Hello. I have used VistaBoot pro for many months and find it extremely useful.

Right now I have Win XP and Vista on different hard drives and the program lets me boot either perfectly. I have today installed a fresh copy of XP on a seperate hard drive and added that as another legacy OS entry in VistaBoot pro.

Right now I have the following options when VistaBoot pro boots:
1) WIN XP 1
2) WIN VISTA
3) WIN XP 2

Options #1 and #2 work fine as they always have. The problem is when I choose #3 it boots to the default/original XP installation (like I was pressing #1).

I guess my question is, is it possible to do the scenario I have outlined above with VistaBoot pro? If so am I missing a step? Could there be an error with the configuration?

Thanks for the help

Forgot to mention I am using: VistaBootPRO v.3.1

I think install VistaBootPRO 3.3 unless you have some issues with it on your system? There are some functionality improvements in it.

Sounds like you need to sort your boot.ini out (if you copy and paste your's here, together with a screenshot of your disk management (either from XP or Vista) we should be able to get that sorted out quite easily. This on it's own may sort out the boot path for WIN XP 2.

If not, it may be necessary to Reinstall the Vista bootloader>All Drives from the Bootloader page of VistaBootPRO.

I'd suggest backing up you current BCD store anyway, even if it is not working correctly. It at least will restore your current situation for us to work on again if necessary.

Grav!ty wrote:

I think install VistaBootPRO 3.3 unless you have some issues with it on your system? There are some functionality improvements in it.

OK I did that.

Grav!ty wrote:

Sounds like you need to sort your boot.ini out .... If not, it may be necessary to Reinstall the Vista bootloader>All Drives from the Bootloader page of VistaBootPRO.

I reinstalled the Vista bootloader usin 3.3 - didn't make a difference.

My XP boot.ini right now only refers to my WIN XP1. I guess I was thinking VistabootPro would take care of that. I mean I can easily edit the boot.ini so when I choose WIN XP1 I will be taken to the XP dual boot menu, and then choose the OS from there - was that what you meant? Is that the only way to do it? Is there no way to choose option #3 and have it boot directly to WIN XP2 instead of going to the second menu?

Thanks for your help

I also have 2- XP installations + Vista & Server 2008 on the test rig.

VBP for me manages the Vista & Server & lists the 'Earlier OS' as 1- entry.
If i click on the 'Earlier OS' entry i get the next window w/ both the XP entries listed & have to choose which i want to boot from.

Since XP was the last one i installed that XP entry is what the second folder defaults to, this can be changed where you edit the boot.ini.

In VBP chose the 'Earlier OS' at the default... this worked for me, as when Vista was chosen in VBP that was what was booted even tho the XP was the default in the boot.ini window.

shreader wrote:

I also have 2- XP installations + Vista & Server 2008 on the test rig. VBP for me manages the Vista & Server & lists the 'Earlier OS' as 1- entry. If i click on the 'Earlier OS' entry i get the next window w/ both the XP entries listed & have to choose which i want to boot from...

Thanks Shreader, since my last post I edited my boot.ini file and have a similar setup like you do; when I choose XP from VBP I go to the second menu and I can choose between my 2 XP installations. This works fine.

I knew I could do this from the beginning but I thought (erroneously, I guess) that I could add another legacy OS entry to VBP and have that boot directly, but VBP doesn't seem to be able to do that.

Remember that VBP is not a boot manager program (per say GRUB). It is a GUI program that manages the entries for Vista/XP

NT50 wrote:

Remember that VBP is not a boot manager program (per say GRUB). It is a GUI program that manages the entries for Vista/XP

Yeah, I guess you are right! So there's my vote to add regular boot manager functionality to VBP!

In order to do that we wouLD have to take over Vista boot manager. Not sure about THe legalities in that.

Love the tagline there though............VBPro takes over multi-boot functions from MS's bcdedit; actually I like it the way it is - simply an interface (A better one albeit) to the Vista bootmanager bcdedit program