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i first had three windows versions: Win2k, WinXP x86 and WinXP x64. my primary operating system is WinXP x86. after that i installed Vista RC1 on a fourth partition.

my old boot.ini contains 4 entryes:
[boot loader]
timeout=15
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /FASTDETECT
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional x86 Edition"=OPTIN /FASTDETECT
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition"=OPTIN /FASTDETECT
C:\bootsect.dos="MS-DOS Prompt"
(that msdos prompt is actualy the dos part from win98se and bootsect.dos contains the win98se boot loader)

anyway, after i installed vista the vista boot manager would appear with three options: windows legacy, windows vista and msdos prompt (it's that win98se prompt, i have no idea why it reads it from my old boot.ini but it doesn't really matter). the primary operating system is still winxp x86 and i have to go trough 2 menus to actualy get to it and it drives me crazy.

basicly all i want to do is getting all the operating systems in one list (the new vista boot manager or the old winnt loader, it's all the same for me)... i just want only one boot menu.

the first thing i tried was adding the tree old windows versions in the vista boot manager but i couldn't as it doesn't support loading winnt kernels directly but rather the ntloader or a boot sector

then i thought what if i dump the new boot sector that vista installs in a file and add a new entry in boot.ini and replace the new boot sector with the old winnt boot loader? in theory when the ntloader has to load a file that contains a boot sector it should copy its content at address 0000:7C00 and jump to its beginning (as if it were loaded by bios in the first place). well i dumped the vista boot loader, replaced it with the nt boot loader and from the winnt multi boot menu i selected the vista boot sector... it crashed WHY???? is vista also modifying the MBR? is it something that the vista boot loader expects from the bios or from the MBR that gets overwritten by the ntloader? for example, when the boot sector code is loaded and run by bios the DL register contains the boot drive (i have prior experience with asm, written my own operating system a year ago so pls don't dismiss me as a clueless person that doesn't know what he's talking about). i'm sure that the boot drive in DL is not the issue here but i suspect the MBR code would initialize something that the vista boot manager might need and that memory range gets overwritten by the ntloader. i don't know, i'm not sure, it's just an idea... however it might not be the case here

so... the question remains: is there any way i can have all the 4 windows versions (win2k, winxp x86, winxp x64, winvista rc1 x86) in one single boot menu? it doesn't matter it can be done with the vista boot manager, the old nt loader or with some third party boot manager. i don't care. i just want it from one boot menu

pls help

thanks in advance