I had been dual booting XP and Vista. At startup I am given a screen to choose whether to boot from XP or Vista, I think this is the Vista boot manager. Since then I reinstalled XP. Now, I am not getting the boot loader screen at startup so I can choose which OS. Is it something to do with modifying the master boot record? Or do I need a recovery disc or something?
View 3 RepliesI'm trying to dual boot 2 different installs of xp pro from 2 drives using the Windows boot loader. I've edited the boot.ini every possible way I can think of, but nothing works. I've done this plenty of times using a linux boot loader or dual booting from a single drive but I cant figure this out. I haven't been able to find any reference to this subject anywhere, but I think it would work. Anybody have a clue as to how to do this? I know I can use a different boot manager to accomplish this, I just wanted to make the Win boot.ini work. Or, does anybody know of a good boot manager if I cant make this work?
View 9 Replies View RelatedI have been trying to install Windows XP as a second OS as I already have Windows 7 Ultimate installed. Unfortunately, after I select a partition, format it, and reboot the system stalls on the screen after the BIOS that has something to do with a list of devices and such. After 10 or so seconds a few characters and letters go blank randomly on the page. I rebooted and selected my cd drive as the boot device and accidentally didn't press a button in time to boot and a bunch of highlighted numbers were thrown all over the screen and a random smiley face on one of the lines.
View 12 Replies View RelatedI Installed a 2nd HD and cloned my first HD to it as a backup and would like to be able to dual boot. This is XP Pro. I would like to know what numbers to use in multi, disk, and rdisk.
View 3 Replies View RelatedI have a new laptop that came with Windows Vista. I have been trying to load it with Windows XP because Windows Vista didnt work. I am pretty sure a format and clean install will wreck my warranty, hence the dual boot. So far, I have been able to partition and install XP SP-2 to a partition. I've booted into XP fine but my Vista partition is not available. I think that the partition table or MBR has been corrupted.
So to repair this, what I did was boot up from the Vista recovery DVD and run the 'startup repair' option to reload the bootloader for Vista and thus, enable dual booting. When I rebooted I got a black screen saying 'Invalid Partition Table' or something to this effect. I tried repairing the MBR and so on and so forth from the console on the recovery DVD but this proved to be pretty much totally fruitless. So I went through and did an install of Windows XP once again, to my other drive partition I had created. So I am basically where I started.
i have a dual boot system xp / vista64 all of a sudden my computer takes a long time to boot it stays on the splash screen for about 10 minutes before showing me the boot selection screen what could be the problem?
View 2 Replies View RelatedI have dual booting on my PC with Vista home premium on a 500 Gb SATA disk and XP Pro on a 250Gb SATA, both internal. Vista no longer holds terrors for me and I'd like to get rid of XP and regain better use of the 250Gb HD. Can I just remove XP from the control panel in the XP boot or is it a lot more complicated?I don't really want to re format the XP drive as I'd have to transfer a lot of data and files
View 3 Replies View RelatedMy computer has two physical drives with dual boot, Primary Physical drive having XP prof and Secondary physical drive having two partitions, one has Windows Vista Basic and the other partition for back up files and data. Everything was fine till I went for a reinstall of XP prof on the primary physical drive. After the XP prof reinstall I was not able to access the secondary physical drive, when I go in from the windows explorer, I can see the drive which used to have windows Vista partiton and I get a warning message that the drive needs to be formatted.
View 4 Replies View RelatedI am running Windows XP and would really like to share the hard drive with another OS "Linux" and dual boot.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI have a computer in which I have an XP dual boot on 2 separate hard drives (160 & 120 GB).I have had this particular combination in working order since 4/07. A few days ago my 2nd drive (F) would not boot. I get only a blank, black screen and nothing else NO error messages or warnings. My C drive will boot normally, no problems.The drive is "seen" in BIOS, startup and in my computer on the C drive. The drive is there but the darned thing just will not boot. I have tried using "fixboot" & "fixmbr" to no avail!
View 11 Replies View RelatedI had Windows XP Pro on my computer, but I decided to install Fedora on my machine as well. What the problem is, is that when I boot up, my computer boots directly into Fedora (there is a few seconds where fedora will ask you to press a key to enter a menu to select which OS to use, but if you don't press anything it will go right into Fedora) but I want it to boot directly into Windows.
View 9 Replies View RelatedI really didnt want to harm my computer or have all my files deleted so after spending hours googling it, I thought I'd make my own thread and ask here.My cousin basically gave me my laptop, 40gb hard drive and dual booting windows xp and windows vista.I've never ever used xp and always use vista, but recently I noticed that I'm running out of diskspace. After a lot of research I realised it was my windows folder that was taking up 50% of my drive!
