Trouble with dual boot installation

[Wildapes]

Hopefully this isn't too difficult to fix.


I have 3 hard drives. My main hard drive, up until I installed vista, was a 60gb IDE drive (drive C). I have a slave drive attached to it (drive D). I partitioned a Sata drive (drive F:, apologizes if I'm making this more confusing than it should be. I'm highly sleep deprived at the moment) and installed vista using a dual boot configuration. I recently discovered that the IDE drive with XP on it is dying and causing data corruption and instability in games (one of the only reasons I'm keeping it around.)

What I want to do is to remove the XP drive and replace it with a new sata drive and keep my vista/xp dual boot configuration and have Vista be the main OS. The problem is though, that when I remove the IDE c: the bootup screen tells me theres a disk error. I changed the priority so that the sata drive is on top but it still won't boot into vista properly. I'm not sure how to go about getting my pc to recognize the sata drive as the main boot drive.

Also assuming I can somehow correct this issue (hopefully without a reformat) how would I then install XP again so that I can have dual boot?

 

[Wildapes]

Help?

 

[grumpyboy]

sorry what your saying doesnt make much sense

XP was on C: yes? was that the boot drive ?
Whats on D:?
Vista is on F: SATA yes?
IF you remove the XP drive drive c:? how can do still have dual boot ?
Well if you want to boot from f:
your have install the vista boot files on F: you can do this with vistabootpro then make drive F: the boot drive in the BIOS.
you can also add XP Boot meny entries with vista boot pro
Lucky we have vistaboot pro since bcdedit is a pile of trash

 

[Wildapes]

C:'s is the main boot drive with XP. D's a slave drive with backup/work files and attached to the C: drive as a slave. F is a partitioned sata drive with Vista installed to it.

I want to replace the C: drive because it's failing and not have to reformat the Vista installation. At the same time, I also want to keep dual boot between vista and XP.

I thought that I could simply remove the C: drive and be on my way with Vista then reinstall XP on a new drive at a later time.

However, when I remove the C: drive it tells me there's a drive error and I can't boot into vista.

I set the F sata drive to boot first in bios however it still won't boot into vista unless I have the C: drive attached.



Assuming that I'm somehow able to get Vista to boot without the C: drive attached. How would I be able to install XP to the replacement Sata drive and have a dual boot system again? Is this possible without having to reformat my vista installation?

 

[grumpyboy]

there is a way to do it but its quite complicated theirs no simple way.
the reason it wont work is because the boot loader is on the C: drive
theirs no boot loader on the F: drive, so when you try to boot from F: you get an an error.

The solution is remove the vista drive compleatly for now (so you cant mess up)
put the new drive in on its own. make sure the bios is set to boot from it.
Install xp on it.
put the visa disk back in
you now have the vista and the new xp disk in your system
Set the BIOS to boot from the the vista disk
boot the pc
if youve done it right it will boot vista
install vistabootpro
theres an option in vista boot pro to add a xp menu to the boot menu
add one that points the xp drive
done!

 

[Wildapes]

Thanks, really appreciate the help. Don't think I would have thought of that. Do you know if the new SATA drive with XP will be detected as the C: drive by chance? I recently discovered some recent DosBox games I purchased absolutely need to be installed to their respective default C: locations in order to work at all.

 

[grumpyboy]

no it wont, now I could be wrong here but i think im probably not.

The first PRIMARY partition on the boot disk will be the C: drive

Then the first primary parttition on the 2nd disk in your boot order will and so on.

One way round it would be to shrink the vista partition using a tool like partition magic.
then create a emtpy partition in front of the vista partition then create a primary partition there and install xp there.
Once xp is installed and booted change the active partition in disk manager back to the vista partition.
the xp system will now be on c: ( i think ) then use vistaboot pro to add the xp partition to the vista boot menu


the only other way is not bother with vistaboot pro and the bootloader stuff

just change the boot disk in the bios when you want to either system

Both disks have a boot record now and it will boot

Though many motherboards have disk boot menu option before the os boot menu these days.

it produces a menu and allows to choose which disk you want to boot from.

 

[grumpyboy]

or could just say sod it and reinstall xp then vista
its not that much bother

 

[Wildapes]

Yeah, that's probably what I'll end up doing anyways. I hate having to back everything up and reinstall everything again though.

 

[grumpyboy]

its windows get used it...