Messed up XP when installing Vista

[rkoenn]

Well, I installed Vista on my backupdrive and now can't boot XP. Here is the story:

1. Started with XP installed on nForce RAID 0 pair of drives.
2. Disconnected these drives from the system.
3. Installed Vista on my backup WD 160GB PATA drive.
4. Booted into Vista and everything was fine.
5. Reconnected XP RAID drives.
6. Booted to Vista and it recognized the RAID as "foreign" drive.
7. Imported "foreign" drive just as they were (C and D partitions of 200 GB each).
8. Was able to see everything on these drives ok.
9. Rebooted machine and switched BIOS to boot from RAID to XP.
10. Machine starts to boot to XP and immediately does a hard reboot.
11. Tried safe mode and last known good boot configuration with same results.

So the question is what to do next. I would certainly like to just get back into XP as it was a nice smooth running installation. It must have been the importing foreign drive option I did that started this problem. I changed nothing on the XP drives when I was browsing them. I have tried a boot without the Vista drive connected with the same bad results. I haven't tried a repair install but that is probably next. I still have all my data and everything intact on the RAID array as far as I can tell. Hardware is:

Athlon 64 3500+
MSI K8N Ultra nForce 4 ultra MB.
2 GB RAM in 2 modules.
2 Maxtor SATA 200gb in RAID 0.
1 WD 160 PATA with Vista installed.
ATI Radeon 800XL Video.
Toshiba DVDRW and Teac DVD.

That is pretty much it. If anyone has any suggestions for recovering without some type of reload let me know. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

 

[corkyg]

This is a copy and paste from the MS Vista site:

" . . . No other installation scenarios are supported. Upgrading to this beta from any other edition of Windows requires a clean installation, as described in option 1. In addition, once you install Windows Vista Beta 2 (or RC1) you cannot roll back to the previous operating system installation?you will either have to acquire and install the final released edition of Windows Vista or reinstall a previous edition of Windows. Before installing Windows Vista Beta 2 on any computer, please remember to back up all your files. . . . "

Sort of tells me that you should have a scratch HDD to play with.

 

[rkoenn]

Well I don't think that is it exactly since I had the original XP disks disconnected when I installed Vista. I think possibly when Vista "imported" the foreign drive that possibly it wrote something to the XP partition that is causing this reboot when XP boots. It didn't wipe XP out or replace it but something apparently happened. I could also save all of my data to the D partition on the RAID array (where I already have my important docs) and do a clean install but that is a lot of work when all my software has to be reinstalled as well. XP still attempts to boot as the NTLDR and system boot starts but then it blows up with a hardware reset or something. I feel if I had never done the import of the RAID array I could have booted to either of the two drives and run XP or Vista totally independent of each other. I wish I had now. So if anyone knows if from the recovery console I could go in by hand and fix something on the boot directory or windows directory let me know.

 

[Navid]

You should backup your data first in case you have not done that yet.

Go back to Vista and see what is in boot.ini on your XP since you said you could see the drive.

 

[rkoenn]

I can look at the drive from Vista and am making an attempt to do just that. However the security on the boot.ini file is keeping me out. Need to brush up on my security smarts and take owernership of it. Hopefully there might be something added to it that is causing this although I think not. Thanks for your suggestion.

 

[Navid]

Right click on it and select the "Security" tab. Then I think you click on Advanced and Ownership. You need to add your Vista ID as an owner and give it permission.

 

[rkoenn]

Well, I did get to take a look at boot.ini and it appears to be normal. I compared it to my wife's and it is identical. Looking at the system files and file structure on the RAID array from Vista they look just like you would expect. But another attempt to boot from them into XP and the same result, hard system reset shortly after XP starts to boot. What a screw up, it seems obvious that Vista did something to that array but darned if I know what. What is the boot log file that lists what is happening during boot? I may have turned that functionality off in XP as I don't seem to see it. Is there an extra command at boot that allows for boot logging? That might reveal the problem.

 

[Navid]

Have you backed up everything?
If yes, you may want to disconnect the Vista drive, make XP the bootable drive and fix the master boot record on XP.

Please note that I am just throwing ideas at you. I have not experienced this exact issue.