Alcyone Posted September 30, 2006 Share Posted September 30, 2006 I tried to add osx to Vista's boot manager and screwed it up to where I couldn't boot into XP. I tried to restore Vista using ghost, but it didn't work and now neither of them will boot. If I simply reinstall Vista, will that fix the problem? XP MBR I believe was handled by Vista, so when it got hosed there's no way I could boot into XP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
schale01 Posted September 30, 2006 Share Posted September 30, 2006 Can you describe how you had your partitions setup, install order you used, and what you added to the boot manager that killed it? I assume you were using bcdedit? What happens when you boot now, how's the screen look, any error messages? Sounds like it should be fixable but I need more information. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alcyone Posted September 30, 2006 Author Share Posted September 30, 2006 Hello, thanks for the reply. I had XP and Vista installed on 2 different drives. I installed vista on another drive after XP was already installed. I did in fact use bcdedit, What ended up happening is it tried to use chain0 as the path when booting into XP. The MBR will have to be completely restored as I don't think there's a way to fix it now. When I tried to restore Vista with Ghost and booted up, I got the same screwed up message when trying to boot into XP. And now, I get an error booting into Vista saying it can't find winload.exe. I assume that ghosting vista installations isn't possible and I when I tried, it messed it up. I'm just curions where that boot manager is stored. When OSL 2000 comes up, it says there's an MBR on hard drive 3, which is my Vista drive. It doesn't show an MBR for hard drive one, which is my XP drive. So I assumed that by restoring Vista, it would create a new MBR. Is this correct? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
schale01 Posted September 30, 2006 Share Posted September 30, 2006 So I assumed that by restoring Vista, it would create a new MBR. Is this correct? One would hope but this may not be the case as Vista my have modified the boot information that it usually looks for. I believe winload.exe (bootloader) is in the windows\system32\ directory Try booting the Vista install disc in recovery mode. This has options to restore/repair installs. (I can't rememeber the details or step by step off the top of my head) You should be able to restore the vista bootloader from there. It may not restore XP but you can fix this with bcdedit. Get back to me after you try this. I'll look up a couple things on bcdedit. BTW, I forgot to ask which build of vista are you running ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alcyone Posted September 30, 2006 Author Share Posted September 30, 2006 Thanks. I'll try and use the Vista dvd to correct the issue and post back. I'm running (or was running) build 5600 RC1. I believe it did modify XPs boot info as when I try to boot to the XP parition, I get the same boot screen that I get to when I boot to the MBR on the vista drive. What I'm thinking is I can reinstall Vista if the repair thing doesn't work, and then restore my XP installation with Ghost. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alcyone Posted October 3, 2006 Author Share Posted October 3, 2006 Ended up having to reinstall xp and vista unfortunately. I was able to use XPs repair utility and it booted up, but nothing worked right. Vista installations will also modify XPs MBR, so just reinstalling one operating system isn't sufficient. I ghosted my XP installation before installing Vista, so if things screw up again a vista reinstallation will be all that's required. I really wouldn't recommend modifying Vista's boot menu with bcdedit unless you really know what you're doing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
schale01 Posted October 3, 2006 Share Posted October 3, 2006 Do you remember which commands you used? I'm curious as to what got messed up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tripleboot Posted October 5, 2006 Share Posted October 5, 2006 To boot back into XP if you have deleted Vista you will need to fix the boot.ini. To do this you will need these commands after booting up with your XP DVD and going in R (recovery) Fixmbr Fixboot Use one or both and sometimes this will take more then one time to get to work. I often times have to use the following command to rebuild boot record as well. bootcfg /rebuild Follow the instructions and rename your OS. If you delete Vista it will wipe out anyway of booting back into XP without doing this unless you made a ghost image or backup image with Acronis True Image. I have saved several OS image drives just for this reason so I don't have in re-install everything when I have a meltdown! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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