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

I've talked about this a bit in a Disk Partitioning thread here, but it wasn't really the subject of the thread as it developed when another things ran off at a tangent. Since this has now got much more depressing and serious I hoped I might be lucky and find an answer here.

Basically, I resized my XP partition in Disk Management with the idea of expanding the Vista partition as it was running low on space. I found that the Vista partition just wouldn't expand though, even with unallocated space next to it.

Anyway, the next reboot I got "ntldr is missing. Press ctrl alt and del to restart". I've tried everything - running the vista rescue boot disc, the XP recovery console (though I'm not really sure what I'm doing with fixmbr) and downloading a set of so called system tools. Eventually I reinstalled Vista and copied across a saved Acronis backup to restore. I had to ditch the XP partition to do this as there wasn't room for the backup on the laptop but it had to be moved there to restore. Guess what? Once I'd finished the restore (which was a very up to date backup, taken in case anything went wrong with the resizing), I was back to the same message "ntldr is missing".

It's driving me mad that a sleek, customised, tweaked and functional operating system is sitting there, and I can't get at it. I've spent weeks working to resolve hardware issues that Vista presented and installed loads of programs etc. I've spent hours setting up other user profiles and getting Vista just how I wanted it. With the exception of bluetooth and my network printer, all the hardware conflicts were fixed and it was just how I wanted it! I'm going on holiday soon and working full time until then - I really didn't want to have to start again and try to have the laptop ready to take with me.

There has to be a way round one stupid f***ing file preventing me booting into a perfectly usable system! I'm not too bothered that I've lost the XP partition, it was becoming redundant anyway but at the moment I've got a totally useless piece of expensive junk! I'm sitting looking at an icon in my Vista tray here "Windows Media Player Found: ToshibaVista" (the laptop is on the table a few feet away). :fpissed:

Is that a dual boot system? I believe MS did away with NTLDR in Vista.
I may be mistaken, but Vista loads from BOOTMGR now.

Boot to a live cd (linux) and see what's there, what may be missing. And
start googling for answers.

No sense in whining about it...you broke it. Nothin' like being up Chit Creek for some real-life learning...

;)

*sigh* I've come here precisely because Google didn't provide answers and I thought that's what forums were for anyway.

I've had ubuntu installed once, it sees there's a Vista partition but there's precious little to be gained from that. Clearly it relied on something set up with the XP partition to boot and once I shrank that drive it caused problems. I wish I'd never seen the forum post reply that told me XP had its own drive resizing tool in Disk Management, frankly. I still didn't do anything that should have been risky, why include the ability to resize drives if it is?

I did everything right but it highlights a weakness of imaging a drive and thinking you've got a failsafe backup ...

I love people who don't know the answer to something, but instead of admitting that they say "google" like they're being dismissive of someone who hasn't tried. "I could help but I'm not going to lower myself because you've got to learn how to solve your own problems" really means "I haven't a clue where to start but I couldn't let anyone see that I don't know the answer to everything to do with computers."

All I can do is try a repair install if it'll let me. I don't think there is any other way to fix this, I might as well face up to a clean install of Vista even though I really, really hate reinstalling Windows and always have. I feel like I've lost an arm until it's all back to normal again and it's just so much work, specially with Vista.

Exactly! brokencrow,

"If it ain't broke then don't try to fix it" and "If you don't stop picking at it; it will never get better" :D

Moira, I have really lost track of where you might be at right now! I would confirm that Vista does not use NTLDR, so your machine is still trying to boot Windows XP............... if you want to boot Vista, I would seriously suggest that you start from scratch. I would also forget about dual booting. I know of very few people who actually need it apart from bragging rights, and I suspect that we are both a little too long in the tooth for that?

Microsoft make serious operating systems, not some cringing stuff you dump at the tail end of your HDD and promptly forget about. If you just want to learn then you really should look at VM solutions............. just copy any files you want to share onto a RW dual layer DVD;)

Basically XP and Vista want to be first, as in: "I am the Lord thy Operating System; I am a jealous Operating System, and thou shalt have no other operating systems before me".

