Issue with dual boot XP/Vista

[jim1976]

I have a problem with making my dual boot work correctly ..
Let's take it from the beginning..

I had Win XP and later I installed Vista on a different HDD. It created by itself a dual boot and I had no issues whatsoever with it..
That was till I decided to format my primary HDD C: and reinstall XP. Vista remained as it were. I remind you that both OSes are on a different HDD.Now I know that you can't possibly make boot.ini in XP to see Vista in dual boot. So I downloaded the EasyBCD program which writes the Vista bootloader for me.
I restarted and it had indeed created the dual boot. Now I can start Vista through this dual boot, but I can't start XP. The only way to make XP work again is to remove from Vista the bootloader through EasyBCD. But this of course removes the dual boot and I can't start Vista

So is there a way to make a permanent "appropriate" dual boot that can run both OSes again?

Thnx in advance

 

[exaltair]

Yes, Format both drives. Install XP first, then install Vista.

 

[merk]

You can also try using the xp repair options. I forgot which ones specifically, but if you boot from the xp install cd and select repair, some of the tools in there deal with fixing boot issues. Might try some of those and see if it fixed it for you. I had a similar problem a while back when vista was still beta and that resolved it for me.

 

[jim1976]

Actually it needed Vista repair, in order to create the lost boot and bootmgr in C: drive again. Then I used VistaBootPro and created a legacy OS for WinXP. Everything works fine again.