Unable to boot into XP

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

Hi All,

I had 3 partitions on my 80G hard drive with C:=Win2K, D:=WinXP and E:=Data...
I did a clean/format install of Vista 5365 build on the Win2K partition..

After this i am not able to boot into XP SP2 it always booted into Vista..
Then after reading the forums, i downloaded VistabootPro software and added
legacy XP with D: partition..

I do get the Windows Boot Manager with Vista and XP. but i am still not able
to boot into XP.. I get error 0xC000000f with info saying "The selected entry
couldn't be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt".

What do i have to do to fix this ? Am i missing some steps ?

Thanks
Sathish
 
It's highly likely the Win2k partition was the boot partition, did you
verify from diskmgmt what was the boot partition before doing anything?

If you then formatted it and installed Vista on it, logically the XP boot
files would be gone now.

!!WARNING!! do not try the following without 1:1 clone/imaging of the HDD:

First, less risky approach would be to get the proper ntdetect.com, ntldr,
boot.ini to both vista & xp partition (unless you are sure which it's going
to be looking them for) and then try to see if you can get the XP menu pop
up after selecting it from Vista boot menu. Then you'd need to modify the
boot.ini to select XP partition.

A more risky approach, I'd try this only if the above failed. High chance of
losing access to both XP and Vista.

Vista DVD has Boot directory...
run bootsect /nt52 ALL /force
If that worked and you can get back to XP, you can then run bootsect /nt60
SYS /force
With a ton of luck you then, in theory, might have Vista and XP in the boot
menu.
 
If I understand correctly - you booted from DVD and installed on your 1st
(boot) drive. Yes? If so this should get you dual booting. You don't need
VistabootPro, uninstall it.
You need to put the files needed to boot XP on Your Vista system drive.
# Perform the following from a Command Prompt Run as administrator.
D:
cd \
attrib -r -h -s ntldr
attrib -r -h -s ntdetect.com
attrib -r -h -s boot.ini
copy ntldr c:\
copy ntdetect.com c:\
copy boot.ini c:\
attrib +r +h +s ntldr
attrib +r +h +s ntdetect.com
attrib +r +h +s boot.ini
C:
cd \
edit boot.ini
all rdisk(x) entries should be rdisk(1), change as necessary
attrib +r +h +s ntldr
attrib +r +h +s ntdetect.com
attrib +r +h +s boot.ini
# Configure the Vista boot process adding XP to the boot menu. Perform the
following from a Command Prompt Run as administrator.
cd \
bcdedit /create {ntldr} /d "Windows XP"
bcdedit /set {ntldr} device partition=C:
bcdedit /set {ntldr} path \ntldr
bcdedit /displayorder {ntldr} /addlast
I changed the description for Vista to mean more to me
bcdedit /set {current} description "Windows Vista, Beta 2"
I changed the default boot to XP so my family wouldn't get confused
bcdedit /default {ntldr}

reference for bcdedit -
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/library/85cd5efe-c349-427c-b035-c2719d4af778.mspx
 
droid said:
It's highly likely the Win2k partition was the boot partition, did you verify from diskmgmt
what was the boot partition before doing anything?

If you then formatted it and installed Vista on it, logically the XP boot files would be gone
now.

!!WARNING!! do not try the following without 1:1 clone/imaging of the HDD:

First, less risky approach would be to get the proper ntdetect.com, ntldr, boot.ini to both
vista & xp partition (unless you are sure which it's going to be looking them for) and then
try to see if you can get the XP menu pop up after selecting it from Vista boot menu. Then
you'd need to modify the boot.ini to select XP partition.

A more risky approach, I'd try this only if the above failed. High chance of losing access to
both XP and Vista.

Vista DVD has Boot directory...
run bootsect /nt52 ALL /force
If that worked and you can get back to XP, you can then run bootsect /nt60 SYS /force
With a ton of luck you then, in theory, might have Vista and XP in the boot menu.
Click to expand...

Hello, droid. I want to thank you for pointing this out. For some reason,
after two weeks of playing with Vista and being rather impressed with it
as a beta- all of sudden I could not boot to Vista, yesterday. The option
was there, but it gave a message that "winload.exe" could not be found.

I saw your post and from XP I put in the Vista installation disk and ran
"d:\boot\bootsect /nt60 F:" F, of course, being where Vista was installed looking
through XP. It worked.

I believe I may have been the culprit in corrupting the boot. The only thing I did was
resize Vista's partition to give it more free space. I did this with Acronis via XP. I made
sure I booted back to XP so that Acronis could successfully finish the resizing. Everything
seemed to go fine. However, on the next restart, Vista would not load- resizing the
partition was the only thing I had done. Anyway, "d:\boot\bootsect /nt60 F:" fixed my
problem. Thanks.

Take care,

Michael
 
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