Whilst you could reasonably dual boot with Microsoft stuff before and including XP, this is not the same with Vista.

Vista boots differently and more importantly handles offsets differently. This is probably why you still have the remnants of XP on there. Vista expects to occupy the first partition on your C:\ drive and it doesn't start in the same place as XP and earlier versions.

If I recall correctly, you started off with XP and then loaded Vista into another partition? You then shrank the XP partition and tried to get Vista to expand into it?........... from what I have been hearing from others, this is the way it works. It will not backfill (maybe it is afraid of falling off the edge of the HDD :eek4:?) so if your XP and the released space is before Vista, it won't be recognised as available. A bit like this:

A1

VVVVVVVVVVVVXPXPXPXPXPXPXPXPXP

A2

VVVVVVVVVVVVFSFSFSFSXPXPXPXPXP

A3

VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVXPXPXPXPXP

That will work from left to right, but not the other way round?

EDIT: You can still restore back to where you were before trying to resize things? Try creating separate images of the two partitions then clear the HDD out completely repartition and take it from there?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Moira

*sigh* I've come here precisely because Google didn't provide answers and I thought that's what forums were for anyway.

---

...you haven't look long enough or hard enough.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Moira

I love people who don't know the answer to something, but instead of admitting that they say "google" like they're being dismissive of someone who hasn't tried.

---

...never said I had the answer. I googled a few keywords because
I do NOT have the answer. It's an answer, like you, I'd like to have,
which is why I posted to begin with.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Moira

I've had ubuntu installed once, it sees there's a Vista partition but there's precious little to be gained from that. Clearly it relied on something set up with the XP partition to boot and once I shrank that drive it caused problems. I wish I'd never seen the forum post reply that told me XP had its own drive resizing tool in Disk Management, frankly. I still didn't do anything that should have been risky, why include the ability to resize drives if it is?

---

So you've got GRUB on the MBR, and are dual booting Windows with
Ubuntu? Don't run an MBR fix from a Windows CD or you'll lose GRUB
too. And where in the h-e-double-l did you ever get the idea Window's
disk mgm't would let you resize a partition? That's one you SHOULD'VE
googled!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Moira

I did everything right but it highlights a weakness of imaging a drive and thinking you've got a failsafe backup ...

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Well, if you did everything right, why do you have a problem?

Try putting this one down for awhile and coming back to it in a day or two...you've obviously run out of patience. Been there, done that...

edit -- obviously disk mgm't lets you resize a partition, but not necessarily
in a useable, i.e., bootable form. Apps like Partition Magic were written
for that.

nihil I'm at a point where my laptop contains a wonderful vista install I can't access because unless I boot from a cd I get "ntldr is missing". It was a dual boot system with XP NOT because I had anything to prove, but because particularly at first, Vista was too buggy and too much didn't work for me to want it to be the only system on my laptop, which I take away with me and for instance, find the memory card reader useful. I've downloaded updates and worked hard to find solutions to the hardware issues (for instance, when it won't recognise the mouse plugged into a particular USB slot, direct the hardware wizard to search the C drive) and now the only two things I can't get to work are a connection to my photo printer and bluetooth.

My bluetooth dongle has been dodgy from day one even in XP and I could use the memory card reader to read the phone's memory card so that's not so important. I'm sorry Vista has such a problem with my printer as I would have liked that to work so I could print off holiday photos and stuff. But I guess I can work round it and it makes sense to just install Vista this time as a single boot.

Where I'm at right now is also tired, having spent 5 hours in bed over the last two nights and been to work each day! I was up till 3 am last night trying to get the disk partitions sorted out and had to get up at 5 am for work. :(

I am now installing a clean version of Vista having accepted the inevitable - it's the only solution. If I can find a way round the ntldr problem over the next few days it's still worth installing the backup image, otherwise I'll just work on the new install.

brokencrow I might have had a problem because the software didn't work properly. Not every problem is caused by the person on the receiving end of it. However, I'm prepared to accept that I didn't check whether Disk Management shrank volumes in a non destructive way, I just assumed it did.

