Dual Boot XP Pro x86 and Vista Ultimate x64 Issue

by **ALIENWARE1973** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 3:49 pm

hello, I've been scouring google for any info to help me with a dual boot problem I have: I have XP Pro x86 installed as my main OS on a SATA HD. I recently created a partition on the same drive and installed Vista Ultimate x64. When booting, my boot manager doesnt come up and it goes directly into XP Pro. The only way I can access Vista is by going into bios and setting it to boot from CD ROM while having Vista DVD in. <----I dont press any buttons when given the choice to boot from CD, then the boot manager comes up.

I would like for my boot manager to show up without having to change bios settings and without having Vista CD in. I have tried VistaBoot Pro from XP and Vista which seems to do nothing.

When in Vista VistaBoot Pro shows correct OS entries....

Any help would be appreciated, thank you...

by **ALIENWARE1973** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 4:24 pm

oh here is my disk management as taken from XP:

C: has my XP Pro installation
V: has Vista

by **kd1966** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 5:57 pm

Hi and welcome to PROnetworks! One thing I see is that your G: drive (Disk 0) is currently your "ACTIVE" disk, and as I see no OS's installed, this makes me wonder how it became the active disk. Your XP is correctly showing up as the System drive; is the G: drive also a SATA HDD?

by **ALIENWARE1973** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 6:21 pm

no G: is just storage and its PATA, I dont know why its set as active. I didnt set it as active. That screenshot was from in XP (C: ), when I use Vista it changes the letters around, Vista partition becomes C: and XP goes to E:.

by **kd1966** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 6:51 pm

Aha!! So you have a mix of IDE/SATA drives then.....? Interesting that you can boot XP normally but not Vista.......... I'm not sure if there is a way to 'un' activate an IDE drive, other than making it a Logical partition. This is a known issue; hang on for more input from other members

Edit: Don't worry too much about the drive letter rearrangement with Vista; you installed Vista by booting the DVD, which is why Vista took C: but it doesn't affect the physical location of where the data is

by **ALIENWARE1973** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 6:56 pm

heres more screenshots taken from inside Vista that might be helpful:

when I start VistaBoot Pro from in Vista I do get a warning that" Vista is not installed and that I have an irregular drive configuration."

Yes, when i built this system I wanted SATA for my main HD, the IDE was older and I threw it in for storage.

by **kd1966** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 7:00 pm

It's irregular not only due to the IDE/SATA mix, but also becuase each OS thinks the System drive is different........... Vista sees your IDE as the System drive and XP sees itself as the System drive........odd

by **ALIENWARE1973** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 7:56 pm

thanks for you help Kevin.....I GOT IT WORKING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

what happened is somehow my boot folder and bootmgr ended up on my IDE (storage) drive. I moved those 2 things over to XP root folder and I am now one happy camper. I found the suggestion to do this in another thread on these forums..GJ and thanks to admins on being so helpful

I had to dig quite a bit to find this solution, it might be helpful for others that have this problem if there were a sticky thread....

by **kd1966** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 8:12 pm

Great job gettting it working!! We see issues resembling yours periodically/intermittently, although the fix is not always the same; now I'd be REALLY good if I could tell you why it happened.........lol

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Dual Boot XP Pro x86 and Vista Ultimate x64 Issue

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