Vista - Dual Boot Problems...

Long story...

I downloaded and installedBeta2, simultaneously ordering the DVD, which
arrived shortly thereafter. Not sure how, why, etc, but the drive where I
installed Beta2 became seriously corrupted. I could not access it in anyway,
nor reinstall Beta2. This was a dual boot w/WinXP Pro, and at first, the
dual boot worked OK. I Finally had to format the drive where Beta2 was
installed to recover the drive (Not C:, where WinXP Pro resides; Beta2 was
on a separate drive, not a partition.)

Back to 'normal' w/o Beta2, but I still had a dual boot menu, which I lived
with for a while. Then, I decided to try again...I booted to the Beta2 DVD
and installed it to the newly formatted drive F:, to recreate the dual boot,
and hoping that the new install would 'fix' the dual boot menu.

The install completed successfully, Beta2 running fine (?), but when I
rebooted, instead of getting the dual boot menu, I got the 'wrong disk'
blurb, insert disk hit enter...I just hit enter a few times, and nothing. I
reinserted the Beta2 DVD and nothing. Entered the BIOS to see if anything
had changed, nothing...shut down, restarted, and same bad disk info...no
boot. Shut down, waited longer, and finally got a dual boot menu...with 3
options! One for XP, one for 'Windows' and one for Beta2. The Beta2 was
apparently a remnant from the original Beta2 install, and would not
work...the 'Windows' option booted to Beta2, and my XP booted normally from
the other option. Now, everytime I reboot, I have to go through a long
process, just to get the dual boot menu to boot to either one.

I've tried to run BCDEDIT, but it won't run. There are several BCDEDIT's, on
the XP drive and on the Beta2 drive, none of which will run from XP.

How do I fix my boot situation??? Delete all instances of BCDEDIT, and
repair the installation? Try to reinstall, after deleting the BCDEDIT's?
Help, how do I fix it? I can reinstall Beta2, but don't want to reinstall
XP!

I don't think the problem is with my system, just me, and what I've done.

3GHz P4
2GB RAM
2 EIDE HDD's (200GB + 200GB)
1 SATA Drive (250GB)

Have you tried booting the Vista DVD and seeing if you can run BCDEDIT from
there?

Or how about booting the WinXP CD and fixing your boot files? You should
need only repair the boot sectors so that they load ntldr.

"John C. Iliff" <joniliff@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:ukvquxj0GHA.4312@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
> Long story...
>
> I downloaded and installedBeta2, simultaneously ordering the DVD, which
> arrived shortly thereafter. Not sure how, why, etc, but the drive where I
> installed Beta2 became seriously corrupted. I could not access it in
> anyway, nor reinstall Beta2. This was a dual boot w/WinXP Pro, and at
> first, the dual boot worked OK. I Finally had to format the drive where
> Beta2 was installed to recover the drive (Not C:, where WinXP Pro resides;
> Beta2 was on a separate drive, not a partition.)
>
> Back to 'normal' w/o Beta2, but I still had a dual boot menu, which I
> lived with for a while. Then, I decided to try again...I booted to the
> Beta2 DVD and installed it to the newly formatted drive F:, to recreate
> the dual boot, and hoping that the new install would 'fix' the dual boot
> menu.
>
> The install completed successfully, Beta2 running fine (?), but when I
> rebooted, instead of getting the dual boot menu, I got the 'wrong disk'
> blurb, insert disk hit enter...I just hit enter a few times, and nothing.
> I reinserted the Beta2 DVD and nothing. Entered the BIOS to see if
> anything had changed, nothing...shut down, restarted, and same bad disk
> info...no boot. Shut down, waited longer, and finally got a dual boot
> menu...with 3 options! One for XP, one for 'Windows' and one for Beta2.
> The Beta2 was apparently a remnant from the original Beta2 install, and
> would not work...the 'Windows' option booted to Beta2, and my XP booted
> normally from the other option. Now, everytime I reboot, I have to go
> through a long process, just to get the dual boot menu to boot to either
> one.
>
> I've tried to run BCDEDIT, but it won't run. There are several BCDEDIT's,
> on the XP drive and on the Beta2 drive, none of which will run from XP.
>
> How do I fix my boot situation??? Delete all instances of BCDEDIT, and
> repair the installation? Try to reinstall, after deleting the BCDEDIT's?
> Help, how do I fix it? I can reinstall Beta2, but don't want to reinstall
> XP!
>
> I don't think the problem is with my system, just me, and what I've done.
>
> 3GHz P4
> 2GB RAM
> 2 EIDE HDD's (200GB + 200GB)
> 1 SATA Drive (250GB)
>