I have quite happily had all various beta versions of Vista co existing with
XP and server, multi-booting using nothing other than what was on the
Vista/Longhorn and XP disks, I also have an Nvidia chipset, AMD 64 with
SATA/EIDE drives. If you'd like to explain what is actually happening and
post the output from BCDedit.exe and tell us what drive configurations you
have and what is on them it would be more use than a rant about Microsoft.
How can we tell you the solution when we don't know the problem?

Colin T
"bmoag" <bmoag@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:C33792D9-5CE3-4EE4-9F56-81C3FFD7FF6C@microsoft.com...
>I have installed XP on many systems in multiboot configuration because some
> piece of hardware or software required a prior version of Windows.
> In this case I installed Vista (RC1 32 bit) to a separate SATA hard drive
> from the drive XP is installed on. In this scenario XP has always
> installed
> and dual booted as expected. Even XP64 installed (long ago totally
> deleted,
> drives reformatted) on this particular machine in this configuration. As
> Vista will not be universally supported by peripheral and software makers
> this is the scenario many upgraders will face, and this is indeed
> Microsoft's
> problem and not that of the user. Vista users should not have to reflag
> drives as bootable, rewrite boot configuration files manually or resort to
> third party multi-boot programs. This will make the Mactel look even more
> attractive. I do not have exotic hardware on this machine: Nvidia chipset
> supporting an AMD 64 dual core and SATA/EIDE hard drives. Is there a
> solution?
>
>
> "John Barnes" wrote:
>
>> If you have your first drive as first in boot priority, then when you
>> installed xp on the second drive the boot files were on the first drive.
>> If
>> you then formatted the first drive when installing Vista, the XP boot
>> files
>> would be gone. This would be the case if there were 1 partition per
>> drive.
>> As the others have said, provide specific information. Which drive is
>> first
>> in boot priority, what system you want to install on it. How many
>> partitions and which is active. Same for the second drive. How are you
>> or
>> have you done any installations to date.
>>
>> "bmoag" <bmoag@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
>> news:0F0F14ED-78BF-4E9D-B5FB-215325F3897D@microsoft.com...
>> > Microsoft is heading for a well-earned disaster with this OS if they do
>> > not
>> > fix the dual boot installation problem. What's the chance of this
>> > before
>> > the
>> > January release date? Win XP has no problem installing on a second hard
>> > drive
>> > and getting all the information and location of the boot loader correct
>> > but
>> > Vista is a hit or miss fiasco-works for some but not for everybody. I
>> > get
>> > this error and can find no solution that works. I have installed under
>> > WinXP,
>> > installed from the DVD, changed the BIOS settings. I examine the Vista
>> > Boot
>> > loader in VistaBoot Pro and it seems to point to the correct drive. I
>> > run
>> > the
>> > repair function from the Vista DVD, it identifies the problem, says it
>> > fixed
>> > it but of course it did not. Does anyone no of any clear
>> > troubleshooting
>> > for
>> > this or is Vista just more Microsoft crippleware?
>>
>>