Well I installed Vista a while back and then i reinstalled XP on the same partion it was before now i dont get the option to boot from my other partion (Vista). The boot manager showed up right when my system started now it doesnt show up at all. Does anyone know how i can start Vista or get the Windows Boot Manager to show up again?
You hit F8 in the loading stages of your PC to get to the boot menu thing, I think. Try that. Why did you install two OS's on the same partition? Surely that wouldn't work..
You've stepped in the hole of reinstalling an older operating system back to a system running multiple OSes. This reverts the boot manager and files back to a single operating system...effectively wiping out any information the boot files have to present a menu option. Reinstall Vista and you'll have your dual boot back.
I dont think reinstalling is needed, if you can get into XP and right click My Computer, choose Properties, click Advanced tab then choose Startup and Recovery i think theres something in there that will let you add the Vista boot option. If not then there must be third party boot manager available with a google search, most boot managers just want a menu name and where the boot file is location. XP looks for a file called SETUPLDR.BIN but im not sure if MS have kept the name the same for Vista.
Ok I didnt install 2 operating systems on the same partion as I stated like twice. I will try the f8 thing then i will try the other steps i will get back to you guys to let you know if i still need help.
@oodleman, The Vista boot files are not the same as XP. Vista doesn't use the boot.ini file anymore for the boot menu option at startup. Though I have not tried a dual boot yet with Vista, I am pretty sure adding a line to the boot.ini file in XP will not allow booting the newer OS. So...it's possible from my point of view, but not from what I've heard and had look up to show others how to get back to XP after experimenting with dual boots.
well i guess i need to reinstall it so how would i go about formating the partion? or can i right click everything and hit delete?
That would be one way of doing that...or you can format the partition using XP. Then use your Vista CD to reinstall.
There's an advanced option in the Vista DVD's menu to repair the boot. You boot from the DVD to use that. So you shouldn't need to reinstall Vista. Vista should automatically reinstall its boot files into the XP partition and detect the NTLoader there. Then it should present you with the option of booting to an older version of Windows again. Default will be Vista. Older Version will be XP's boot loader which will either load XP or offer you whatever is in your XP boot.ini (such as if you also have 98 installed). I hate it. I always used BootMagic from Partition Magic but now that won't work. I went through ruining my installed partitions by reinstalling one of them. This time I'm going to keep the other partitions hidden and use the Partition Magic Boot Floppy when I want to unhide and set active one of the others. A real pain until Symantec creates an upgraded program. I also have used PQBoot, which sort of works. It's safer to just use the floppy rather than manually installing an incompatible program (PQBoot, that is. Don't even try to install the whole Partition Magic. BSOD.) into Vista. I use Vista on a second hard drive. Last time Vista wouldn't boot to that without its own boot loader, even after it had installed and restarted. It had restarted, but wouldn't cold boot to it. Only using the Vista boot loader worked. I'm about to attempt it again. Maybe I didn't hide the other hard drive's partitions, which confused it. Who knows?
