Help-I need an NTLDR expert-XP/Vista dual boot

Maybe this'll help...

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919529/en-us

I'm sure there's more where that came from.

I'm beginning to see what you mean about googling :( That article explained a lot and no wonder fixmbr didn't work! I hadn't realised to what extent XP needed to be installed first in a dual boot configuration - I don't think I'll bother put it on here now I've read that, nor dual boot with linux (pity live CDs are so slow).

I think I'm going to call it a night shortly ..... I need sleep :( at least I don't have to get up for work tomorrow thank god.

Hey brokencrow,

That is certainly in the right direction. What I was thinking of was the way to remove XP (or other older Win OS) from a dual boot with Vista.

Now, I guess the article you found dates back to the release candidate days of Vista?

Today we must have a lot of instances of "Vista Ready" machines that were sold with XP prior to 31st. January 2007, and are probably dual booting the wrong way round, like this one? I would hope that there are some procedures to allow the orderly extraction of the older OS?

Once people have grown used to Vista, they probably won't have much use for XP in most cases?

I must admit that I haven't come across the situation before this, but I would imagine that it could become more common? Like yourself, I think the information could be u$eful in future.

:)

No, from what I gather the right way round is to add Vista after XP has been installed. Certainly that's what I did because that's how it worked out, and I had no problems at all. It was usually Vista that got subsequently removed, again that wouldn't lead to problems.

Yes, if people try a dual boot arrangement and then subsequently just decide to format their XP partition it could be awkward because that basically caused my problems.

I watched this thread develop with interest. It's reinforced two things in my mind:

Firstly, I'm not ready for Vista yet, and don't think I will be for several months. It may seem harsh, but I'll let others find the flaws/difficulties and iron them out so I have a relatively smooth job; and

Secondly, no matter how hard I google (or anyone googles, for that matter), the "blinkers" seem to come on. Having someone else google the same problem may miraculously bring up a relevant hit. How many times have we seen someone give a google url which gives the exact answer in the first listing? Yes, it's possible to tell a white one about having googled extensively, but maybe it was the truth after all? (Moira, please don't take that as an accusation regarding your googling skills or honesty!).

Moira,

Quote:

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No, from what I gather the right way round is to add Vista after XP has been installed. Certainly that's what I did because that's how it worked out, and I had no problems at all. It was usually Vista that got subsequently removed, again that wouldn't lead to problems.

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Hmmm, this is a difficult one.

Certainly the traditional method was to load the oldest OS first when dual booting Windows.Trouble is, that isn't how Vista works by design.

Also, as I mentioned as well, there were the beta versions and two release candidates, so there would be a fair number of instances of people loading a version of longhorn/vista second and then wanting to remove it because it had expired, and didn't work anymore.

If we could restore your image of this scenario with the small Vista partition, and then uninstall XP, that should resolve your problem. it would require putting the boot information at the start of the drive where Vista would expect it, then it might be able to take up the free space.

What I am suggesting is this:

1. Vista does not believe that there can be any free space BEFORE its boot sector. That is the edge of the World............ it will fall off!

2. Using partitioning tools on live and occupied partitiopns is fraught with danger, I have been personally sorting these since Win 95! Just Google "Partition TRAGIC" and wonder why you get 1,000 hits ;) and that is only one such tool (one of the better ones IMHO)

2. Microsoft haven't thought this through, or have, and just don't give a damn :(.............. see #3 for why:

3. People haven't read the Microsoft EULA. The PC you bought with an upgrade offer was just that............. an UPGRADE. So, if you dual booted you broke the law in the EU, North America, and quite a few other places.

Sure, MS will help get rid of Vista betas and release candidates or they would have difficulty recruiting testers in future. People who try to have their cake and eat it by dual booting an upgrade with XP are a different story.

On the positive side ther will be people who dual booted with proper licenced versions, and MS would have to help them, so I am sure that there is a solution out there.

