Add Win XP to Vista boot.ini

[spacesurfer]

Hi, all.

I installed Vista beta 5384 to my first partition. I tried on second partition (when my first was Win XP) and it failed.

Well, I had a ghost image so I restored it to my second partition. So, I've got vista on first and winxp on second.

I do I get vista to recognize my second partition? I know you have to edit boot.ini but I'm not sure what my entry should be like.

Any help appreciated.

(I'm not sure why vista setup crashed and said no changes were made to your system. When I rebooted, nothing came up. I had a hard time trying to restore but I couldn't. So I decided to install Vista first on first partition and winxp on second.)

[Nakatomi2010]

Windows XP has to be installed to the second partition, when you do what you did XP is going to load and look for all it's files to be on the C: drive, though now it's the D: drive....

Best way would be to do a reinstall from scratch and install it to D: so all the appropriate registry entries would be made...

Or once the ghost is in place pop in the XP CD and see if you can do a repair install.... But then all your software would be messed up too...

[bojo]

they can be installed whereever the hell u like them to be, C: D: Z: B: whatever ur drive is....

and there is no registry settings for dual booting.....

what is booting vista or xp?...

im geussing it will be xp if u restored that, and restored the MBR to point to it (which ghost or whatever prolli did).

whatever is loading, u have to go to the root of that drive, and unhide the boot.ini file.

alternative is right click my computer>properties>advanced> startup and recovery>settings>edit

from their u can add in the partition numbers to boot what u want

eg.

[boot loader]

timeout=30

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS

[operating systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional x64 Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

if u added

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Windows XP dummy file"

then a new entry would appear when u boot ur pc, and would try to load windows from the 3rd partition.

im not sure what giving the incorrect one does, i believe it will just fail and u can restart and select the proper one.

NO GAURANTEES THEIR AT ALL, TRYING ANY OF THIS COULD REALLI KILL UR PC.

but in that case its just a reinstall which has alreadi been suggested.

NOTE: the boot.ini is going to be in the root of whatever partition u are running. EG. for u, if ur in vista, boot.ini would be in C:\boot.ini. If in XP it would be in D:\boot.ini. (to avoid this, just use alternative method mentioned earlier).

any questions just ask, i had to do this once, to allow me to dual boot Winxp and winXP x64, when normal XP was installed second.

ohh i assume by reconize u mean, boot from, as u should alreadi see the partition in vista.... and be able to access the files from vista

u wanted to choose between booting vista and xp rite?

[spacesurfer]

vista is loading currently.

your point about winxp looking for c: is well taken. i agree that it will screw up my system.

since my system is in no proper condition for use, i will have to just reinstall winxp on c: and vista on d: if that works.

[Nakatomi2010]

Bojo: There's only one boot.ini file and it's almost always on the C:\ drive as this is the boot drive, and as a result all other operating systems which are installed place their boot files on C:\, to test this theory install Windows XP on Partition A and XP x64 on partition B, once the installs are done, format drive C:\, this will in turn case x64 to no longer boot...

[gunsmokingman]

Vista does not use the Boot.ini any more, W3K, XP, W2k uses the boot.ini.

To edit Vista you need to use bcedit that Vista has

Example

This changes the boot menu for Vista default text for any legacy OS to this

bcdedit /set {ntldr} Description "Place the name here"

To change the default text on Vista Boot Menu

bcdedit /set {current} Description "Place the name here"

There are some more option to use with bcedit

In Vista open Cmd promt and type in

bcedit /?

[bojo]

if you format drive C:, and ur hardrive is searching for the boot.ini of drive C:..... thats obvious it wont work, what a bad test.....

if he has his system pointing to drive D: and booting from it, his boot.ini will be on drive D, unless he has alreadi modified a boot.ini (or sumtin has seriously screwed up).

windows may, cosmetically make itself always appear as C:, (once i had winxp and winxp64 both think they were installed on C:, they appeared as G: in the other OS).

if i formatted drive C: like u said, but copied over ntldr, boot.ini and the otehr to my x64 partition, then rebuilt the MBR with with the windows xp disk, it would boot from my x64 while the C: was killed.

as gunsmokingman said, i thort vista may be different.

however loading it shouldnt be that difficult, just add the lines in.... one problem i can see, is that ur windows 32 will think it is on C:.. cause u made an image of it from when it was on C:. (ONLY COSMETIC, u could easily get over this, it wont affect how windows runs at all)

drive letters are just that, drive letters, dont get too caught up in thinking thats where it all boots from. the boot.ini doesnt even contain drive letters, notice how it has the parition number...... so that doesnt even use C:.....

Edited June 15, 2006 by bojo

[Biohead]

Like gunsmokingman says, boot.ini is only used on the NT5 kernel OSes. BCDEDIT is used in Vista. I think it is located in X:\Windows\System32, but you'll have to double check on that. Just open in the command prompt and edit away, but make a backup first.