Vista won't boot after XP Install

mk6705

Hello.
On my laptop I have four partitions. The first physical partition (E) has XP on it. The second physical partition (C) contains Vista. The third partition contains an operating system I won't name. It wouldn't be affecting anything anyway. On the fourth partition I have an extended partition. Ubuntu is stored on that. Probably not affecting anything either.

Anyway I installed Windows XP 64-bit last night, which as I said above is on the first physical partition. I have a big problem however. On the XP install, I have a severe lack of drivers. But I'll be able to work on that. However I can't connect to the internet on it which makes things trickier, but still that's irrelevant enough. The problem I'm having is that Vista simply won't boot. I restored the Vista bootloader from the DVD. It definitely worked, it comes up as usual but I get the dreaded BSOD every time. Even if I use safe mode, it'll stall long before I see any traces of GUI. Any ideas?

There's two things I'll try in the mean time: Changing the SATA mode back to APCI (had to change to ATA to install XP), and if that fails I'll rebuild the BCD fully from the Vista DVD. However I suspect that mightn't cut it, so I'll need your suggestions...
Thanks.

Odaise Gaelach

When you try and boot up Vista, what STOP code and error message do you get for the blue screen?

Chefburns

What may be your problem is that windows likes to be the only system on your machine so when you install a dual boot or in your case a quad boot(I didn't even know it was possible!!) if you install windows last it can sometimes over ride the boot sector of your drive and leave the others hidden from view you may need to reinstall the other os's:( Never mind i see you already restored vista's boot files...

mk6705

Odaise Gaelach wrote: »

When you try and boot up Vista, what STOP code and error message do you get for the blue screen?

Not sure on that one, it comes up so fast I can't see it. I'll have to record it on the camcorder and go through it frame my frame to see...

mark renton

Adro947 wrote: »

Hello.
The third partition contains an operating system I won't name. It wouldn't be affecting anything anyway.

windows 95 or 98 ??

mk6705

Adro947 wrote: »

There's two things I'll try in the mean time: Changing the SATA mode back to APCI (had to change to ATA to install XP), and if that fails I'll rebuild the BCD fully from the Vista DVD. However I suspect that mightn't cut it, so I'll need your suggestions...
Thanks.

Changing the SATA mode kinda worked. Vista booted, but now XP doesn't .
So the ATA/AHCI (Sorry typed that wrong above) switch has become a BSOD jumper between Vista and XP. So the obvious question is...can I reconfigure Vista or XP to use ATA or AHCI?

john47832 wrote: »

windows 95 or 98 ??

No it's something related to a very common fruit...I'll admit to still having Windows 95 in a vm simply because I like the look of it .

Odaise Gaelach

Adro947 wrote: »

Not sure on that one, it comes up so fast I can't see it. I'll have to record it on the camcorder and go through it frame my frame to see...

You can disable automatic restart on a BSOD.

Start your computer and wait until the Windows boot menu appears. Select Vista from the list and press F8. If your computer automatically boots into Vista, start your computer and press and hold F8 until the Windows boot menu appears.

Then choose "Disable automatic restart on system failure" and press enter. Windows Vista should start up, and when it does it will show the blue screen and error message.

jay93

Adro947 wrote: »

No it's something related to a very common fruit...I'll admit to still having Windows 95 in a vm simply because I like the look of it .

Ahhh Apple MAC OSX :D

This happened me while installing xp and windows 7 on a dual boot the WinXP install somehow corrupted the Windows 7 boot files even tough they were on differant partitions!!:rolleyes:

I ended up having to remove XP altogether and just use windows 7 :mad:

mk6705

jay93 wrote: »

Ahhh Apple MAC OSX :D

This happened me while installing xp and windows 7 on a dual boot the WinXP install somehow corrupted the Windows 7 boot files even tough they were on differant partitions!!:rolleyes:

I ended up having to remove XP altogether and just use windows 7 :mad:

You should definitely be able to get that working. XP is very useful. Windows is getting more and more bloated but XP is still quite efficient. For me nearly any program runs much faster on XP. If you're ever trying it again, use a program called EasyBCD. After you recover the Windows 7 boot files, you can use EasyBCD to add XP to the list. You might run into problem with the ATA/AHCI though. I haven't been able to enable AHCI on XP yet. But I'll keep trying .

Capt'n Midnight

jay93 wrote: »

the WinXP install somehow corrupted the Windows 7 boot files even tough they were on differant partitions!!:rolleyes:

There is no somehow about it

if you install windows it will usually break the booting of any other OS it doesn't recognise including later versions of windows. It's up to other OS's to work around windows.

Golden rule install the OS's in the order of oldest windows first , then newer windows, then other OS's which as a rule are better behaved.

You can usually do a repair of the newer windows to fix problems caused by the older one.

coolpix23

Like Cap'n Midnight said, it's best to install the oldest Windows OS's first, then non Win OS's like Linux, but I don't know how Apple would fit into things.

You can try to sort things out after even if you didn't follow that order.

You need to manually edit the boot.ini file. If you can get into the latest Win OS you have e.g. Vista or 7 you can probably use the tools in there to setup a boot.ini file to boot the Windows OS's, (msconfig->boot) then manually edit that to be able to also boot the non Windows OS's.

If you're trying to "boot" 9x rather than run them in a VM you could have a problem with that. I think 9x can't boot from NTFS.

Have a look at -> http://oreilly.com/pub/h/591 to see a starting point.

Look at -> http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457123.aspx to see what happens during the boot process.

Then look at http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/multiboot/boot_ini.htm
also http://support.microsoft.com/kb/102873
they're about the ARC names for the disks and partitions.

mk6705

coolpix23 wrote: »

Like Cap'n Midnight said, it's best to install the oldest Windows OS's first, then non Win OS's like Linux, but I don't know how Apple would fit into things.

You can try to sort things out after even if you didn't follow that order.

You need to manually edit the boot.ini file. If you can get into the latest Win OS you have e.g. Vista or 7 you can probably use the tools in there to setup a boot.ini file to boot the Windows OS's, (msconfig->boot) then manually edit that to be able to also boot the non Windows OS's.

If you're trying to "boot" 9x rather than run them in a VM you could have a problem with that. I think 9x can't boot from NTFS.

Have a look at -> http://oreilly.com/pub/h/591 to see a starting point.

Look at -> http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457123.aspx to see what happens during the boot process.

Then look at http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/multiboot/boot_ini.htm
also http://support.microsoft.com/kb/102873
they're about the ARC names for the disks and partitions.

If you read my post, you'd see I have no problem with bootloaders. In my experience, you can install them in any order you want, as long as you have an Ubuntu live CD or similar to sort things out when things go wrong. What I really need is to enable AHCI on XP. Only works with ATA at the moment.

Capt'n Midnight

Adro947 wrote: »

What I really need is to enable AHCI on XP. Only works with ATA at the moment.

Have you installed the AHCI driver for your chipset (do not pass GO if you haven't)

usually then you can reboot, change in the BIOS and it should work

plan B is messy , that's a repair install and pressing F6 the instant the screen goes blue and inserting in the driver , you then have to fix the booting all over again