Problem with dual booting XP + Vista

[Rimz]

Hi,

Sorry for this longish post, I just want to explain things as clearly as possible.

I am having problems dual booting XP and Vista. XP boots up as default which is what I want for the time being but I cannot boot to Vista. I do not get the boot loader during start-up so I cannot choose. The only way I can boot to Vista is to have the Vista DVD in the dvd drive at start-up, which loads the Vista boot loader allowing me to choose what OS I want to boot from.

I have 2 HDD’s:

1. My main drive is 250G. This has 2 partitions (200G for XP Pro 64bit and the rest for Vista Business 32bit)

2. My second drive is 160G with XP Pro 32bit and is only used as a backup. I cannot boot to this drive either. I transfer files from my main drive to this one.

I would like the option to boot to all three without an application like Acronis Boot Selector – I’ve tried this with my old system and it worked fine for a week and then I couldn’t boot to anything!

Ideally I would like to use Vista Boot Loader or something built into Windows so I can choose what OS to choose to boot from. My main goal is just to get my main drive working with XP 64 and Vista. The 2nd drive would be a bonus. I have not changed the ‘jumpers’ on the 2nd drive, I don’t know if I need to… there is no labelling to show me which is slave etc. So at the moment both drives are primary but the Vista partition is not (if that makes sense).

I have tried ‘Vista Boot PRO’ and ‘Easy BCD’ to configure the boot options but I am having no luck. Changing Vista to default or changing XP 64 to default from within Vista made no difference. I know Vista does not use boot.ini any longer but this is my boot.ini for my default OS, XP 64:

;

;Warning: Boot.ini is used on Windows XP and earlier operating systems.

;Warning: Use BCDEDIT.exe to modify Windows Vista boot options.

;

[boot loader]

timeout=30

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

[operating systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional x64 Edition" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT /USEPMTIMER

Vista or XP 32bit are not on there, are they meant to be?

I’ve repaired the Vista installation three times and have formatted the Vista partition + reinstalled Vista twice. This has not managed to sort the dual booting issue out.

This is my boot sequence:

1. DVD drive

2. DVD/RW drive

3. Main hard drive

4. Second hard drive

Any advise would be greatly appreciated, thanks for your time.

[joaodanet]

BCD is new database for boots in VISTA system.

try for help!

BCDEDIT /?

or

BCDEDIT /? /xcommand

or

F1 and search BCDEDIT

[pmshah]

Use a third party boot manager.