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When you are trying to find the boot.ini file had you set Tools/Folder
Options/View to 'show hidden files' AND unhide 'protected operating system
files' ? Colin

"DuckRyder" wrote:

> Need a little help… with “boot” problem.
>
> First off, it is not my main machine or a “Production” machine, but I would
> like to get it working correctly.
>
> Background:
>
> Here is the set up. It is a Fujitsu Laptop; it was dual booting the original
> XP and Vista Beta2 with no problems. I am using Symantec Boot Magic and that
> was working with no issues. Enter Vista RC1. I could not simply do an upgrade
> of the Beta2 because there is not enough space allotted on the partition;
> since there were no files that I needed to keep, I just formatted the Vista
> Partition and did a clean install to that partition. What happened (I now
> know) is that the Boot Magic partition was disabled which hid the Vista
> partition and after the coping files reboot it booted straight into the XP
> partition. That did not work very well. The installation failed and Vista
> tried to roll back and rebooted. After that happened when the PC was booted I
> got the “Please chose an operating system to start.” However, there was only
> one choice “Windows Installation Rollback” once that started it would look
> like it was going to start Vista but instead of a log on screen I got a
> screen with “this installation was not successful” and the PC would reboot.
> It would continue this as long as you let it.
>
> By using the rescue disk I booted to partition magic and set the Vista
> Partition to active and, once that was done I booted from the VistaRC1 DVD
> and installed it to the blank active partition this netted me a working
> (quite well I might add excepting USB devices, but that’s another subject)
> Vista RC1 installation. I then used the rescue disc to unhide the XP
> partition and based on reading and searching a wide variety of online sources
> found and renamed the file “bootsect.bak” on the XP drive. Then once again
> set the XP partition to active and rebooted. This netted me a screen n with
> “Windows Installation Rollback” and “Older Version of Windows” and I can
> start the XP installation by choosing “Older Version of Windows”, so I then
> repaired the Boot Magic installation and set it to active.
>
> Problem:
>
> Now when booting the PC I get the boot magic screen. If I chose Vista I get
> the working copy of RC1, if I chose XP Professional, I get the screen with a
> choice between “Windows Installation Rollback” and “Older Version of Windows”
> and I can start the XP installation by choosing “Older Version of Windows”.
>
> Searching various forums and tech net I find two solutions, one involves
> renaming “boot.ini” and then renaming “boot.bak” to “boot.ini”. Problem is no
> amount of searching in windows explorer will locate the “boot.ini” file. I
> can access it from the XP installation by running msconfig. I also know it is
> there somewhere because any attempt to rename “boot.bak” to “boot.ini” is
> greeted with “already exist”. The other involves running a command from the
> Vista DVD to remove the Vista boot sector. I am concerned that this may
> remove both of them (I believe there is one on the XP partition and one on
> the Vista partition). I have also considered opening the “boot.bak” file and
> then copy/pasting the contents into “boot.ini” in msconfig, but that seems a
> bit strong-armed and more than a little reckless.
>
> Solution:
>
> Presently is to live with it as is but would rather fix it if someone has
> some suggestions. I apologize for being so long winded, but I thought that
> the background might help.
>