windows vista XP and boot menu

If i reinstall a saved XP image.....will this mess up the dual boot menu that vista installed?

 

Yes. Restoring the XP partition to the way it was before Vista was installed will remove the dual-boot menu Vista sets up. You'll probably have to do a repair from the Vista DVD to fix it.

This is a perfect example of why it's better to keep the OS's isolated from each other. That way you can do restores on them without messing up any of the other ones.

 

Could someone be a little more specific as to this statement.

{This is a perfect example of why it's better to keep the OS's isolated from each other. That way you can do restores on them without messing up any of the other ones.}

Do you mean have the OS's on separate hard disc?
I have Vista and XP on the same harddrive but on separate partitions.
thanks
kowal
PS: I tried reinstalling just the XP image using TI10.....but my system become unbootable........i had to reinstall both vista and xp.......no data lost....just a lot of my time.
I tried fixing the boot record by vista repair console....but it could not see my harddisc for some reason.

 

Having different versions of Windows installed on either separate hard drives or on separate partitions on the same hard drive is okay. The main thing to keep them isolated is so they don't become "connected" or inter-mingled.

If you install Vista on an XP system and the XP partition is visible to Vista, it will install its bootloader to the XP partition and setup a boot menu so you can select either XP or Vista. This is what it did on your system. The two are connected together. If you do a restore on your XP partition you'll have to run the Vista repair to allow it to boot.

To keep them isolated from each other you have to use a third-party boot manager such as Acronis OSS, BootIT NG, System Commander, GRUB, etc. The "other" OS partitions can be hidden from each other so that the XP can't see the Vista partition and Vista can't see the XP partition. Either partition can be restored without causing any boot problems for any other OS.

If you're going to use Vista's boot manager to dual-boot, then you'll need to get things setup so it works and then when you do backups you'll have to backup the entire drive (check the "disk 1" box). When you restore, restore the entire drive (check the "disk 1" box).

Keep in mind that just because restoring a single partition won't boot (and possibly won't repair), the files are still in the backup image. You can always mount the image and get your files if worse comes to worse.

 

With the number of incompatibilities users are reporting with Vista, I would go with the "instal on a separate drive" suggestion.

 

Hey thanks "mudcrab".........i chose to (backup the entire drive (check the "disk 1" box)..........this seems like the it may be the most successful option.