Vista hangs during boot

I installed Vista on one partition and XP on another (Vista on C: and XP on
D. During installation of Vista it hung on the screen "preparing Windows
Vista to start for the first time" (or something). After a re-boot it
continued the installation without a problem.

Now, the problem: Vista often (but not always) hangs during boot-up. It does
this about 6 times out of 10. When I manage to boot it seems to work fine but
there are still strange "hickups" where the system becomes un-responsive and
open Windows show a "not responding" tag. This lasts for about 1-2 minutes
and then everything goes back to normal.

Well, I started the PC with the Vista DVD to repair the installation and the
system told me that there was a problem with the boot partitions and that it
would just love to repair it. :-P

However ... it only showed me one partition. And that was Vista on D:
Vista is on C ... I stopped it there as I didn't want to mess up my XP
installation.

Any ideas what's happening?
Thank you in advance!

Stormlight wrote:
> I installed Vista on one partition and XP on another (Vista on C: and XP on
> D. During installation of Vista it hung on the screen "preparing Windows
> Vista to start for the first time" (or something). After a re-boot it
> continued the installation without a problem.
>
> Now, the problem: Vista often (but not always) hangs during boot-up. It does
> this about 6 times out of 10. When I manage to boot it seems to work fine but
> there are still strange "hickups" where the system becomes un-responsive and
> open Windows show a "not responding" tag. This lasts for about 1-2 minutes
> and then everything goes back to normal.
>
> Well, I started the PC with the Vista DVD to repair the installation and the
> system told me that there was a problem with the boot partitions and that it
> would just love to repair it. :-P
>
> However ... it only showed me one partition. And that was Vista on D:
> Vista is on C ... I stopped it there as I didn't want to mess up my XP
> installation.
>
> Any ideas what's happening?
> Thank you in advance!

It might be a lot easier to repair "a problem with the boot partitions"
using the freeware apps EasyBCD and/or VistaBoot Pro (Google for them).
They'll probably take care of that issue, but I doubt that fixing the
boot partitions will fix the "hiccups." They smack of a video-driver
problem or a problem with some other driver. What video card do you
have and what driver for it is installed?

I imagine that the Vista DVD sees Vista on "D:" simply because it's
located on the drive that's second in the BIOS boot order. To get a
dual-boot installation, you would have needed to install XP first, then
Vista, so the boot partition probably contains XP, while Vista is
probably on the other partition. Hence, the DVD sees it as D:.
If you somehow installed XP AFTER installing Vista, then the XP Setup
would rewrite the MBR and give you the "problem with the boot
partitions" that the Vista boot DVD now sees. That process, however,
should not even show Vista as a boot option, so it's confusing. Please
indicate specifically how you did this Vista and XP installation.

Well, my PC came with XP installed in partition D: for some reason. I
installed Vista on the free partition which was D:.

As for the device drivers, I have a Geforce 7950 GX2 and I use the drivers
that Vista installed automatically. Could it have anything to do with the
JMicron Raid controller (JMB36X) which was recognized during installation? I
installed the driver manually later.

Thank you for your time.

"Ron Miller" wrote:

> Stormlight wrote:
> > I installed Vista on one partition and XP on another (Vista on C: and XP on
> > D. During installation of Vista it hung on the screen "preparing Windows
> > Vista to start for the first time" (or something). After a re-boot it
> > continued the installation without a problem.
> >
> > Now, the problem: Vista often (but not always) hangs during boot-up. It does
> > this about 6 times out of 10. When I manage to boot it seems to work fine but
> > there are still strange "hickups" where the system becomes un-responsive and
> > open Windows show a "not responding" tag. This lasts for about 1-2 minutes
> > and then everything goes back to normal.
> >
> > Well, I started the PC with the Vista DVD to repair the installation and the
> > system told me that there was a problem with the boot partitions and that it
> > would just love to repair it. :-P
> >
> > However ... it only showed me one partition. And that was Vista on D:
> > Vista is on C ... I stopped it there as I didn't want to mess up my XP
> > installation.
> >
> > Any ideas what's happening?
> > Thank you in advance!
>
> It might be a lot easier to repair "a problem with the boot partitions"
> using the freeware apps EasyBCD and/or VistaBoot Pro (Google for them).
> They'll probably take care of that issue, but I doubt that fixing the
> boot partitions will fix the "hiccups." They smack of a video-driver
> problem or a problem with some other driver. What video card do you
> have and what driver for it is installed?
>
> I imagine that the Vista DVD sees Vista on "D:" simply because it's
> located on the drive that's second in the BIOS boot order. To get a
> dual-boot installation, you would have needed to install XP first, then
> Vista, so the boot partition probably contains XP, while Vista is
> probably on the other partition. Hence, the DVD sees it as D:.
> If you somehow installed XP AFTER installing Vista, then the XP Setup
> would rewrite the MBR and give you the "problem with the boot
> partitions" that the Vista boot DVD now sees. That process, however,
> should not even show Vista as a boot option, so it's confusing. Please
> indicate specifically how you did this Vista and XP installation.
>