Dual Boot XP Pro / Ultimate 64 problems....

Everything was working very well, then when I tried installing Disk Director on the Ultimate 64 partition, everything went to hell. It automatically installed OS selector (which I don't need, Vista does this for you), and when I said 'disable os selector' it rebooted, move winloader.exe and now the system won't boot into either XP Pro or the Vista OS.

Is there any way that I can recover the winloader.exe to the correct file location and just go on with my life, without installing both OS's over again?

I've tried the recover startup option in the Vista installation proceedure and it tells me it cannot fix the problem.

Thanks Acronis....

 

Others have said that OSS installs automatically with DD. I don't disbelieve you, but I've installed DD dozens of times and it never installed OSS. I always had to install it separately.

You probably just need to do a BCD repair to point to the correct partition.

Is your Vista partition the Active partition? If so, you can use the boot option. If not, you'll need to assign the partition letter.

Boot to the Vista DVD and go to the Command Prompt (don't bother with any automatic repair options). Run the bcdedit command. The output will be similar to that shown in this thread.

( <ENTER> means to press the ENTER key )

If you want to set it to boot you'd run these commands:

Code:

bcdedit /set {default} device boot <ENTER>
bcdedit /set {default} osdevice boot <ENTER>
bcdedit /set {bootmgr} device boot <ENTER>

If you want to set it to your Vista partition letter, you'd run these commands (this assumes C: is your Vista partition letter when booted to the Vista DVD):

Code:

bcdedit /set {default} device partition=C: <ENTER>
bcdedit /set {default} osdevice partition=C: <ENTER>
bcdedit /set {bootmgr} device partition=C: <ENTER>

If something looks strange, post back with the bcdedit output.

 

Thank's for the reply, but I'm currently reformatting both partitions. I tried what you posted, suggested from another site, but still no go.

I'm wondering if when I installed DD in XP PRO and then installed it in Vista that somehow DD realized it was a dual boot scenario and automatically installs OSS. Probably not, but I can honestly say that OSS did install itself automatically at the end of the DD installation...

Probably won't install DD on the Vista OS again, unless someone can confirm that it should work with Vista 64 bit without hassle.