[12heineken]

I unplugged my single-partition XP disk, plugged in another single-partition disk, and loaded Vista Beta 2 on it. When I plug both disks up to power and IDE ribbon and set the jumpers, the BIOS will only boot the master disk, even if told to boot the slave disk first. My BIOS has no hotkey to bring up a boot menu at startup, but even if it did, I doubt it would even work.

I downloaded VistaBootPRO and used it to try to add my XP installation on the other Disk to the Vista boot menu. When I select XP from the Vista's boot menu, the machine reboots. I told VistaBootPRO to add "WINDOWS" on F:. When that didn't work, I told it to add "Windows XP Home Edition" to F:.

I realize that both of these disks were "Disk C:" at install. At current jumper configuration, the Vista disk is Master, C: and the XP disk is Slave, F:. I hate to admit it in the presence of people more experienced than myself, but I don't know if drive letter at time of install makes a difference at this instance.

Am I doing something wrong, or am I not "smart" enough to know that this configuration won't work, regardless of what kind of bootloader I use?

[imnuts]

It won't work properly due to the method of installation that you used. By seperating XP from the system during the installation of Vista, Vista installed it's own bootloader to the disk it is on. Now, it would have installed the bootloader regardless, but when you seperate the two disks so that they cannot see each other when Vista is installing, I don't know of a way that you can get the Vista bootloader to recognize XP properly so that it will boot. Possibly doing a startup repair from the Vista DVD would work as it should scan for orphaned Windows installations and add them to the boot menu.

[12heineken]

Thanks for the super-quick reply. In my experience, when you need to do a startup "install disc" repair in XP, you need to know exactly what you are trying to repair, and how to do it (no menu-driven option sytem). Luckily, XP has been around long enough that web searches usually yield a verbatim how-to. I can't even find a hardware-compatibility list on the web for VB2, let alone a specific repair how-to for my situation. Do you know what would I need to know in order to perform your advised fix? Thanks.

[imnuts]

I don't ATM as I don't have a DVD or computer close by that I can get the exact steps for you unfortunately. I can describe the basic process though. First, you'll want to boot off of the installation DVD. On the install screen, there is a shortcut to recovery options that should be on the lower left-hand side of the window. If you click this, it should give you a list of start up options after scanning for operating systems. This is the point where I'm not completely sure as to what you may need to do. I am thinking that you will want to select Vista as the operating system that you're 'fixing'. After that, I think there is an option for startup repair, which should hopefully fix the dual boot issue for you. Unfortunately, I'm not exactly sure if this is correct, because, as I said, I have no way to check it out ATM.

Also, Welcome to PROnetworks, feel free to stop by the <a href="/forum/viewforum.php?f=32" target="_blank">Introduction Area</a> and introduce yourself

[kd1966]

Thanks for the super-quick reply. In my experience, when you need to do a startup "install disc" repair in XP, you need to know exactly what you are trying to repair, and how to do it (no menu-driven option sytem). Luckily, XP has been around long enough that web searches usually yield a verbatim how-to. I can't even find a hardware-compatibility list on the web for VB2, let alone a specific repair how-to for my situation. Do you know what would I need to know in order to perform your advised fix? Thanks.

Hi and welcome to PRO!! I think the fix was the VISTA (Not XP) DVD media to boot from. This is known as the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE). When you boot your Vista DVD and you get to the screen with that big "INSTALL NOW" button, just look down to the lower left for "Advanced Startup/Recovery" options and select that. That is the WinRE and will, during it's scan, look for orpaned Windows installations. This method has worked in the past to pick up lost XP, and even Vista installs (Running multiple builds)

[12heineken]

I tried the Vista recovery utility - it either didn't search for or didn't see the XP installation on the other disk. I'm in the middle of reinstalling both OS's to one multi-partitioned disk right now - that oughtta do it (I hope). I installed XP first, and Vista is installing as I'm typing. I'll let you know. Thanks guys.

[kd1966]

Ok, further reading of this points out a glaring issue (As noted by previous poster) - When you installed Vista, the XP disk was not "available" and therefore you are likely NOT going to be able to just have Vista "scoop it in" the bootloader. I'm guessing that Vista is the current "master" drive on the controller and you put the XP disk as the "slave"?
This causes issues as well due to the boot.ini information on the XP disk being incorrect, as it is no longer the first partition on the first HDD