[Sebhael]

Hello, I'm here to ask a simple question that is actually starting to eat away at my sanity and will to live.

I'm trying to dual-boot Windows XP Pro, and Vista Home Premium.

For some reason though, once "Completing Installation" has gone past, and the computer reboots to finalize, once it hit's "Windows Vista" in the boot manager, I get a nice sexy black screen.

I've read this here, I've read that there.
1. Newer Nvidia model.
2. SATA
3. Montior Refresh Rates.
These seem to be everyone elses problems...

First comp specs.
Mobo - ASUS A8N32-SLI
Proc - AMD Athlon X2 3200+
VCard - Nvidia 7900GS
2gbs of RAM

Now my HDD partitions and set up.
I have C: SATA, 250gb, I want this all for my selffish XP set up.
E: an old 40gb IDE I took from my father after upgrading his, just for music.
Then I just got a new drive [SATA], which I've partitioned into two.
F: 200gb for whatever I can use it for,
and H: 100gb, this is where I want my Vista installation.

Now that I've sidetracked from whatever it is that I started with, back on track.
I've tried switching monitors, went from a newer LCD, to a ravenous '96 CRT I use to use back in the day. I read in some places that that might cure something that Vista tries pulling. Where it will try to optimize itself for the system it is currently being installed on. Once it finds a CRT though, it pulls a much higher and wrong refresh rate. Tried it, failed.

That's about all I've tried I guess.
What else should I try to get this running? All I want Vista for is to play ShadowRun.
I'm seeing all these things and it's starting to confuse me, I don't really know whatelse to try or what order to try it in. So as this problem may be posted multiple places on this site, I'm just asking for one more explanation.

Please?

[Elvandil]

Did you load SATA drivers at some point during the installation?

You might try rebooting from the Vista DVD and running startup repair.

[Sebhael]

That right there is one of my main problems. I can't really find any SATA drivers, at least nothing that makes much sense. While I was on ASUS's site, I only saw > XP compatible drivers. I saw no Vista drivers. So out of fear of screwing something up, I never got the XP drivers, will they work? Or does Vista drivers exist somewhere?

Right now though, I'm trying some wicked concoction, hopefully it works.

(Yes, this method is doomed for failure, but hey, I have time)

I'm setting up Vista with Virtual PC 2007, then after I get everything set up and correct drivers installed, I plan on taking the ISO, and then actually burning it onto my Vista drive.
Sounds crazy, and dangerous. That's ok though, danger is my middle name.

[Elvandil]

Though I've never dealt with a configuration exactly like yours before, I'd suspect that SATA drivers would need to be installed in Vista for both SATA drives. I'm not sure how this would be done, though. It may be that you would need to install Vista, get it up and running, install the SATA drivers for your XP drive, and then run startup repair to get your dual-boot menu.

If the 2 drives use the same driver, the extra steps may not be needed.

If you can't find the Vista drivers, I'd try the XP.

[Sebhael]

Still didn't work.
Also my plan didn't work.
I also ran installation and slept last night, woke up to it still not working.

The most I've gotten so far is it running it a virtual setting, being the idiot I was, it was impossible to mount it to a HDD. Can't play a game from the emulation cause it only assigns 8mb of video RAM to it.
---
Also last night I ran into "Make sure your partition is marked as Active" did that, which may have been one problem.
I don't really know if this is a graphic problem or not, I really can't diagnose it cause the only other thing I have laying around is a 5500 AGP, in which my board doesn't have a slot for.
I'm going to try installing Vista, booting into XP and messing with the drive that has it installed.
I need to get this running soon, my brothers are getting pissy that I'm not tearing stuff up with them ;_;

[Sebhael]

Alright this is pathetic.

I've tried taking out my 7900GS, and placing in a x700 Pro. No go.
I've installed numerous drivers, XP and Vista compatiable. No go.
I've messed with settings, boot options, drive settings. Nothing.

Sadly though, I turned around and installed Vista on a
ATi 480 chipset motherboard, 2 sata drives, a semphron 3400, nvidia 7800GT.
Worked perfect.

Anyone happen to know why this is happening?