No reboot after updates and then mystery healing

I have had this issue for many months, now. I loaded Vista x64 Home Premium to run in a dual-boot configuration with my XP Pro. I do critical work so I didn't trust going to Vista exclusively. I mainly wanted it to see if I could utilize all my RAM and speed up Photoshop processing.
I have had it working three or four times, (except for tablet functionality) then when I must re-boot because of SP1 and other security updates or in one case, I installed Office 2007, it does nothing on restart; black screens and just sits there, totally unresponsive. No blinking of the LED which shows drive activity. When re-booting, F8 isn't working (nothing happens). Regarding the previous instances, I gave up trying to get it to respond and went back to booting into XP, which always works fine. Then after a period (usually a month or more) I will try booting into Vista, on restart, and viola, it works again!
WTF is going on?

ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Toledo: 2,400 Mhz on air (10% OC)
Thermalright XP-90C with 92MM Thermoflow temperature sensing fan
4 Gig of OCZ Titanium DDR400 (PC3200) dual channel, unbuffered RAM
MSI NX6600-TD256E video card & dual 24” wide screen LCDs setup
2X - WD 250Gb 7200RPM SATA main drive, w. 16Mb cache
(one for XP Pro and one for Vista x64 Home Premium)
2X - Fujitsu MAU3036NP (15K RPM hard drives running SCSI 0 [striped])
Lian 7077A - full tower case with optional 120mm fan in top,
90mm fan (stock AMD-CPU) angled facing MB chipset
Antec TP2 550 (watt) power supply
Windows XP Pro/Windows x64 Home Premium, setup for dual-boot


MS Digital Media Pro Keyboard
Wacom Intuos II Tablet
EIZO ColorEdge CE240W, 24”, wide-screen LCD display
and BENQ HDMI 24” wide-screen LCD display

PS: Although I can't say that I haven't missed something, I tried to do all the driver updates I could find when I started the install of Vista, way before xmas. I haven't added or updated any drivers since. Like I said, it will work fine, every once in a while and then when I make changes, requiring a re-boot Vista become unresponsives for a while.

How did you set up the dual boot?

You have asked a potentially difficult question to answer.
I did the dual boot initially prior to 3-07. As I said in my specs: 2X - WD 250Gb 7200RPM SATA main drive, w. 16Mb cache
(one for XP Pro and one for Vista x64 Home Premium). XP and Vista x64 are on seperate drives from each other.
After I took an initial stab at configuring the dual boot I had an "expert" come to the house and he could not fix it on that visit. He suggested V-com's System Commander to manage dual booting but instead I used Vista boot Pro 3.3. I fiddled with that, and had it dual booting, but could not get it to work consistently, as I mentioned, if I changed or updated anything in Vista. I have not used or changed anything in VistaBoot Pro since it was initially working.
I apologize if I am not clear or not answering your question. I have worked with PCs since the '80's, changing out parts and loading OS and software. I built two PCs recently and know enough to be dangerous, but that's it. And, it's been quite a while since I was immersed in this issue, so I'm a little fuzzy.

Here are screen shots of Vista's files, the boot. ini of XP and the settings as they show up in VistaBoot Pro:


XP's boot.ini looks like this:
[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT

"BCD Registry settings" (from VistaBoot Pro):
There is currently 2 OS(s) installed on your system.
The current boot timeout is: 30
Default OS: Windows XP Pro SP2
Entry 1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name: Windows XP Pro SP2
BCD ID: {ntldr}
Boot Drive: D:
System Bootloader: \ntldr
Entry 2
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name: Windows Vista X64
BCD ID: {f28580fc-d02f-11db-83cd-8fe93d148689}
Boot Drive: X:
Windows Drive: X:
System Bootloader: \Windows\system32\winload.exe
Windows Directory: \Windows
(Just so there is no confusion (I hope), way back, before this dual-boot scenario, I had a hard drive issue and my XP boot drive is named "D", not the normal "C" designation.)
I hope you or someone can help. I will try and provide any info I can. I'm trying to avoid reloading XP (and all my programs), if possible, and I'm wanting to maintain XP Pro as long as I feel insecure that Vista can get the job done by itself. If there are other, better ways to configure the dual-boot then I am willing to do that, for sure.
Thanks

I'm still hoping for some help on this. What else can I provide?

Thats really weird Scargo, before SP1 Vista would sometimes create a folder called $$DeleteMe$$DeleteME$$DeleteME$$ but the issue was fixed with SP1 when it was integrated with the installation dvd...Its safe to delete all them files too...

Is Vista still giving you grief?

still have blank screens

Yes, after what, a week (?) I cannot boot into Vista and it has yet to "self-heal".
I'm about to try a BCD backup restore in VistaBoot Pro.

It might be worth integrating SP1 with the Vista installation DVD and formatting and clean installing, It will fix most of these files and boot problems.

dmex said:

It might be worth integrating SP1 with the Vista installation DVD and formatting and clean installing, It will fix most of these files and boot problems.

Click to expand...

Microsoft says:
Microsoft strongly recommends using Windows Update to download and install Windows Vista SP1 on single PCs.
I see reference to "slipstreaming SP1" but I haven't found the exact link to instructions about how to do it. This is all very confusing.
The only resason for me not to try a clean install is that I have Office 2007 loaded (but when I did updates to it, and rebooted Vista, it was one of those instances when it did not work for a while-that I have referred to). That and all the time it takes to reload everything.
Does Microsoft now offer a new DVD with SP1 on it? If so I may order that, unless you have better suggestion, like integrating the SP1. Can I intergrate it and do a repair install? My impression is the SP1 goes in a folder somewhere on the DVD?

Just a thought: I do not have any isues with XP Pro, but I am running the two striped, SCSI drives as my scratch discs for Photoshop and I think they are the where the pagefiling is done, as well. I guess if Vista has functioned fine for a while (off and on) then driver compatibility for the SCSI's and Vista x64 are not an issue?
BTW: I tried the BCD backup install and all that did was to make my BIOS dual-boot choice look different. It still did nothing-unresponsive.

Checkout our tutorial here: http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/151606-vista-sp1-slipstream-installation-dvd.html

It will answer some of your questions.

Steven