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[juliabird Profile]

It was the old story, had to install XP as well as Vista to get ALL the software that I installed on my new computer running at its peak. Well, after reading the instructions thoroughly, I figured I would have no problems avoiding problems in using BootPro. Wrong. Maybe the problem was that somehow, XP had renamed the "D" drive that I created for it to "J", stuck somewhere in the middle of my 9 in 1 card reader, but I couldn't get back into XP after Vista was repaired. So...I tried various fixes: I copied the XP boot files individually, and put them in to the XP drive from Vista. No go. OK, copied a newer version of the boot files. Still no go. Used BootPro to load the legacy boot drivers. After that didn't work, I gave up on the software, figured the $9.95 I spent was just as well invested as those tickets I bought for mega-millions lottery jacket.

Next, I tried various alterations of bcedit from an administrative prompt, which I originally bought BootPro to avoid, but none of them worked either. Renamed the drives to match XP's letters. The hours dragged on.

I did finally get both OS's up and running with a .bat file I copied from Ganesh from Bootstrike.com. This method differed from the others in that it required the Vista installation media in the DVD drive while it ran. The only change I made to it was to make sure that my drive letters matched the commands in the .bat file, before running it from Vista. Next boot I had my two OS's up and running.

The file goes like this (substitute your drive letters as needed):
cd %windir%
e:\boot\bootsect.exe -NT60 All
%windir%\system32\Bcdedit -create {ntldr} -d "XP"
%windir%\system32\Bcdedit –set {ntldr} device partition=c:
%windir%\system32\Bcdedit –set {ntldr} path \ntldr
%windir%\system32\Bcdedit –displayorder {ntldr} –addlast

You can also type this manually, one line at a time from an administrative level command prompt.
Hope this helps someone out there, like it did for me.
Next week maybe I'll figure out why XP is only showing 3gb's of ram, while Vista registers all 4gb's that are installed. Or maybe I'll just enjoy using the computer for awhile, lol.