I put a lot of work into trying to solve my problem before posting here, but I think I was partly running around in the wrong directions and getting side tracked with installing ubuntu to try and get something booting and set up a different dual boot system, all the while thinking my image archive would restore at the end of the day. By the time I got to this point, I hadn't done that much research into what might be causing the boot problems ... I don't think you stay as calm and cool as you should do when these things happen.

With hindsight, what would have sorted the problem was realising that the XP partition was damaged (should have been obvious), so restoring that image might have put everything else right. What's difficult though, is working out how I would have done it, because I'd have had to get the backup onto the laptop which would have meant destroying the other partition. Then in the long term, I probably wouldn't have wanted such a similar type of OS to take up so much space, ie it's OK having linux dual boot, but two very similar windows installs on a smallish laptop hard drive is a waste of space. So I'd have run into this problem sooner or later when I tried to remove XP.

I think I've probably got the best configuration for the laptop, ie the drive split in two, one for Windows and one half for data and backups (and room to store an image locally). I'll just carry on with the fresh install of Vista - I just wish I hadn't wasted so much time getting annoyed and frustrated with it all and achieving nothing very much (apart from taking it out on brokencrow!). I don't see a dual boot with ubuntu and vista being too successful - I'll maybe just stick to the live CD if I want to use it.

Edit: Nihil people removing Longhorn/beta releases would have been OK - you could always remove Vista, the problems would have been if they'd tried to remove XP, but before Vista was final that wasn't very likely. And nihil, I don't have an XP partition any more, I had to delete XP when I copied across the backup image to restore it. In fact, I'd done it before then - once I realised I was going to have to delete XP anyway I got side tracked into installing Ubuntu, which lasted until I found I couldn't get that to organise a boot manager to get into Vista.

Yeah, Vista's a whole new ballgame. I had a VIP user at work who's T43
laptop bit the dust. Instead of going thru proper channels for another laptop,
the exec expensed one at Best Buy to his AmEx card. Then he brings me
this new Lenovo laptop, loaded with Vista, expecting it to magically connect
to the domain in a few minutes. This is a domain composed largely of W2K
desktops that we're just now rolling out of and into XP. We haven't tested
any of our apps on Vista. XP's giving us fits as it is. I took one look at it
and concluded I don't have time for this. I'm so overwhelmed at work, I've
got no time for a learning curve. I quickly bagged the Vista install and, not
nearly so quickly, loaded XP. So I'm keen on picking up anything I can on
troubleshooting Vista. It's coming...

And Nihil, watch it. "EULA" is a four-letter word, remember?

:)

This may help:

http://www.sysint.no/Nedlasting/MbrFix.htm

I believe I've been using it for some time as part of a Bart PE .iso
I'd downloaded via a torrent (the PE version I've used has a GUI
though). It's a nice app that's worked quite well on numerous W2K
and XP boxes for me.

Hi Moira,

On a slightly more positive note, at least we have probably saved a young man in South Africa from a fate worse than death:

http://antionline.com/newreply.php?d...ote=1&p=924941

The ungrateful bugger will probably come over here and beat us at cricket and/or rugby as a way of thanks? :D

So, you have wiped XP totally. I am afraid I don't quite understand? If you made an image of the disk before you started, didn't it have your original partitioning and OSes on it? :confused:

Anyway, you raise an interesting side issue with partition sizes? I only really started thinking about that with NT 4.0 (no restore points back then). You set aside a partition for the OS and security software, another for the applications and a very small one for local data. This made it easy to restore the OS, the applications suites could be tailored for individual departments and the data was either generated on a server or backed up to one by the user, so there was no great storage requirement there.

With a home or stand alone environment these days, I suppose you would back up the OS and security software monthly, your apps about the same and your data on a daily basis.

I have never seen the point of storing an image or backups on your local drive. If anything goes south it will be the entire drive. Different story if you have two physical drives, but if I have those I go RAID1 ;)

I guess these considerations are why external drives for laptops are very popular these days?