Vista / XP64 dual boot

[d032sh]

Hi guys,

I finally got sick of my xp64 woes the other week and decided to give Vista a go. However since I wanted it as my primary OS when I installed my shiny new hard drive I put it in the primary sata port on the mb and moved my old hd with xp64 on to another port.

Installed Vista nicely (with 4GB in... I expected it to crash?) but Vista didn't notice there was another windows on another hard drive. Fair enough I suppose since the boot record is on the secondary drive. Being a complete Vista newbie I was wondering how I can edit the boot file and put in a link to the second hard drive so I have the option of booting to the XP drive. I'll probably ditch the XP installation entirely in the near future but first I could do with some drivers, not least for my modem, so I can get the Vista installation up and running and activate it within three days or my computer will blow up (or something ).

Is there a boot file in the root I can edit to allow booting to the second drive?

[Splash]

Ok, Vista will install the bootloader on the first drive ennumerated by the BIOS. When you moved your XP disk the bootloader was moved with it.

Best advice I can give would be for you to move your original install back to the primary port and then boot from the Vista DVD, then select boot repair.

[d032sh]

Is there not an equivalent to the old XP boot.ini? I found (after muchus searching) a menu which listed the OS's to boot but there was no option to edit/add more like in XP

[dangel]

Install VistaBootPro and use that. VistaBootPRO - Go PRO with Microsoft Windows Vista Boot Manager

[d032sh]

Install VistaBootPro and use that. VistaBootPRO - Go PRO with Microsoft Windows Vista Boot Manager

I shall give it a whirl this evening.

Much obliged Mr Dangel.

[fuddam]

vistabootpro saved me ass this week too - it be the business

[directhex]

Is there not an equivalent to the old XP boot.ini? I found (after muchus searching) a menu which listed the OS's to boot but there was no option to edit/add more like in XP

there's no ini file with vista, it's managed by an app called bcdedit. there are a few clicky gui managers for it, though