As for Ubuntu, when it looked like I was going to format the disk I thought it would be nice to dual boot Vista with linux rather than XP as I still fancy having a linux install to play around with. So Ubuntu did get installed, however it had to go once I realised I couldn't restore an image over the network (because Acronis boot loader doesn't install network drivers) and I needed room for the Vista backup. So I don't have Grub.

And I got the "idea" disk management would resize partitions from a reply in the thread I posted about looking for a boot manager that worked in Vista.

I took exception to being advised to Google something which has occupied the best part of 3 days now - it's not like I haven't worked on it!

I am not an expert, heck I hate windows. Found a good link explaining the
differences between XP and Vista bootloaders.

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com...1-6169638.html

I assume you started with XP and added Vista later. So it's looking for the XP
boot loader, which got trashed when you had your unfortunate accident. (If God
had intended for people to resize partitions, he would have built that
functionality into Fdisk back with dos 3.3)

Armed with information about how it is supposed to work, I'm sure
there is a way to repair the bootloader. Either reinstall XP onto its original
partition (original size), or install the Vista bootloader, or maybe Gore still
has a copy of OS/2 you could install...

Hey brokencrow,

Let's forget about the restore this with that nonsense. It obviously does't work, and I can't say that I am particularly surprised, given the different ways in which the two OSes work behind the scanes.

What we DO have is an IMAGE of the original disk before any of this happened. So at least we can go back to that?

Now, my problem is that I don't really know what Acronis (latest version) can do, and what it can't.

Say, for argument's sake, we restore the disk back to it's original state. Surely, we can then use a different approach and possibly different tools to achive the original objective when the image was created? or am I being naiive and over-optimistic?

What I would want to do is extract the Vista partition and restore it to a larger one, and do the same with the XP (if required). I really would want to reverse their positions on the drive though.

I guess I would be looking for a spare drive or one with a lot of space on the network right now?

What I would be aiming at would be to create partitions of the desired size then restore back into them. I could see that working for the Vista, but the
XP one would be more of a problem as it would be smaller? An easy way round that would be to insert a larger drive? Or I would first try separating the XP partition, shrink it, then repartition it?

Any ideas?

Moira,

Am I right in thinking that you have an Acronis image of the disk before you started your resizing attempts?

If that is true, that is surely where we should start?

I don't know how Acronis would handle restoring onto a larger drive/partition, perhaps you could check that?

The trouble with restoring the disk back to its original state, is that each backup was done when it was dual booting with XP, and having read that article on Vista's new boot loader - thanks rcgreen, it was most interesting - I'm beginning to see why it's unrealistic to think there's an easy fix for this. Each image will bring up the same error message because in each case the snapshot of the system was taken when it was relying on XP for initial bootup. I can't think why it would be doing that but it obviously was because the first thing the - well BIOS I suppose - is looking for is the NTLDR file, which doesn't exist in Vista and couldn't be restored to a Vista install.

I don't see myself fixing the BCDEdit file when I can't get past the "missing ntldr" point. Sure, I can see the disk in Ubuntu or even XP if I installed it, but realistically what can I do to the BCDEdit file from merely exploring the image?

I suppose things are not as black as they look. The timing's not great, but I've ended up with slightly more space for Vista - the alternative of doing nothing would have meant I was constantly trying to keep that red line off the Vista drive icon while looking at all the space I didn't need in XP. I'm annoyed I couldn't seem to get 3 partitions last night, but the second drive can still be carved up - or I can try. Chances are if I'd wanted more space for Vista I was going to have to do a clean install of it anyway.

Edit Sorry nihil I hadn't seen that last post. Yes I have a perfect image of my lost-for-ever perfectly customised and set up Vista install! That was what I restored last night and came down this morning to the message "NTLDR is missing" etc. Restoring that image means restoring the OS back to a point where it had XP alongside it to boot.

