Dual boot problem - Blank screen

[Steven T]

I was booting into XP fine until I installed Vista. Now every time I boot my computer I have to press F8 and select the hard drive that vista is located on. My bios (p5n-e sli mobo) does not allow me to select the boot order of my hard drives.

Anyway, I get a black blank screen if I do not press F8 and manually choose which HD to boot from EVERY TIME. Anyone have any idea..?? Why did this happen, how do I fix it. Stupid vista!

 

[Billb2]

Originally posted by: Steven T...have to press F8 and select the hard drive that vista is located on.
... Why did this happen

I suspect that you disconnected your XP HDD (to "protect" the XP install) when you loaded Vista (or perhaps Vista, for some reason didn't see the XP). When you do this Vista's boot loader does not see the XP install and will not give you the option to boot to XP.

Vista's BCDedit will allow you to edit the Vista boot loader:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/...ware/bcdedit_reff.mspx

 

[Steven T]

Originally posted by: Billb2

Originally posted by: Steven T...have to press F8 and select the hard drive that vista is located on.
... Why did this happen

I suspect that you disconnected your XP HDD (to "protect" the XP install) when you loaded Vista (or perhaps Vista, for some reason didn't see the XP). When you do this Vista's boot loader does not see the XP install and will not give you the option to boot to XP.

It doesnt give me the option to boot to ANY OS. And no, I never disconnected my XP drive. I simply ran a new install of vista over the old one because it was giving me problems. Never removed any drives....

The ONLY way I can boot to any OS is if I press f8 at start up. Then I can choose XP or Vista. Another SUPER annoying thing is that if I choose XP then I have to go to another boot screen. Really annoying, why would I want to have 2 separate boot screens? Whatever, I just want to be able to boot without having to pres f8 every time cuz half the time I dont do it fast enough and I have to restart the computer cuz it just hangs on the black blank screen