I'll give the full history of this problem so you guys can help me as much as possible.

I originally had a Windows XP Home edition installation on a 20gb hard drive, and when I realized that an upgrade was needed, I bought a 320gb hard drive. When the hard drive came, I installed windows xp pro in it, and made this hard drive the primary hard drive. I left the 20gb drive with the xp home installation connected so I could get files from it.

Last night I installed windows Vista ultimate on the second partition of the 320gb drive. So on that drive there is a windows xp pro, which was my primary os, and the other partition has vista ultimate on it.

Heres the problem. When I turn on my comptuer and it goes to the boot screen to ask which os to boot to, when I select an earlier version of windows it boots to the windows xp home edition on my 20gb drive instead of my xo pro installation on the 320gb drive.

I have not found a way to make it boot to the xp pro installation. If I unplug the 20gb drive with xp home on it, then when I turn on the computer, I get a disk boot failure and nothing will boot up at all.

Also, strangely, when I select the earlier version of windows and it boots me to the xp home, my mouse and keyboard do not work.

Can anyone help me make it so that when I select the earlier version of windows it will take me to the xp pro install instead of the xp home install?

Thanks.

You probably need to add an entry to the XP boot.ini and if you post the contents of your current boot.ini file as well as a description of your drive layout according to Disk Management (right click My Computer>Manage>Disk Management) I'm sure we can help create a new entry for XP Pro.

I cannot post an image until I wait to be a member for a complete 24 hours. I will try to pm you the image. If anyone else wants to try and help and needs to see this image, I will post it when I can, or I can pm it to you. Just post and let me know.

There is my current disk management. Disk 0 is the one that has the xp home install on it. Disk 1 is just data storage and has no operating systems on it. Disk 2 contains the xp pro installation on the F drive, and obviously Vista ultimate on the c drive.




I do not know how to get to the boot.ini file. Can you post a quick list of steps to getting there? Remember that I am only open to vista right now.

Thanks for the help so far.

Image posted. To access the boot.ini for XP, go to folder options in Vista's control panel and make sure that is set so you can see hidden files and folders and also that protected operating system files are not hidden.

Then just search for it from the start menu and double click it to open it or right click>open. Right click the body of the text and select all>copy and then paste the contents here.

Thankyou for posting the image for me. I appreciate it.

Here is what the boot.ini from drive F:/ says:

Code:

[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 /usepmtimer

You need to add a line to your boot.ini as follows for the XP Pro installation:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Change the XP Home line to read:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows Home" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

So the boot.ini should look like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows Home" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

This will leave XP Pro as the default "earlier versions of windows".

Lets see if that works for you to access XP Pro and then we can sort out the mouse and keyboard issues on XP home.

Note that I've taken out the /usepmtimer switch of the boot.ini which may be there because you installed dual core optimizer software?

The boot.ini should be placed on the root of the drive tagged "System" which is your D drive. You'll probably need to rename the current boot.ini to something like boot1.ini and then copy and paste the new contents of the boot.ini above to a new text file on your desktop and safe it as boot.ini then cut and paste it to where it should it be.

Thanks. That works fine. If I choose an earlier version of windows I have a choice of xp pro or home now.

Thanks for your help.

Any any suggestions you might have towards getting the moust and keyboard to work on xp home would be nice, but its not too important. I will hardly ever boot to it probably.

Glad you got your boot fixed Dilda

For your XP Home mouse and keyboard problem, post in the Windows XP forum (seems like a windows or driver thing to me), and I'm sure you'll get attention to that issue there. Perhaps a repair install will fix the problem.

If they are working on the other installations then obviously there's nothing wrong with the hardware itself. Here's some more ideas. If they are USB items try a different port. If not USB, make sure your system is set not to halt on any errors (in the BIOS) and then unplug them and plug them in again after you've booted into XP Home. You could also try a different mouse and keyboard if they are PS2 as that may cause XP Home to find new hardware, and then restart and plug the original ones in again.