Removing VBPro will not harm/damage your XP or Vista system; VBPro is simply a better way for users to manage their Vista boot entries, but is not physically part of the BCD. Also, I'm not sure if I understand here, but changing OS entries in VBPro does not affect the boot.ini for XP If you want to change the name of an entry in boot.ini, you will need to open the file and edit it.

Just out of curiousity, does Vista recognize your RAID XP OS in disk management or Explorer (While your're in Vista I mean)? That's an interesting setup; hopefully some of our RAID folks will take a look at this and see something for you to try.

One last thing before I hit the sack....... regarding the drive letter assignments; Vista will try to make itself the C: drive in most instances in dual boots, and even multi boot environments. HOWEVER, this does not physically change the partitions, only how Vista sees them. At one point, I had 4 different Vista builds installed and no matter which one I booted to, it called itself C: The important thing to remember on the dual/multi boots is to avoid changing drive letter assignments unless you are in your "System drive" OS (Most people this will be XP) and ensure you use the drive letters as Explorer sees them.

OK, I guess it's time for me to roll out my standard XP/Vista dual-boot disaster recovery advice

1) Pop in your XP CD, and install a clean copy of XP to your current Vista partition (you should consider renaming the Vista partition to give it a proper label), formatting the partition during startup.

2) This should let you edit the boot.ini so that it can see the old XP -- create a XP/XP dual boot environment, and test things to ensure that both work

3) If the old XP still can't boot after this (unlikely), then use the XP recovery tools --- alternatively attempt a "repair" installation of the old XP...

4) When all is well with both setups, boot into the new XP, then pop in the Vista DVD, and choose Upgrade

Ok guys, what about bootsect.exe? We haven't tried that yet. And there is that option in VBP about returning XP back to normal after uninstalling VBP. Don't give up on me yet. If I can survive and endure being a quadriplegic for the last 13yrs, then we can w00p Vista and XP's butt into working correctly! C'mon, you type the ideas...I'll try 'em.

Tati

Tatiania wrote:

Ok guys, what about bootsect.exe? We haven't tried that yet. And there is that option in VBP about returning XP back to normal after uninstalling VBP. Don't give up on me yet. If I can survive and endure being a quadriplegic for the last 13yrs, then we can w00p Vista and XP's butt into working correctly! C'mon, you type the ideas...I'll try 'em. Tati

Don't worry Tati, we certainly wont give up on you. It appears though as there is something wrong with your boot.ini file. If it was the Vista bootloader that was actually causing the error, you would get a {ntldr} not found error. Obviously ntldr is being found, as it is that which cannot seem to read the boot.ini file. Bootsect.exe will replace the bootloader, but it will not help you if there is still something wrong with your boot.ini file. Your best bet at this point may be to run an XP repair install (hopefully it will see your current installation and allow an in place repair install. Once this is done, and you can get into XP, you can then restore the Vista Boot loader which should allow you to boot once again into both XP and Vista.

Hi, well to be honest...I don't know how to an XP repair install or know how to use the recovery console (the place where you have to type commands like bootcfg, fixboot, fixmbr, ect..) And also in that environment I can't type anyways, due to my injury. I'm using the on-screen keyboard right now. When the problem first happened, I had my nurse help me navigate through the recovery console trying to learn what each command was/did, and I probably made things worse.

Tati
(Feel the <3)

Tatiania wrote:

Hi, well to be honest...I don't know how to an XP repair install or know how to use the recovery console (the place where you have to type commands like bootcfg, fixboot, fixmbr, ect..) And also in that environment I can't type anyways, due to my injury. I'm using the on-screen keyboard right now. When the problem first happened, I had my nurse help me navigate through the recovery console trying to learn what each command was/did, and I probably made things worse. Tati (Feel the <3)

Unfortunately, the XP installation environment is not User Access friendly, which could be a difficulty, however, doing a repair install is just a matter of inserted the XP CD, and booting from it, and when it goes into the installation routine, it should search for any existing versions of Windows, when it finds one, it will give you the option to repair the installation (this is not the same as using the recovery console). A repair install will go through and reinstall the Windows System files, but it should not replace any program files that you have installed, and you should still be able to use any third party applications you have installed once the repair install is done. Of course, doing a repair install of XP will wipe the Vista bootloader, but you should be able to easily replace that with VistaBootPRO, or by using the Vista DVD recovery options at which point you should have full access to both XP and Vista

I personally would try a repair install, 'cos what the heck why not ... ... but I wouldn't advise it nor attempt it on a client's rig

I'd just clean install as I've described above, tweak the boot.ini, and basically reconstruct from a completely fresh install --- basically because it works out as far less hassle and time-wasting to just do it the stoopid way ...

On my own rig and in my own time ... sure, I'd definitely go the extra mile IMO though, XP/XP dual-boot and subsequent boot.ini editing is likely the most efficient way of resolving your boot issues

If I do a repair install on XP, am I going to have to backup everything so as not to lose lots of important info? (about 40gigs worth) And could you run me through the process of a repair install and how to remove Vista completely from my machine? Unfortunately I installed Vista on a hdd that has other files and folders on it.

Tati

Tatiania wrote:

If I do a repair install on XP, am I going to have to backup everything so as not to lose lots of important info? (about 40gigs worth) And could you run me through the process of a repair install and how to remove Vista completely from my machine? Unfortunately I installed Vista on a hdd that has other files and folders on it. Tati

you shouldn't lose any data... although you might want to open a topic in the Windows Support and Discussion Forum

Tatiania wrote:

If I do a repair install on XP, am I going to have to backup everything so as not to lose lots of important info? (about 40gigs worth) And could you run me through the process of a repair install and how to remove Vista completely from my machine? Unfortunately I installed Vista on a hdd that has other files and folders on it. Tati

We have all the necessary info on removing Vista from your system on our Vista Beta 2 Installation Guide