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

[nihil]

Hi Moira,

I came across this and thought of you 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?

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?

[Moira]

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

[nihil]

Sorry Moira,

The link is here:

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

[IKnowNot]

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?

[Moira]

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.

[RoadClosed]

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?

[Moira]

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!