dual booting xp pro and vista

[cdubb]

i had xp pro installed on my 250gb sata2 drive its in three partitions i bought a new hdd 320gb partitioned it and installed vista yltimate now my xp wont boot and i noticed some drive letters are chchanged the partition that xp pro is on is a logical while the other two partitions on the same hdd are primary

how do i fix this i need the xp pro partitoon to be primary im sure

[cdubb]

ttt

[CPressland]

Yeah the XP Partition NEEDs to be Primary. You can use something like Partition Magic to fix that

[Churma]

Install easy bcd and then you can point the new bootloader in vista and add your old xp install. The you will have an option to boot to it.

http://neosmart.net/blog/2007/easybcd-16-released/

It works trust me. Goodluck

[cdubb]

ive tried using easy bcd and i get the bootloader at startup but when i try n load xp it doesnt boot but vista will...! i dont have partition magic is there another way to set my xp partition to primary?

[Computer Guru]

EasyBCD adds a XP entry to the bootloader that will work only if your boot.ini is in order. Double check that.

[Xerxes]

I did a similar thing except the other way around, had Vista Home Premium on one HDD and installed XP Home to the second HDD, after that Vista wouldn't boot, only XP. I end up using a combination of the recovery console and EasyBCD and it works a charm. Another program you might want to consider is VistaBootPRO same thing as EasyBCD, however, if EasyBCD didn't work this might, Good luck!

[spacesurfer]

If you can boot to Vista, you don't have to use a third party program to set your XP partition as primary. you can do it in Vista's disk management console.

If you're up to it, you might also want to see this guide for dual booting: Multi-boot Vista and XP with Grub.

Grub4Dos is very versatile.

Edited May 22, 2007 by spacesurfer

[Computer Guru]

EasyBCD contains an implementation of Grub4Dos called NeoGrub.

[cdubb]

can i use vistas disk management to set my xp partition to primary i cant seem to find the option when i right click on that partition...also where or how do i find my boot.ini file to check it? i cant find it on any disks...

[spacesurfer]

Sorry, I made a mistake in what I said earlier. I don't think you can change a partition type from extended to primary. What I meant to say is make the partition active, not primary. You can make the partition active by going to Computer Management --> Disk Management --> right click on your partition and select mark partition as active.

[cdubb]

this is what my boot.ini looks like

whats wrong here?

There is currently 2 OS(s) installed on your system.

The current boot timeout is: 30

Default OS: Microsoft Windows Vista

Entry 1

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Name: Microsoft Windows Vista

BCD ID: {current}

Boot Drive: C:

Windows Drive: C:

System Bootloader: \Windows\system32\winload.exe

Windows Directory: \Windows

Entry 2

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Name: Microsoft Windows XP

BCD ID: {ntldr}

Boot Drive: E:

System Bootloader: \ntldr

[cdubb]

ttt

[Lant]

For some reason for me I had to set Vista and XP's Boot Drives to C: (even though its the x drive on vista and i on xp) so you might want to try to change around xp's drive letters.

[cdubb]

u mean change the drive letter in windows so they are both set to C: or u mean on EASYBCD or VISYABOOTPRO?

[Computer Guru]

EasyBCD.

The drive letter for the XP entry should be the boot drive, which may or may not be the XP drive itself.

Lant, if you're interested in why it did that, here's the documentation for the drive letters: http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Conf...+the+Bootloader

[cdubb]

ok i did that it still wont boot for some reason it wont let me logon my xp partition in recovery console it says invalid password but i know my password....

also what command do i use in recovery console to get my xp to boot

[cdubb]

ttt

[+Warwagon MVC]

ttt

whats ttt?

[Buzz99]

Yep! That "ttt" thing is getting on my nerves...

[Computer Guru]

warwagon, i see you have your weapon aimed at those words - good job! ;P

cdubb: I can't help you if you don't know your password.