dual boot
information is dying.
Click to expand...


This KB Article (not for the faint of heart or technically-challenged)
explains how to repair the Vista boot process after installing WinXP:

Windows Vista no longer starts after you install an earlier version of
the Windows operating system in a dual-boot configuration
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919529

MS-MVP John Barnett's Guide is considerably more user-friendly:
http://vistasupport.mvps.org/install_windows_xp_on_machine_running_vista.htm



--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:


http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/555375

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safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin

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The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has
killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot
 
This KB Article (not for the faint of heart or technically-challenged)
explains how to repair the Vista boot process after installing WinXP:

Windows Vista no longer starts after you install an earlier version of the
Windows operating system in a dual-boot configuration
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919529

MS-MVP John Barnett's Guide is considerably more user-friendly:
http://vistasupport.mvps.org/install_windows_xp_on_machine_running_vista.htm
Click to expand...

Thanks.

John Barnett's Guide does not help though - it describes the process for
installing XP on a system which is already running Vista. The problem with
the dual boot XP drive failure is that Vista can't start (because the boot
information was placed by Vista install on the XP drive which is now
broken).

The KB article would help but it doesn't give enough guidance in terms of
example arguments for the most basic configurations.
 
Hopefully someone can help.

I have a dual boot system - XP on the boot drive and Vista on a slave drive.

The boot drive is failing (clicking on boot and often preventing the
computer from passing the bios splash screen).

The Vista install modified the boot header on the XP boot drive.

This means that I cannot just buy a new boot drive and install XP on it
because the boot information allowing for dual boot will need to be
re-written to it.

How do I do this?
Click to expand...
 
andy said:
<http://groups.google.com/group/micr...ccdac924c871?hl=en&lnk=st&q=#e44fccdac924c871>
Click to expand...

Thanks.

The post in that thread that is most helpful is:

http://groups.google.com/group/micr...neral/msg/e44fccdac924c871?hl=en&dmode=source

But it doesn't specify example path arguments. Maybe people think it is too
obvious and they don't need to specified but I don't want to assume anything
in this case and end up with a faulty boot system.

I will probably just try using "c:" for the XP partition (but what happens
if there is more than one partition on the c: drive?)
 
If you can backup the XP drive using Terrabytes Image for Windows (trial
available) you can just replace the XP drive and restore the image and it
will work just as your current startup. Acronis True Image also has a trial
version available. In either case you should consider purchasing the
product and regularly backing up your system in case you have a complete
failure of your hard drive in the future.
 
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