Can't boot into Vista..

Hi, first post on here, so please be gentle!!

Right, I have Vista installed on my 'C' drive. On a seperate hard drive, I have my 'old' Windows XP installation as well. As I have a couple of things that won't run under vista (some finance software and my scanner mainly) I would ideally like to have Vista as the 'main' o/s but have the option of booting into XP when needed.

I have installed Acronis direct suite, but when the computer boots up, I don't get the option to boot into Vista, just XP. If I boot up with only the vista HDD attached, I can't get past the Boot Menu. I tried,hitting f5 to by-pass Acronis, but it won't let me.

So now, I'm stuck. I cannot get into Vista at all. I have had to reconnect the XP hard disk as the boot drive with the Vista one as it's slave. I can at least boot into XP and 'see' the Vista files as well.

So, with all of that in mind, what are my options? How can I get the boot manager to 'see' vista? If I can't, how can I get Acronis off my computer so that I can at least boot into Vista again?

Any suggestions would be greatfully received

 

Firstly, beware that DiskDirector itself doesn't officially (nor officiously!) support Vista: so don't try any partitioning/resizing of Vista's partition with DD right now, wait for a new version (we're waiiiiiting for Acronis!). People have reported bad things about results.

Secondly, you have two options about OS Selector:

1) forget about it, use Vista's boot manager instead to handle both OSes, which is quite sufficient and there's no need of OSS really in that situation;

2) or use the trick mentionned in my following post to get OSS to see Vista: https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=148352

The second option is a workaround to remove OSS's blindness about Vista; again we're waiting for Acronis to be up to the task of getting synched to Vista.

But I recommend first option: Vista's own boot manager. You might need to use Vista's install DVD to fix the MBR to boot it (or, after using the trick in the second option, to then disable OSS by choosing Vista to boot, then uninstalling OSS).