I installed Vista over my original XP installation recently. Later, I decided to reinstall XP on to a small partition. I didn't plan this very well, and so I went back and repaired the vista bootloader with the vista DVD, which kicked XP off the boot list.

Basically, what I would like to do is re-add my XP installation on to the Vista bootloader, but when I try to do it via VistaBootPRO, (add legacy OS, drive-letter J:) and try to boot up with it, it just gives me an error that suggests I insert the XP cd and repair the boot record.. which would just end up erasing the vista bootloader again.

I saw a technique that involved copying the XP boot.ini and ntldr over to the vista drive, but I did a search and actually couldn't find any boot.ini file on the XP partition.

Anyone have any ideas? :/

You should copy the ntdetect.com also. The boot.ini can be created with the XP recovery console bootcfg /rebuild

Okay, I'm in the exact situation as above. I have Vista installed onto my C: partition and I have XP installed on K:. All the boot files (boot.ini, ntldr and ntdetect) are on the C: partition. I went into VistaBootPro and added my XP Pro. I get the same error as mentioned above. I need to figure out how to make the boot drive for XP C: and the Windows Drive K:? I can't figure out how to edit the Windows Drive. As of right now, it's blank? Any suggestions?

Today I did the same. I had to change the bootdrive to C: because that is where ntldr is located.
Start a Command Prompt in Administrative Mode (hold a shift key pressed and right-klick on Commandprompt) then type:
bcdedit /set {ntldr} device partition=C:
This wonderful tool VistaBootPro should keep use away from bcdedit, but the command above fixed my problem.

Regards,
Rob