I appear to have the same problem as the original poster - I'll give a bit more info.

I had a single hard drive, with XP installed on a primary partition C: and a separate logical drive D: on an extended partition.

I added a second internal HDD, created an NTFS partition on it, and installed Vista through XP to the NTFS partition (H:, according to XP) on the second hard drive.

Everything worked fine, with the Vista boot menu allowing me to choose Vista (default) or XP, with the three second default. I wanted to change to XP as the default, and rename the OSes, so I installed Vista Boot Pro 2 on XP.

Renamed the OSes, changed the default timeout to 10 seconds, XP was identified as C:, while Vista was identified as H:, and applied the changes and rebooted.

After trying to choose XP on the boot menu, it comes up with the unable to find ntldr message. I was able to regain access to XP using XP Recovery Console and fixboot, and then rebooted into XP and tried "Reinstall the Vista Bootloader" from BootPro, which was successful. OSes are still correctly identified as C: and H: for XP and Vista (respectively), but after rebooting, I still get the ntldr error when trying to start XP.

Suggestions?

split to new thread by gries818

kd1966 wrote:

I'd like to know more about your partition setup and HDD; size, location, how created, SATA,........ that kind of thing. It would help us to pinpoint why your system is having dual-boot problems with VBPRo

Assuming you're asking the both of us, here's the info.

SATA hard drive #1 - 160 GB - partitioned into a 80 GB C: (where XP Pro resides) and 80 GB D:

E: and F: are DVD drives

SATA2 hard drive #2 (in SATA mode) - 250 GB - single 50 GB H: partition (created with XP Disk Management console by creating 50 GB primary partition in NTFS and formatting) with Windows Vista 5384 installed from within XP (not booted from DVD), remainder unallocated space.

Dual boot worked fine until VBPro was installed, only reason for installing was to change default startup OS to XP, and to change timeout settings from 3 sec to 10 sec.

If there's any other info you might need to assist, ask away. Thanks.

AF Tech - we like each individual question to get its own thread so I will split your posts to a new thread so you maybe helped in a better way... It will be less confusing for those who are help ya!

gries818 wrote:

AF Tech - we like each individual question to get its own thread so I will split your posts to a new thread so you maybe helped in a better way... It will be less confusing for those who are help ya!

Sounds good. I figured since the symptoms were similar, I'd throw it into the same thread, but whatever works the best for you folks.

I'll keep an eye out to see if there are any additions to the thread - getting Vista up and running is completely secondary to keeping my base system (with XP) running, so all's well here.

Feel free to ask if there's any additional info you might need to troubleshoot.

Thanks!

Thanks to some great bug reports like yours AF Tech, we were able to pin down the bug

We have released VistaBootPRO 2.0 Beta refresh which addresses the problem and also provided a fix to get users back into XP/Vista here: http://www.pronetworks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=79762

jrfree1 wrote:

Thanks to some great bug reports like yours AF Tech, we were able to pin down the bug We have released VistaBootPRO 2.0 Beta refresh which addresses the problem and also provided a fix to get users back into XP/Vista here: http://www.pronetworks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=79762

Okay, I think we're getting closer. Not quite there yet...here's more info.

Quote:

1. Recover your Windows Vista installation Boot to your Windows Vista installation DVD and at the "Install now" setup screen select "System recovery options" at the bottom left of the screen. Startup recovery should start running immediately but if not, select your Vista installation drive and click "Startup recovery". Restart your system when prompted and you will now be able to boot into Windows Vista.

That worked fine - actually, after booting in once, it found the Vista install, did a repair, then required another reboot to get to the "Startup Recovery" option. After another reboot, I was then able to boot into Vista.

Quote:

2. Recover the ability to boot into your Windows XP installation From within Windows Vista open the command prompt (DOS window found at Start>Programs>Accessories>Command Prompt) and run the following commands: CD\ and press Enter on the keyboard bcdedit /set {ntldr} device partition=C: and press Enter on the Keyboard (where C: is the drive on which you had Windows XP installed initially, before installing Windows Vista).

This wasn't quite as successful. After performing the above, I received the error "The boot configuration data store could not be opened. Access is denied". I rebooted once again, back into Vista, and tried it again, with the same result. I rebooted again, and tried to boot into XP, which resulted in the Boot Manager Error I received before (File: /ntldr Status: 0xc0000002 Info: The selected entry could not be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt)

I haven't looked around yet for information on bcdedit to find out why it's not allowing me access to the BCD store, so if you've any quick fixes that you know of before I have to learn about that topic from ground zero, it'd be appreciated :-)

Sorry AF Tech, I believe that to successfully use bcdedit.exe from a command prompt in Vista with UAC on, you must first open the command prompt in Administrative mode. Go to your start menu, programs, accessories, locate the command prompt, right click on it and select 'Run as Administrator', this should allow you to successfully make the changes

That worked - run as administrator, that is - the changes were successful. Unfortunately, I'm still getting the same Boot Manager Error when trying to start XP...

Thanks very much for your quick replies, by the way...it's very much appreciated.

AF Tech wrote:

That worked - run as administrator, that is - the changes were successful. Unfortunately, I'm still getting the same Boot Manager Error when trying to start XP... Thanks very much for your quick replies, by the way...it's very much appreciated.

If you could, running the VistaBootPRO 2.0 refresh version, copy and past the detailed view into a post here so I can take a look at your current bcd entries, that may help a bit

Also, make sure that ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini are all in your system drive root

ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini are all still present on the C: drive as it was named before Vista (which Vista sees as D

Here's the detailed view of the bootloader settings as seen by VBPro2 run in Vista:

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier {bootmgr}
device partition=D:
description Windows Boot Manager
locale en-US
inherit {globalsettings}
default {current}
resumeobject {09888215-14d4-11db-b53a-806e6f6e6963}
displayorder {ntldr}
{current}
toolsdisplayorder {memdiag}
timeout 10

Windows Legacy OS Loader
------------------------
identifier {ntldr}
device partition=C:
path \ntldr
description Windows XP Pro

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {current}
device partition=C:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Windows (TM) Vista Ultimate (recovered)
osdevice partition=C:
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {09888215-14d4-11db-b53a-806e6f6e6963}