Dual boot issue with XP

[neekunj]

hi,
I managed to dual boot xp and vista(vista preinstalled),but problem with my operating system,Seagate Momentus 5400.3 160GB Hard Disk Drive,i couldn't fix it on their computer, Windows doesn't even start up, giving a BSOD when booting. Every time I boot, XP comes up by default. So does anyone have any suggestion on how to get my vista back?

Thanks in advance for your help!!!

[Calvin K]

hi,
I had to use my WinXP disk to format the drive and then tried a fresh install of Windows7 all over, after formatting with the WinXP disk. Only different thing I did this time was to leave the languages at english, rather than changing to faroese. Not sure if this has been the cause of the error, but I thought leaving everything at default would get me better chances at succeeding.

[Dr. V]

hi,
Even if you can't boot xp all the data is safe and recoverable.But you should be able to fix xp to boot up again. You can try the fixmbr/fixboot command, this will either fix the problem, if it doesn't it won't make it worst. You can check the boot.ini file in xp and make sure that it's setup so that it is pointing to the correct boot partition. The ultimate bootdisk probably won't fix it, a more valuable tool would be a "boot corrector" it's what I use. It can only be found in the "paragon partition manager 9.0 boot disk" it's a very good utility that has got my computers to bootup in some worst case scenario problems.

[Solomon]

I run a dual-boot XPso that I can use one for general computer stuff and one with minimal services for audio recording. As long as you haven't changed the System drive (as opposed to the Boot drive - running OS partition) between installs, the drive letters remain the same and the same Windows authentication codes will work for both.

However, if you swap the System partition between installs, the Boot partition will always be C: and the Windows authentication codes will be different (mainly because the System partition ID will be different).In multi-HDD systems, to do multi-boot and have the boot partitions all on the same HDD, you will have to disconnect the 2nd, etc, HDDs. Without the disconnection, Windows would allocate drive letters to each drive first, then by partition, so that a two drive system with two partitions on each HDD would have default letter allocations.While you can change drive letters of partitions, you do NOT want to do this to a Boot partition as the registry entries set at installation will then point to the wrong drive. Reletter partitions after OS install, but before installing applications to minimise reconfiguration of paths to data partitions.