Vista boot fails after XP install

  • Thread starter Thread starter bereikme
  • Start date Start date
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bereikme

Hi,

I used this <a href="http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp
guide">article</a> to add an XP installation next to an existing Vista
installation, with the difference that I used a second hard disk for
XP.

This is what I did:
- Add second hard disk as slave and boot Vista. Vista boots (from
primary) and recognizes the second hard disk and I can browse the
files on it.
- Boot with XP cd-rom and install XP on the second hard disk (which it
calls D:). The XP installation copies its files and reboots. Then I
get a boot error.
- Boot with Vista cd-rom and repair the MBR. Vista recognizes the
(one) Vista installation, I choose to repair the MBR and it reports
that it found an error and fixed it.
- Reboot Vista -> boot error!

And there I get the standard boot error message at the command prompt.
I disconnected the second hard disk (with half-way XP install) and set
the DVD player on that cable back to primary. Still the same error.

Now I can only boot with the Vista cd-rom. It still finds the (one)
Vista install, when I try to repair it it reports there was nothing to
repair. But still I can't boot it...

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Regards,

- John
 
With some hard drives, when you add a slave drive you must change the jumper
on the primary hard drive to be a master with a slave. The slave hard drive
must be "jumpered" as a slave.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
I know, but thanks for your reply. Btw my main hard disk is a single
SATA disk. My second hard disk is IDE, on one cable with my DVD-ROM.

I found the problem: for whatever reason the one and only primary
partition on my main hard disk was not set to active anymore. To find
that out / set it to active, boot from the Vista DVD, and at the
repair installation screen you can start a command prompt. (I recall
that in some other step in the installation process you can press shift
+F10 to get a command prompt, don't recall which step but this info
might be of use.) Anyway, at the command prompt type:

diskpart
select disk 0
list volume

The boot partition should have an asteriks (*) in front of it. If not:

select partition 1
Active
exit

Hope this helps, regards,

- John
 
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