Technology, Support, and News Forum

[robhouston Profile]

HELP----I originally had XP installed on my SATA drive (1). I then installed Vista Home Premium on my ATA drive (0). Everything dual booted just fine for about 3 weeks, then several days ago, I noticed that when I selected my Win XP installation from the boot menu, XP wouldn't boot----it just sits there with a blank screen. Vista boots fine.

I attempted to repair the Vista boot loader, which added the 3rd item in the OS Entries.

How can I get back my ability to boot into XP?

Thanks for your help,

Rob

http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u15/ ... ntries.jpg
http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u15/ ... 007/CM.jpg

[kd1966 Profile YIM]

Hi and welcome to PROnetworks! I've moved your topic here based on the content; the other location is reserved for issues and bugs with VistaBootPRO. Not trying to confuse anyone.......
Ok, so you had a successfull dual boot operation going with an IDE and SATA drive........ and now only Vista (On the SATA) works/boots......... and your image links are not working at the moment.....
Do you remember what your BIOS settings were before this happened? Meaning which HDD was set at the first boot device? I'll try to fix your links shortly; enjoy the site!

EDIT: You can also try running "Diagnostics" in VistaBootPRO 3.1

[robhouston Profile]

kd1966:

Thanks for your help, and also with the image links----I'm not sure what I did to NOT make them work.

Anyway, the Vista installation is on the ATA drive, and XP is on the SATA drive. Nothing has come up using Diagnostics on VistaBootPRO 3.1. The SATA drive is set up as the first boot drive, and I did not change this, or anything else in my BIOS (that I can recall!).

I hope this provides the information you need (along with the images), and thanks again for your help.

Regards,

Rob

[JabbaPapa Profile]

Given that your dual-boot was previously working, you cannot disregard the possibility that you may have potential hardware issues

At the very least, you have basic configuration issues that need to be addressed ...

[robhouston Profile]

JabbaPappa:

Okay, so I've checked my BIOS, and I can't find anything that has changed. The hard disks all seem fine after scanning. What else might be the problem?

Should I try to do a "repair" of the XP installation? I suppose I can restore from a previous image, both for XP and Vista, but I'd like to know what the basic issue is, before I go through the trouble.

Thanks again for your help!

Rob

[JabbaPapa Profile]

OK, having thought about this some more, it's probably NOT hardware-related -- if it were, the Vista would have broken, not the XP (unless it's a bad SATA data cable or whatever).

[JabbaPapa Profile]

Can you please provide a screenshot of your hard drives, from the Disk Management Tool in Computer > right-click > Manage ?

Also, it would be interesting to know if Vista can boot properly with your SATA drive unplugged