I suppose I could try installing XP, then installing Vista, then restoring my image ..... but the way I've organised the drives now I don't really want to have XP dual booting and I would find I couldn't remove it. In a way, once I can manage without XP it's better with the smaller constraints of a laptop, to just have one operating system, or at least not waste space by having almost duplicate installs of two very similar OS's.

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?

Hi Moira,

I came across this and thought of you :D This is a Vista bootmanager (only for Vista) that expects Vista to be in its proper place on the first partition, and lets you add other OSes. VistaBootPro

http://lifehacker.com/software/vista...sta-236823.php

It is free :)

It is basically a GUI interface for the MS CLI tool already mentioned. Nothing revolutionary, just makes things a bit easier because it is a GUI add-on.

AD2007?...............Microsoft?................CLI?.............. que passa?

Next thing, Billygoat Gates will be touting Linux?:sadwin:

EDIT: Direct link to provider's site is here:

http://www.vistabootpro.org/index.php

P.S. I have changed the thread title slightly to make it easier to find for people with similar problems. I hope you don't mind?

nihil, that link sent me to a rew reply on the forum? the empty box?

I do have a backup of the XP partition but it isn't any good now, I might as well delete it as I'm not putting XP back on. I wouldn't want two partitions containing two OS's and no separate place for data, and I totally failed to get a third partition visible in Explorer. The problem with my original images before I started is they didn't take into account not being able to access them due to "ntldr is missing" messages!

True, I wouldn't keep an image backup on the same drive as Windows - that would be pointless if you couldn't get back into Windows - but it does need to be on the same computer when you come to restore, because the acronis boot loader which does the restore of the active partition doesn't load network drivers, therefore it can only find local images. Since I want if necessary to have the space to put an image on my laptop, I'll store it on the data drive with perhaps a copy over here in case the entire drive packs in. However, with a laptop you're probably looking at a new laptop if that happens, ie they aren't so easy to replace as on a desktop PC. Yes, I backup monthly and save all important documents etc in several locations on a day to day basis.

Brokencrow that looks useful, however I'm past trying to rescue stuff, I'll just plod on configuring Vista :(

Sorry Moira,

The link is here:

http://antionline.com/showthread.php?t=275401&page=2

:)

Just a question here, no intent on helping, just learning.

Did you happen do run format on the drive?

Not to format it, but just to see what it showed?

The reason I am asking is I was curious as to what partition(s) were listed as active.

I haven't yet attempted to dual boot Vista, but on this laptop I installed Grub on the second partition ( not the MBR,) made only the second partition active, and it boots from grub where I can boot to either XP ( first partition ) or Linux. ( currently using Grub version 0.97, I believe now called Grub Legacy. )

If I want to bypass Grub, I just use format to make only the first partition active and it boots directly from XP. ( BTW, this was not possible with older equipment of years gone by. )

I was wondering if Vista ( or even your attempted Ubuntu install ) did something similar, making something other then the first partition active?

Ah well, I actually made the Vista partition active - some sort of warning came up about having to have operating systems on partitions marked as active, but I thought this would be OK. For all I know, that didn't do the boot manager any good either.

The XP partition was listed as active but the Vista one wasn't. I didn't attempt to run format, not when I thought everything was OK because I had no intention of formatting things. I tried format a lot later when I was attempting to resize the partitions.

From a learning perpective. Did you try and restore the windows directory, program files and user settings only? Leaving root alone?

Did you partition the drives exactly as you had them before resotring the image? Using Fdisk..... if that still exists.

Did you run the restore from within a windows install? Or from a bootable vendor software specific bootable recovery disk?

The drives were messed up anyway, I couldn't get them back to to exactly the way they were before I shrank part of the XP drive.

The problem wasn't that the image wouldn't restore - it restored perfectly - it just restored the now corrupted boot manager since the work I'd done on the XP disk wasn't non-destructive. I couldn't run restore from within the windows install as it can't restore to the drive that windows is running on. However that didn't matter either.

I restored an acronis image and there's only really one way to do that - no learning involved. Now I've just about got Vista back reinstalled anyway. My learning perspective is not to view disk management as a non destructive way of resizing drives - I don't know why I ever thought it should be!