View 3 Replies View RelatedI have 2 hard drives, one with my data running Windows XP and the other also with data running Windows 98. Right now it is set to boot off the Windows XP drive. Is there an easy way I can set up a dual-boot system to give me a choice on boot-up without clean-installing either OSs? I don't want to lose my data on either drive
View 4 Replies View RelatedSo I'm using my a8n-sli premium motherboard and have been just using 1 sata hard drive using Windows XP for about a year. I bought a second sata hard drive last week and installed Vista on it.I just can't figure out the correct boot.ini for this to work,I get an missing NTLD message, when I try to boot from Vista, but the XP one works with that configuration.I can boot off the Vista one fine if I set it in the bios boot order to come up before the XP hard drive, so the drive and the OS are fine
View 3 Replies View Relatedi rescently had to format the drive for a fresh copy. I have installed xp home retail version and realised i wanted to try something diferent. At system start the computer starts up prior to the windows boot screen and displays COMPAQ in big bright bold letters with option of F10 for system restore which is no longer on system (reformated) as well as other options for boot select pres ESC and F1 for setup.Can i remove this from my system? and then can i create a menu with 2 options 1 load windows normaly and 2 install a disk image stored on a hidden partition? maybe like the F10 key assighn that to access the imge and install it.
when I edited my boot menu I left off the NoExcute=OptIn at the end of the boot menu line to load my system and was wondering if I can add this now without messing everything up ? I just found out what this option does and looks to me like a have to option. This is on XP Pro.
View 14 Replies View Relatedi have ONE hard drive with partitions. I had a really bad setup first, I had 1 partition with 3 windows installs on it, folders like WINDOWS, WINPRO, WINN, I never took the time to delete them or whatever, and I was using winpro as my main OS. When I was running the above setup, when I boot up it would ask me: Select what OS to load Windows Pro, Windows Home, Windows Home
I decieded to install Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit, worked flawlessy, but I wanted to go back to windows xp pro 64 bit. So I made a new partition and installed windows XP pro 64 bit onto it. when I tried installing windows xp with my CD, the first part would work fine, but then when it restarted to continue the setup, it would load my MOBO logo and then after, it would just show a blinking underscore "_" on the top left corner, and nothing else.
I managed to install a fresh windows xp from my USB flash drive, but when booting up normally it still does not let me select what OS to log on to, it just shows the blinking underscore in the top left after the MOBO logo passes, I actually have to boot by USB drive to boot this fresh install of windows. I think something is wrong with my boot loader, but have no idea how to fix it.
I was one of the many millions of Vista Beta testers out there, dual-booting on my wife's machine with XP Pro and Vista.
After awhile, I really got tired of Vista and I think it's a POS, so I stopped running it. When I installed the OS, I had it on its own partition on the HDD. Xp, naturally, was on a partition of its own as well.
What I did was to delete the Vista partition. But when I boot the system, I still see the "Boot into Vista or XP" screen
After many times removing viruses from my computer, I am dual booting both windows xp and windows 7. I primarily right now use windows xp, I lost the ability to get into windows xp, when at the dual boot screen I click on windows xp but I just get a black screen with no cursor, I cannot get into safe mode either. My google chrome stopped working and could not connetc to any websites. Windows 7 was working perfectly. I have scanned from within windows xp and from windows 7 to find as many viruses and trojans as possible. a trojan remover told me my ftdisk.sys was infected with win32/patched.dx. I moved it into the virus vault knowing it was an important system file as I did not think I had a choice. I then extracted the original ftdisk.sys from the xp cd and replaced it, I know that service packs can modify original files and I hoped the original file was the same as the infected one. That did not have an effect. I used recovery console to run fixmbr and no effect. I then ran fixboot.exe and chkdsk /r and next thing I know I do not get a boot screen at all.
Please help me as I cannot get into either windows now. Would fixboot.exe or chkdsk remove my boot screen?
Many problems with viruses and then windows xp and windows 7 both went down, just a black screen after posting, no cursor, not even safe mode available. I repaired windows xp using the xp recovery console. Reinstalled while keeping all my files and folders intact. Now my only problem is that the dual boot menu for windows xp and windows 7 has disappeard. I can only choose to log into windows xp.
Could you help me identify an easy way to bring back the option to log into windows 7. From windows xp I can clearly see my other hard drive, which has windows 7 on it, and access it so it has not been lost or formatted which would be strange if it was.
Installed Win XP in a hard disk and installed vista in another But I didn't like Windows Vista and just formatted the Hard Disk But now when I turn the PC on, the Dual Boot screen continues to appear How I make it disappear and make my PC only start with Windows XP?
