Cant boot vista without xp....

mayto

I have a dell pc with 2 harddrives and im after getting vista through work which i have installed on the 2nd harddrive ( with xp on the first harddrive ). I want to get rid of of xp and use that drive for storing files ( I use my laptop for with xp work). However, i tried booting the pc without the xp harddrive connected and it wont boot vista saying no boot device (in the bios this is the first drive listed in the boot seqeunce). So can anyone tell me what is stopping vista booting and what it needs from that xp harddrive or what i can do to get vista to boot without xp being there.

edit:

Well i seemed to feck up xp altogether now, i used partitionmagic to resize the xp C partition which it did, but its after moving the the partition to around 160gb (there was 180gb free space). When i now try and boot xp it says ntldr is missing. Vista still boots fine and the xp partition looks fine when looking at through vista and the ntldr file is in c:/i386 . So i take it, its not booting xp because this and other files are not in the same place on the harddrive. Another thing, the bcdedit.exe boot manager file in vista only opens for a second for some reason ( never tried to open it before today ). I dont want to have to reinstall vista as I have it up and running fine with all my needed programs installed

A format of the xp harddrive and reinstallation of xp will probably solve that problem, but is there anything i can do so i dont need xp at all? Hopefully someone understands what i mean above

edit again: i installed vistabootpro and backed up what it asked me to backup and changed nothing, and now with the xp harddrive connected it doesnt even give me the option of xp or vista (xp didnt work anyways, but now it seems to try and boot vista straight away and seems to be a problem with

file: \boot\bcd

status: 0X0000034

info: the windows boot configuation data file is missing required information

So now i cant boot xp, cant boot vista!

Cant install xp again unless the drive is formatted it seems as i get a blue screen when running the setup the way the xp harddrive is atm.

Why did i go near it at all!

mayto

well the vista installation dvd fixed the vista not booting problem but it still needs the harddrive with xp installed to boot ( says no boot device without the xp harddrive).

8T8

The boot loader for Vista is probably residing on the XP drive for dual boot purposes though that is a guess on my part I have not yet tried removing XP in the scenario you outline.

There may be a quick way, re-install Vista when it gets to the disk management part format the drive holding XP with XP gone Vista should in theory no longer present the boot menu.

You can then when back in Vista create a new partition on the old XP drive. Or check out the Vista Boot Pro boot manager haven't really toyed with it myself yet but worth a look to see if it will do anything, EasyBCD is a similar program that allows the removal and re-installation of the Vista bootloader you may be able to write another one to the HD Vista resides on though I still think the safest method is the re-install.

mayto

Yes after some googling, vista writes stuff to the other OS's partition.

I fixed the non booting vista problem with the vista installation disc, the repair optitons automatically fixed the bootloader and it boots straight into vista atm ( doesnt even give me the option to pick xp ). But still it needs the xp harddrive to boot.

Not sure what you mean exactly by

"There may be a quick way, re-install Vista when it gets to the disk management part format the drive holding XP with XP gone Vista should in theory no longer present the boot menu.

You can then when back in Vista create a new partition on the old XP drive."

seems like reinstalling both is my only real option atm. I probably should keep xp on a small partition in case i need it. But atm i cant even install xp on the first harddrive as i get a blue screen error ( the move and resize probably why), so i need to completely format that harddrive but i dont seem to be able to atm. I cant do it through vista's own format manager thing.

8T8

When you go to re-install Vista when you get to the disk management section delete the partition on the HD that XP is on.

With no file system on the XP drive Vista will forced to reinstall the boot loader files onto the HD Vista is currently on removing the need for the second HD to be present in the system.

Once the system is up & running just go into disk management and create a new partition on the XP drive and you should be good to go the drive will be independent of Vista and vice versa.

(If you are unable to do that remove the XP drive from the machine and run the repair anyway that should sort it out, once up and running plug back in the XP drive boot & format it.)

EasyBCD may allow you to add back in XP to the Vista bootloader but you are only doing damage by trying to re-install both OS's over each others which is why you are getting the blue screens in XP.

mayto

Im afraid im too late to try your method

Both drives have being formatted and i am now getting this error when trying to select a partition to install vista

""Windows is unable to find a system volume that meets its criteria for
installation.""

It seems to be a common problem when googling but haven't found a proper solution yet.

Even though the xp harddrive was formatted, im still getting the blue screen after it loads all the setup files


edit:

finally seems to be installing! have the first harddrive disconnected and its installing it on to a 60gb partition on the 2nd harddrive..................touchwoood it installs!

Im never touching partitionmagic again! ( it worked fine everytime i used it apart from this time)

edit:

Finally, its up and running fine! and have the added bonus of those US online spotlight addons (dont remember being given the option to pick ireland, must have overlooked it).


Thanks for the replies 8t8