Unable to Dual Boot - Caught in a Loop

[itsonlydanny]

Hi there,

 

I very recently reinstalled Windows XP Home 32-bit - having had a dual boot set-up with XP as the default OS and Vista Ultimate 32-bit as the other OS. If my memory serves me right, I had installed the OS's the 'wrong way round' - ie, installed XP after Vista after a botched attempt to do it the 'right way round' (ie, Vista after XP). After an initial panic, Vista Boot Pro 3.3 came to the rescue and everything seemed fine.

 

However, after the re-installation of Windows XP I 'lost' my Vista boot-up - and VBP 3.3 could find nothing. So I booted up from my Vista Ultimate system disc, clicked on Repair, it found Vista (though, curiously, it thought it was on drive "G"), got the message "root cause: Boot Sector code for system disk partition is corrupt", clicked on Fix/repair start-up ("successfully", apparently), re-booted, etc. At first, it appeared that I was back to a dual-boot situation - as the Boot Manager screen appeared. But when I selected XP I got an error message - "\ntldr" is missing.corrupt, etc - and it asked me to put the system disc back, re-boot and do another "repair" (but it was obviously referring, confusedly, to the Vista Ultimate disc, not the XP disc).

 

Anyway, using VBP 3.3 on the Vista 'side of the computer' I re-installed the Legacy System Bootloader - ie, I uninstalled the Vista Bootloader. However, almost inevitably, this resulted in the disappearance of the Boot Manager screen and I booted straight back into XP. Once there, I fired up VBP 3.3 and reversed the Bootloader sequence - ie, I reinstalled the Vista Bootloader (and hence uninstalled the Legacy Bootloader). Alas though, that had absolutely no effect and I just booted back into XP again.

 

So, I re-booted again from the Vista system disc, clicked on Repair and so on. With the same result - unable to load up XP from the boot screen manager, so went back into Vista: and from there reinstalled the Legacy system Bootloader, thus enabling me to load up XP again but also denying me access to the boot screen manager or Vista again.

 

And so on and so on - caught in a loop. Do you think there is anyway out of this loop, or cycle, short of reinstalling Vista all over again? I am very reluctant to do so as I have a lot of unfinished/half-finished games on Vista and seriously don't fancy reinstalling - and starting them - all over again.

 

Anyway, I currently having four Hard Drives, one of which is divided into three partitions - with XP ("D"), Vista ("E") and "F" (full of games, music, etc). The other three Hard Drives are on on "C", "X" and "Y". Yes, I tried to re-letter/re-assign my XP system disc to "C" with Partition Magic - but the consequence of that was that I was totally unable to boot into Windows at all, and had to reinstall XP yet again!

 

Presumably, I have some seriously messed-up boot files, MBR, etc.

 

Any advice or help would be most appreciated .

 

By the way, here are my Tech Specs:

 

XP Home+Vista Ultimate (32-bit) \ Intel E6750 @ 3.47 \ Abit IP-35 Pro \ Antec 900 Ultimate Gamer \ Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro \ 4gb Corsair Twin2X2048 XMS Xtreme Performance (800mhz) \ XFX 8800GTS 320mb \ Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer \ Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB \ Samsung Writemaster SH-S223Q \ Corsair CMPSUHX 620w PSU \ 24" Acer X243H \ ZyXel P-660RU-T1

 

Thanks,

DANNY

[Waco]

Dual booting Windows is a pain. Since you're using multiple drives anyway I'd just install/repair XP without the Vista drive connected then do the same with the Vista install without the XP drive connected. If you want to boot one or another just use your BIOS to select which drive to boot from (most recent boards allow you to choose a drive to boot from by hitting F12 or something similar at boot time).

[RogerDeath]

Dual-booting Ubuntu 10.04 and W7 x64 was a pain as well. I actually had to install Ubuntu as an application under Windows in order for my boot loader to work correctly.

 

What sounds like the problem here is the change in the boot loader from XP to Vista/7. The only thing I would suggest is to wipe all traces of your OSes and start with XP and then do Vista. I would assume that the Vista boot loader would allow for the proper boot loading sequence needed for dual-booting the different operating systems. Or for that matter just do like I did and see if there is a way to install Vista as a program under XP (but you can still boot to it like I can with the W7 boot loader and GRUB).

 

Other then this advice, I will give the golden rule of the internet: Google is your friend.

[nahuelcutrera]

if nothing work you can still get your savegames manually and reinstall vista ... maybe you should check windows 7, I had this kind of trouble in the past and even if you fix it it will come back , so I would advice you reinstall vista or seven ... eliminate the vista partition then create it again with the vista/seven installer ... you can try "easy bcd" though it's similiar to "vistaboot pro" maybe it could help you