View 6 Replies View RelatedI recently brought a laptop with XP Home preloaded, but as I had a retail CD of XP
pro I thought I'd boot from that CD and run setup which includes a full reformat.
I now have XP pro up and running, but I get an annoying "dual boot" screen giving
a choice of XP pro and XP home! How can I get rid of this dual boot screen as XP
Home no longer exists?
my wife deleted her configuration for her boot loader and now we cant get her windows to load i have put her hard drive on my computer to try and reformat but i just cant get it to boot from disk dont know what im doing wrong we have windows xp i have partition magic on my disk and tried to add windows on her disk using this but it dosent recognize the disk
My PC has Windows XP and Linux operating together with GRUB boot loader. I have to reload XP, and when I insert windows OS CD, it encounters GRUB boot loader and hangs.How to reload XP... i.e. how to get past GRUB boot loader.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI installed a beta of Vista just to try it out. I used Partition Magic to create a second partition to run it on. I installed it with no problems and was able to boot between Vista and XP when I needed to switch. When I was done with Vista, I didn't uninstall using Vista's uninstaller. Instead I used Partition Magic to reformat the partition. I've installed Ubuntu on the partition that Vista was on and I like that pretty well. Problem is, when I try to boot into XP, it still thinks that Vista is installed on there and goes through Vista's dual boot prog. When I select XP it loads normally until it gets to the part where it should run autochk. It crashes saying it can't find it (it must be looking for Vista's copy since XP still has its) and I can't do anything except turn the machine off. Point of the story: How do I modify the boot loader on my XP drive? I can still access the infor mation from Ubuntu so if I have to edit something I can.
View 6 Replies View RelatedIs it possible to add a bootable file to the windows boot loader?I want to add a Dell Diagnostics utility. Currently, the only way to access it is with a dos floppy disc, or the windows cd. If so, how is it done?If the above isn't possible, how do I add DOS?
View 8 Replies View Relatedi recently installed linux on my second hard drive but it never worked so my question is how do you turn the boot up menu back to windows instead of grub (i think) its just the hassel of having to go down the list and selecting windows??
I have a fresh install of Win XP on my C: drive and whenever I boot the PC I get options on which windows install to boot into. I had a Win 2000 install on my D: drive at one time but that drive has since been reformatted, so I'm at a loss as to why I have to choose an install at every boot.
I tried to rebuild the boot.ini file using the XP Setup Recovery console but that only added a 3rd option to the list of installs to choose from at boot-up.
My question is, can I edit the startup options manually and delete the 2nd and 3rd lines, or is there another way to clean this up so my rig boots to the C: drive automatically every time?
I decided to upgrade to Vista today from Windows Xp. Rather than doing the upgrade process, I decided to start off with a fresh format/install.
after the first reboot in the Vista setup process (where Vista attempts to load data from the HDD) the system would just sit there after post as if the Vista loader couldn't properly detect the partition. I currently don't have time to troubleshoot the Vista problem with my system, so in desperation I have tried to go back to XP. I am able to boot into Windows XP setup, format the drive, and copy over the beginning essential files. However, after the system reboots after the initial copy of the data... XP is not capable of booting from the hard drive. this was not a problem before I tried to install Vista.
To check if a problem had occurred with the drive, I installed Ubuntu Linux. Ubuntu is able to boot from the drive without any problems. However....... when Ubuntu loads grub, it detects the following on the MBR: The Vista loader appears to be preventing Windows XP from properly booting from the hard drive. The drive is a Western Digital 320gb. I have 30 gbs set aside for Windows to boot from. The rest of the drive is another partition with files I cannot afford to lose.
I had XP pro loaded on my boot partition and wanted to get rid of it. I deleted the entire volume D:, but my boot loader menu still lists that OS. Of course it can't boot to it any more, but I don't want to see in the menu at startup. What files are left over from that OS instance that I need to remove?
View 5 Replies View RelatedAs in the title, im faced with a permanent 7B BSOD stop error message on my pavillion laptop. My current knowledge indicates that is a boot loader error, and as you may naturally expect, i am desperate to fix it! I have tried using the advanced startup options to use the last configurations which worked and safe mode, but i get the same BSOD stop error. I placed my hard disk in another laptop and it boots fine, i have even been able to log in and use it as normal. However, when i put a hard disk running a perfectly fine copy of windows xp home to my pavillion laptop, i get the same 7B stop error.
My pavillion refuses to boot from CDs as well. It seems to me the problem isnt with my hard disk and the OS version on it, but with the remaining components on my laptop...but what could be the criminal? Would anyone be able to shed some light on my problem? Of course, I will provide more details as requested.