mulitboot problem

hi, I had tried to install Vista Home Premium on second drive.
It seemed that it may have installed on 1st drive (where XP was already installed), but some (if not all) Vista files were on the second drive).
How do I determine if any Vista files are on my XP drive?
Is it possible that Vista got installed on my 1st drive (of 3) and was coexisting on that drive with XP. XP would not boot, until I removed Vista muliboot function/files.

I am currently running XP only on 1st drive, formatted second drive.
What files on XP drive (boot files) do I need to backup before I try installing Vista on drive 2 again.
And I guess I need to create a bootable CD with that/those boot files on it, arggggggg

Hi,

Yes Vista will drop her boot files on the first partition and then install the actual Vista operating system on whichever partition you selected during the installation process.

If you want Vista to be all on one partition, you need to install her on the first partition.

When you look in Disk Management you will see your partitions displayed at the top of the window - If you don't see them as a list, click View ,Top,Volume List.

Where it says System is actually the volume on which the boot files reside

Where it says Boot is actuallty the volume on which the operating system resides.

Obviously it will only show these for the operating system you are currently in when you open Disk Management.

Hope this helps
SIW2

well the confusing issue this time around was that vista was booting with drive 1 as C: and it should have been booting with drive 2 (vista) as drive C: