[Dalamark]

Hello all, new here, my pc config is intel quad 6600, 4gb ram, 2 320gb hd, OS is XP Pro with SP2. Okay I heard people speek highly of Vista and no so highly so I decided to give it a shot and make my own decision.
XP was installed a few weeks ago and is on disk 1 50gig partition, created another 75 for E:Vista Ultimate and have 175 unallocated for now. My other drive is just for games.
At first I used the remaining 250 for Vista the first time. Everything loaded fine was online with Vista was updating drivers and then I rebooted to finish the install for some drivers and the boot options never came up it booted right to XP.
I looked at the partitions and it shows Vista there so I looked in XP boot.ini and it shows:

[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="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
I checked around and people said to add Vista to it so I did and added this:

[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="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate" /fastdetect

It gave the options to now choose one but when I choose Vista the screen goes blank
no cursor or anything, display is 1280x960 someone had suggested that already.
If I choose XP it boots fine.
I then decided to format the the partition with Vista cd and made a 75Gb and I now have a 175Gb unallocated for now as described above, did the install again and samething, loads fine everything looks pretty but as soon as it is rebooted it goes right to XP no boot choices.
If you check boot.ini only shows one OS Vista is nowhere to be seen and once again if you add it to the boot.ini going to My Computer, props, advanced, and editing that way it does the samething when chosen boots to a blank screen.
I decided to go the msconfig route and checked the boot paths and it showed the one for Vista as invalid which is the path I have above.
I am clueless now and I don't wat to start from scratch meaing wipe everything clean and try doing Vista first and then XP. I searched around the web and most of the issues I found was that XP would not boot after a dual boot attempt. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks and have a good one all!

[Elvandil]

If you have Vista, its BCD now controls the boot process and it does not use any boot.ini.

Try these tools from Vista, preferably, or from XP:

VistabootPro or EasyBCD

[Dalamark]

okay I'm pretty sure this is most asuredly operator error and I'm really not afraid to say,lol. Elvandil thank you very much for your quick response, I tried both Vistabootpro and EasyBCD and could not get either to work. I do not get an option to choose an OS. I have XP on C: and Vista Ultimate on E: both on the same drive here is the EasyBCD settings:

Entry 1
Name Windows Vista
BCD ID: (bunch of letters and numbers)
Drive: E:\
bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe

Entry 2
Name: Microsoft Windows
BCD ID: {default}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \NTLDR

As stated the option to choose an OS does not come up and the option time to choose one is still at the default of 30 secs. Any other ideas, as stated earlier it very well may be operator error and I say this because both Vistabootpro and EasyBCD did not work, thank you much for the help!

[Elvandil]

Try changing the default to Vista. The rest looks correct. Do you have the Vista drive set as your boot drive in BIOS (if the choice exists)?

When you run Vista, what drive does it say that Windows is on?

Does XP call its own drive C: and the Vista drive E:?

Try using SGD Boot Disk to boot to the Vista partition and run VistaBootPro from Vista.

[davehc]

As Evandil says, you can keep the original Boot.ini, there is nothing wrong with it. Vista does not read it but you still have to have it there for XP to boot.
As you have the Vista DVD, have you tried booting up on it and selecting the "repair start" option?
You EasyBCD should look something like this:
Entry #1

Name: Windows Vista
BCD ID: {current}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe
Windows Directory: \Windows

Entry #2

Name: Windows XP
BCD ID: {ntldr}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \ntldr

As you can see, both paths are on C: This is a quirk of Vista, which always allocates itself as C: - It does not harm the other entry. It is possible that there could be some small differences in your set up, but once you have got it up and running it will be easy to modify.
But this will not solve you problem, as apparently you do not have the Vista Boot manager or possible, even the Vista MBR written.
To do this, if the first above suggestion does nothing, go to the "Manage bootloader" tab in EasyBCD.
Choose "Write MBR" and then Choose "reinstall the Vista Bootloader"

[Elvandil]

...and remove the Vista entry from the boot.ini on the XP drive. That is where you are seeing the menu that does nothing.

[Dalamark]

Hello again, yes XP does call itself C: and Vista E: The choice for booting in bios is there but not for partitioned drives, just physical drives. The repair option does work but when the system is rebooted it goes right to XP with no choice to select Vista.
I also tried to change Vista to the default and it still boots directly to XP with no choice. I tried to load the bootloader as well with EasyBCD and nothing, tried with VistabootPro and
samething still no option to boot to Vista. Tried changing the drive letter to C: as Davehc setup is and still no option to boot to Vista.

[Elvandil]

In Disk Management, are the boot drives primary partitions? Is the Vista drive set as active? (You can still do this with a 98 boot disks and fdisk.)

[davehc]

And did you try to rewrite the MBR - most important - as suggested. (Vista has its own interpretation of MBR)

[Dalamark]

Yes Davehc I did rewrite the MBR as you suggested. Here is what disk management says

[Dalamark]

Yes Davehc I did rewrite the MBR as you suggested. I'll attach disk management, the first one is with XP as active the second is when I make Vista active, when Vista is set to active the system will not boot at all and gives an error of cannot find NTLDR (I think they were the letters) then I need to do the repair to Vista to boot back into it and change the XP back to active. Unfortunetly I don't have a floppy in this pc, not that I can't go get one they are only a few bucks I would just prefer not to.

[Elvandil]

What does the BCD look like now?

[Dalamark]

Here are two shots of the BCD one in overview mode and the next in detailed. I noticed in the detailed the bootmanager device is set to E: which was the original config but I changed it as Davehc suggested.

[davehc]

I can see in your second picture, it is still showing E: The boot manager, by default, resides on C: AS elvandil says, the Vista partition MUST be the active one - the boot up process, in a Vista dual boot, depends on that.
Also, make sure you have the XP active boot files on the boot section as well as the XP section, that is:
autoexec.bat
boot.ini
config.sys
IO.sys
MsDos.sys
NtDetect.com
ntldr.

Just copy them over. If you cannot see them, in the Windows Explorer- Tools-Folder Options-View, make sure you have opted for "Show hidden files and folders" and also, untick "Hide protected operating system"

[Dalamark]

Okay I made the Vista partition active which after a reboot was done I would get the missing or corrupt ntldr. I changed it, but copied all that you said davehc to the Vista partition E: and rebooted and it came up to the Windows Boot Manager page, I almost spit my iced tea at the screen after choking on it when I saw that screen, lol.
I then choose the Vista option and got this error in Windows Boot Manager:

File: \windows\system32\winload.exe
status 0xc000000f
Info The selected entry could not be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt.

I tried doing what a few people had work and that was to do a repair, that did not work.

I tried reloading the MBR and that did not work.

For some reason I checked to see if it was in system32 and it was on the Vista E: partition but not on the XP C: I checked the all drives in Easy BCD and did it again and still nothing on the XP and same error when rebooted.
I decided to copy it to the C: and restarted and this time it started to load Vista then went to a blank screen and shut down and rebooted, was still able to load into XP though so that was a relief.
The bootmanager is still showing E: I have no idea how to change that, here is the current shot of it as well as disk management. By the way thank you all davehc and Elvandil for all your help so far. I have been reading alot of horror stories about this dual boot combo.