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Windows Windows XP/Vista Dual Boot problems

Discussion in 'Software' started by Shannon, 26 Apr 2007.

  1. Shannon

    Shannon What's a Dremel?

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    I recently decided to try an install of Vista, so I imaged my current XP partition, made a partition on my a secondary 500gb SATA drive and installed Vista on it.

    The install went fine, and it was working great for the first couple days. I think it takes better advantage of my hardware because it seemed quite fast, and I had been having a few problems with my XP installation that Vista didn't seem to have.

    However, after booting into XP and then back into Vista a few times I started to get corrupt disk errors in Vista, and some of the software I had installed on Vista that had been working perfectly (like Firefox) simply disappeared, like a "has been deleted, moved or renamed" type error. When I boot back into XP after this, I start to get similar errors there, though the partitions are on seperate physical hard drives.

    So I end up just restoring my XP partition from the image (it then works fine) and formatting the Vista partition. I have repeated this process about 4 times now, and am about to embark on a 5th time restoring XP and formatting Vista. I haven't activated Vista, wanting to test it first.

    Does anyone have any suggestions for what went wrong or how to fix it or prevent this from happening?

    thanks!
     
  2. Hazardous

    Hazardous What's a Dremel?

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    I have no idea what's causing the problems you describe there?
    It certainly sounds like you've done everything right?

    But may I suggest you have a read of the following two articles, just to make sure you have set up dual-booting XP/Vista the right way...

    How to dual-boot Windows XP and Windows Vista (updated on 30th March 2007)
    How to dual-boot Vista with XP (dated 21st January 2007)



    I'll actually be very interested in how you get on... 'coz I'm contemplating doing exactly the same meself :idea:
    There's no way I'm gonna rely solely on Vista :worried:
     
  3. Bobthequill

    Bobthequill What's a Dremel?

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    I made the mistake of buying a new system with Vista preloaded when my XP motherboard failed.
    On power up, Vista loaded from a hidden partition on the drive and offered a free trial of Office 2007. Unfortunately the Office upload halted on Outlook?? Not sure why. So I went on line and downloaded a trial Office from Microsoft, only to find it would not open.
    That was only the start of my woes. I loaded a few programs I had disks for, only to find Vista rejected them. I found later that a few would load if you changed the compatibilty mode.

    No sign of an email program, so I downloaded Eudora which worked well. Then I thought about transferring my old stuff from the dead system and hooked in my 70gig XP drive as slave. ( The new main drive is a 250gig sata).
    By swapping boot priorities I could boot up into iether system.

    Then I attacked the less than friendly Vista system to find out why I only seemed to have half the expected programs up and running. The machine suppliers handbook mentioned that you could restore the Vista image from the hidden partition on the main drive without a format, but recommended backup anyway. That looked like a solution, so I backed up the few files I had transferred and triggered a restore.

    Big big mistake. It restored ok, with not exactly a no format. It left data files alone, but zapped every executable file on both disks. 50 programs down the gurgler just like that!
    Perhaps it was partly my fault for not disconnecting the slave drive, but the instructions were clear, "With No Format" just didn't say what was going to be zapped to put Vista in charge.
    I managed to get some semblance of order back by using BCDedit and Vistaboot pro to set up a boot for each drive again.
    Then I tried a repair on the XP disk to see if I could get a few programs back. I first tried the original XP startup disk, followed by SP2, but coming out of the first setup of SP2 to reboot, the bios lost it. Said NTLDR missing and I was locked out.
    Could still access Vista though, by changing boot priorites. That was two weeks back and I have not improved a lot on that situation.
    I have slipstreamed XP/SP2, no better. I have partitioned that main drive and installed a new version of XP, but again when I am forced into a reload of XP for whatever reason, the boot sequence gets screwed up.
    I have burnt boot disks and added various items that people on the web say will solve the problem. None of 'em have really helped.
    Today, I decided to scrap my XP dual boot, remove the partition, removed the slave drive and reverted, extremely unwillingly to a Vista only system.
    When I boot up now, I get the choice of Vista or Windows XP restart (which no longer exists) and I can find no way of removing this incorrect choice.
    I believe I am one of the few amateur geeks (I wasn't when I started) who has seen the full boot charade roll down the screen,to point at drive A:, which is not installed.
    Strangely, I blame myself as much as Vista for my problems. I just did not realise that the level of qualification of the average computer user had, by the introduction of Vista, moved to two extremes.

    1) Dumber and Dumber.

    2) Superior and intuitive intelligence to the point where you can write your own software, acceptable to Microsoft Vista.

    Can anyone please please tell me how to bring my XP drive back from the dead?
    I can access it via Vista and strip out files, but frinstance, my perpetual McAfee licence is now 49 months out of date and is anyway incompatible with Vista. I need XP to run programs that Vista can't yet handle.

    I believe Microsoft may, in the long run, regret introducing Vista as a forced upgrade. I can see no reason why Vista should not be backwards compatible with its predecessor. People can be pushed, as was the case with XP in its introduction, but I don't think Vista's lack of choice is going to be good for Mr William Gates.
    Don't s'pose my comments will effect Bill though.

    Any advice appreciated.

    Bobthequill
     
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