I can't figure out how to delete this message. More later.

Back to square 1 - I recloned the original XP drive that is still dual booting correctly. With the 500 GB drive installed instead of the 300 GB drive the system shows the boot manager screen correctly. When I select XP I get a Windows Boot Manager screen that is an error message - Windows failed to start..... The suggestion is to boot from the XP CD and repair. This is actually what happened the first time and I took that suggestion but I left this part of the process out in my earlier description - my apologies. The repair process then made the XP (500 GB drive) bootable but no more boot manager dual boot screen showed. Instead it booted directly to XP. I skipped the repair process this time around.

With the old 300 GB drive for XP and booting to XP = C: 300 GB (XP), F: Raid 5, G: Vista. Boot to Vista and = C: Vista, D: 300 GB (XP), E: Raid 5

With the new 500 GB drive in XP and booting to XP = the Windows failed to start error message. Boot to Vista and = C: Vista, D: 500 GB (XP) E: Raid 5. Also the BCD info shows Windows Boot Manager and Legacy Boot Loader as device unknown. The Vista BootPRO 3.3 “Manage BCD OS entries” screen shows XP and Vista are both booting from the C: drive and “Windows XP Professional" shows in which indicate a problem.

My guess is that if I check the "Change Boot Drive" option and select D (XP drive with "Boot" subdirectory) and click apply all of my problems will go away. Obviously I would just go ahead and try this but the last thing I want to do is not be able to boot to anything.

Thanks in advance for all of your help and patience.

It really boils down to the basics.

XP requires ntldr, NTDETECT, and boot.ini to boot
boot.ini has to point to the drive and partition that XP is located.

Vista requires bootmgr and the folder Boot with all contents.

All of these have to be on the System/Boot drive / partition

NT50 - I appreciate the fact that you respond quickly. Let me see if I can cipher a meaning to your response that I can apply directly to my current situation.

My system drives and contents do not change at all regardless of which drive is used for XP. The system drive is always the XP drive regardless of which hd is installed. The BCD store can then be the only thing that for some reason has changed (don't ask me why.) With the old 300 GB drive used for XP the BCD store correctly points to the D: drive to find NTLDR. With the new 500 GB drive used for XP the BCD store incorrectly points to C: (for some unknown reason.) Therefore it will not boot to XP. Vista boots correctly because the BCD store points to the D: drive that contains the Boot folder.

Now comes the critical question for me for which I respectfully request a direct answer. If after booting to Vista with the new 500 GB XP drive installed I use Vista BootPRO and in the “Manage BCD OS entries” screen check the "Change Boot Drive" option and select D (XP/system drive with "Boot" subdirectory) and click apply will this solve my problem? If not what will?

Re your question I doubt that will work.

When I restored my XP Pro OS (using WHS) if I did not format the drive first the restore worked perfectly... BUT... if I formatted the drive before the restore I had to edit the Boot.ini for XP to boot.

shreader wrote:

Re your question I doubt that will work. When I restored my XP Pro OS (using WHS) if I did not format the drive first the restore worked perfectly... BUT... if I formatted the drive before the restore I had to edit the Boot.ini for XP to boot.

Why do you think that is so?

I tried to quote you but something isnt working to good w/ that ATM.


It is probably because you need to edit the boot.ini and not the BCD store to fix this.

Thanks for the input shreader. The boot.ini files are identical. Which is what you would expect from cloning a drive.

figurado,

Okay. After taking a look at this entire post it seems to me that everyone is on the right track. The biggest thing that is causing a problem is the ghosting of XP. The very first thing I would do is pop in the Vista DVD and choose a "Startup Repair" which will re-read each drive and setup the BCDRegistry correctly.

If that does not work then I would move the three items that Jeff said and copy them to the Vista partition.

If you could please post a screenshot of your Disk Management screen I could see if there is something else going on as well. It sounds like your drive is not active which can cause lots of problems.

jbullard - Thanks for the response. Are you saying that I should not attempt the procedure I mentioned above? "If after booting to Vista with the new 500 GB XP drive installed I use Vista BootPRO and in the “Manage BCD OS entries” screen check the "Change Boot Drive" option and select D (XP/system drive with "Boot" subdirectory) and click apply will this solve my problem?" I have this funny feeling that Vista BootPRO is trying to tell me something by the fact that the Windows XP listing is red and Vista and XP are both listed as booting from the C: drive.

Please note that ntldr, NTDETECT.com (to be precise) and boot.ini exist on the root directory of the XP drive regardless of the drive be used for XP.

Boot.ini -

[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

Disk Manager -