Would this work?

[mancunian]

Hello.

I have a question. I've dual booted XP and Vista before, but I didn't like the fact that if I restore XP, I have to reinstall Vista to get the bootloader back.

My mobo, the Asrock Dual Sata 2, has an F11 option to select boot device upon startup.

My question is this:

If I take my 2nd HD, hook it up as the primary drive and install Vista, can I then remove it, put the XP drive back in as primary, putting the Vista drive as secondary master, and select which OS to boot using the F11 key? (avoiding the Vista bootloader)

This would be minimal hassle if I wanted to boot into Vista, just select F11 and use the second drive to boot. I googled about this but couldn't seem to get a definitive answer.

It would make restoring my XP image much easier too.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Dahak]

yes it should be selectable from the boot menu

 

[mancunian]

Cheers Dahak.

 

[Hurricane Andrew]

EasyBCD will let you create the Vista bootloader from scratch. I actually installed XP AFTER Vista on my main home rig and EasyBCD let me re-create the Vista bootloader and add the appropriate entries.

 

[thegorx]

read up on BOOTSECT.BAK
it can help you with any type of dual boot setup and restoring of boot menus