Vista booting vs. boot.ini

Hi,

Can someone explain to me the logic of Vista booting?

I have a PC with:
- one SATA HD
- one DVD drive on IDE2 master
- one HD on IDE2 slave

I installed XP on the SATA drive and have used for some time without any
problem. I then wanted to test Vista, which I installed on the 2nd hard
drive. Ever since then, I no longer understand how either of the two OSs
boot, while before, with boot.ini, things were clearer.

My final aim is to get rid of this Vista installation and get boot.ini back
into working.

Thanks

B Riadh wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Can someone explain to me the logic of Vista booting?
>
> I have a PC with:
> - one SATA HD
> - one DVD drive on IDE2 master
> - one HD on IDE2 slave
>
> I installed XP on the SATA drive and have used for some time without any
> problem. I then wanted to test Vista, which I installed on the 2nd hard
> drive. Ever since then, I no longer understand how either of the two OSs
> boot, while before, with boot.ini, things were clearer.
>
> My final aim is to get rid of this Vista installation and get boot.ini
> back into working.
>
> Thanks



The Vista installation will have "set aside" WinXP's system files
(Boot.ini, NTLDR, and NTDetect.com) in favor of its own, completely
different boot manager. This new boot manager requires the use of
BCDEdit, and is far from user friendly.

Boot Configuration Data in Windows Vista
download.microsoft.com/download/a/f/7/af7777e5-7dcd-4800-8a0a-b18336565f5b/BCD.doc

I strongly recommend that you download and install VistaBootPRO
from http://www.pro-networks.org. This utility can be installed to both
the Vista and WinXP operating systems, and provides a convenient means
of editing the boot process, as well as simplifying the removal of the
Vista boot process, should you tire of dual-booting.



--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/555375

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safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. ~Bertrand Russell

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has
killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot

On Sun, 17 Aug 2008 19:23:05 +0200, "B Riadh"
<riadh_lamia@hotmail.com> wrote:

>Hi,
>
>Can someone explain to me the logic of Vista booting?
>
>I have a PC with:
>- one SATA HD
>- one DVD drive on IDE2 master
>- one HD on IDE2 slave
>
>I installed XP on the SATA drive and have used for some time without any
>problem. I then wanted to test Vista, which I installed on the 2nd hard
>drive. Ever since then, I no longer understand how either of the two OSs
>boot, while before, with boot.ini, things were clearer.

So what do you have to do in order to boot from either OS?

>
>My final aim is to get rid of this Vista installation and get boot.ini back
>into working.

If you want to boot XP, go into BIOS setup and set the hard disk that
the BIOS boots to the SATA disk. If the setting for First, Second,
Third Boot Device only let Hard Disk to be selected, then the hard
disk that gets booted is selected in Hard Disk Boot Priority or Hard
Disk Drives setting.

For most motherboards, whenever you change the physical configuration
of the hard drives, the BIOS changes the order of the drives in Hard
Disk Boot Priority or Hard Disk Drives to some default order
(typically IDE drives first). Sounds like this is what happened in
your situation; otherwise you would have ended up with a dual boot
menu on the SATA drive, allowing either Vista or XP to be selected for
booting, instead of booting confusion.

>
>Thanks