Windows Vista Vista Boot Manager question!?

I want to re-install Vista on a fresh partition. If I wipe out Vista, will I be able to boot into my XP (default) OS? Or do I need to do something to boot.ini?

Vista resides on an EXTENDED partition, and XP on the C: drive. I use Partition Magic from within XP. I just want to consolidate the two by deleting the logical Vista partition and then re-create a PRIMARY one for the re-installation. I've already backed everything up, so I'm ready! lol...But I don't want to end up not being able to access XP.

Thanks everyone!

 

Thanks for the info. Oh great. Now Vista is even messing up my XP install.

Alright, so if I simply manually delete Vista (without re-partitioning the drive at all), and immediately re-install it, would that work? I am talking about the Windows folder, Program Files folder, Documents and Settings, etc., etc. All Vista-related folders and I know what they are for both XP and Vista.

 

Hi Crunch,

I can't give any guarantee of course, just tell you how my OS's co-exist.

I have 2 HD's, the master has the OS's in two primary partitions, programs and data are spread out in other partitions on both HD's. XP is in the first primary and Vista in the second primary. On the first installation of Vista it picked up the XP partition OK, and the first Vista boot gave the option of booting into XP or Vista.

As the result of a disaster trying to install Zone Alarm Security Suite I found that I couldn't boot into either OS. I re-installed Vista, choosing to format the original partition during the install. Vista installed normally, no problems, and once again it added XP to the boot manager as I had hoped. No repair install of XP was necessary, and the dual boot is working just fine.

I think that it should work for you too. Fingers crossed! I attach my present disk layout for info. Vista picked up all the partitions, and allocated all the letters in perfect alphabetical order, which XP never managed! You will see that Vista gives itself 'C' and XP gets 'D', but when you boot into XP it will call itself 'C' and Vista will be in 'D'.

Roger View attachment 2097

 

Hey Roger,

Thanks again for your continued efforts and help! I really appreciate it! I think I'll try this: Manually delete all Vista files, followed by an immediate re-installation of Vista. I already tried deleting the entire (all 8.52GB's worth lol) Windows folder on my Vista partition. It said "Access denied" for several files, which I thought would happen at some point anyway.

I know this is a radical way of doing it, but from my experience with dual- and triple-boot systems on one hard drive, I think it might just work to where I can still get into XP. At the very least, I'll end up with a fresh install of Windows Vista.

Which tool do you recommend to delete by force all the files that have access restrictions?

Thanks again.

 

Hi Crunch,

I think that you are making a mistake doing it that way. First Vista installer is going to warn you that there are some system folders in the partition, and then if it installs OK all those folders will be be put into a 'Windows Old' folder, which just takes up HD space.
I think that you will find a clean install of Vista will work best, choosing to format the partition first. You will have a clean partition, no left over data, a new clean MBR, and any bad sectors will be marked not to be used.
As far as my two clean installs have shown me, I wouldn't do it any other way now, especially if I wanted to keep XP bootable.
Sorry, no experience of deleting system files that put up a fight!
Good luck!

Roger

As a matter of interest I just booted into XP to check how the partition labels were allocated again. Shock, Horror!!! Xp has jumbled all the labels up - XP is now labelled 'N' for example, although Vista still has 'C', but a lot of work will be needed to correct some of the paths!

 

How I did set up my Vista PC's

I formatted my C D and E drives. My only full version of Windows was Windows XP.

I installed that on my Drive D. Then got my Vista 32 upgrade version and installed it on Drive E.

Then my Vista 64 upgrade on Drive C.

This then gave me names that I did not particularly like for each partition when the PC started and did not let me choose a default bootup system.

So I downloaded VistaBoot Pro - a freeware file - renamed the bootup choices to Windows XP - Vista 32 and Vista 64 - and chose the default bootup system on the two computers I own.
http://www.vistabootpro.org/

Now I have them working like I want-one PC boots to Windows XP and the second to Vista 32.