Vista Dual Boot doesn't see XP

My installation of Vista is screwy (only works in Safe Mode) and I cannot
reboot into XP. They are on different physical HDs. When I try and boot to XP
is gives a boot.ini error and says it cannot locate /ntldr. I looked at
ECDedit and it is looking for ntldr on my E: drive, but my XP installation in
on my F: drive. My screwy Vista installation says that the E:/ntldr directory
exists, yet it doesn't appear even if I have the directory set to show
invisible and system files. I was going to try loading VistaBootPro, but my
installation is not stable enough... it aways crashes before I can install
it. I am hoping there is an easier by than trashing the Vista Boot Manager
and repairing the XP MBR.

Usually safe mode boot yes - normal boot no - indicates a driver problem.
XP must boot from the active partition on drive 0 (usually always C). A
boot manager, boot.ini for pre-Vista OSs and BCD for Vista installations,
is necessary in a multi-boot setup to have XP boot from other than drive 0
(C).

You do not elaborate on how XP and Vista were installed - clean or upgrade -
XP installed first followed by Vista and so forth.



"TomKo" <TomKo@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:C8B5C242-1960-427A-9272-25C2AFDEF9A4@microsoft.com...
> My installation of Vista is screwy (only works in Safe Mode) and I cannot
> reboot into XP. They are on different physical HDs. When I try and boot to
> XP
> is gives a boot.ini error and says it cannot locate /ntldr. I looked at
> ECDedit and it is looking for ntldr on my E: drive, but my XP installation
> in
> on my F: drive. My screwy Vista installation says that the E:/ntldr
> directory
> exists, yet it doesn't appear even if I have the directory set to show
> invisible and system files. I was going to try loading VistaBootPro, but
> my
> installation is not stable enough... it aways crashes before I can install
> it. I am hoping there is an easier by than trashing the Vista Boot Manager
> and repairing the XP MBR.

"TomKo" <TomKo@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote

> My installation of Vista is screwy (only works in Safe Mode) and I cannot
> reboot into XP. They are on different physical HDs. When I try and boot to
> XP
> is gives a boot.ini error and says it cannot locate /ntldr. I looked at
> ECDedit and it is looking for ntldr on my E: drive, but my XP installation
> in
> on my F: drive. My screwy Vista installation says that the E:/ntldr
> directory
> exists, yet it doesn't appear even if I have the directory set to show
> invisible and system files. I was going to try loading VistaBootPro, but
> my
> installation is not stable enough... it aways crashes before I can install
> it. I am hoping there is an easier by than trashing the Vista Boot Manager
> and repairing the XP MBR.

See if using VistaBoot Pro can help in setting up the dual boot.
http://www.vistabootpro.org/

--
Rock [MVP - User/Shell]

My XP installation was a clean install on my E: drive and is at least 1 year
old. Vista is also a clean install on my G: drive (which Vista has re
designated G. The only way for me to get back into XP was to boot with the
XP CD and run FIXMBR and FIXBOOT. I installed VistaBootPro from within XP and
it didn't automatically find the XP installation, it did, however, find some
sort of "Longhorn Pre-Install" version of Windows. Not sure if that is
normal. My E: drive is a 75gig EIDE drive and the G: drive is a 250gig SATA
drive. The Vista install is only stable in Safe mode, otherwise I get every
imaginable BSOD... from IRQL_THAN_OR_EQUAL to MEMORY MANAGEMENT. I think I
have seen at least seven different BSOD's so far!


"AJR" wrote:

> Usually safe mode boot yes - normal boot no - indicates a driver problem.
> XP must boot from the active partition on drive 0 (usually always C). A
> boot manager, boot.ini for pre-Vista OSs and BCD for Vista installations,
> is necessary in a multi-boot setup to have XP boot from other than drive 0
> (C).
>
> You do not elaborate on how XP and Vista were installed - clean or upgrade -
> XP installed first followed by Vista and so forth.
>
>
>
> "TomKo" <TomKo@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:C8B5C242-1960-427A-9272-25C2AFDEF9A4@microsoft.com...
> > My installation of Vista is screwy (only works in Safe Mode) and I cannot
> > reboot into XP. They are on different physical HDs. When I try and boot to
> > XP
> > is gives a boot.ini error and says it cannot locate /ntldr. I looked at
> > ECDedit and it is looking for ntldr on my E: drive, but my XP installation
> > in
> > on my F: drive. My screwy Vista installation says that the E:/ntldr
> > directory
> > exists, yet it doesn't appear even if I have the directory set to show
> > invisible and system files. I was going to try loading VistaBootPro, but
> > my
> > installation is not stable enough... it aways crashes before I can install
> > it. I am hoping there is an easier by than trashing the Vista Boot Manager
> > and repairing the XP MBR.
>
>
>