I have both XP and Vista installed and had dual booting working well... but I
started playing and have now lost the ability to boot to Vista (no boot
manager screen) and system boots directly to XP.

Is there a way to reinstall the Vista boot manager WITHOUT reinstalling
Vista (as I have added programs/files and customized it)?

I also noticed that I can no longer see the partition where Vista was
installed ;o( - Partition magic reports my 2nd harddive (containing partition
for Vista, as "bad"

I was playing with boot-us when I had caused this problem.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

Jeff

as far as checking to see if the partition for Vista is still OK, go to
control panel > administrative tools > computer management -- then click
disk management and see if XP says the partition is there. it should also
tell you if it is still healthy. (this will only tell you if there is
something wrong with the file table not the actual installation)

to restore the vista's boot loader (BCD) just start the computer with the
install DVD and when you get to the "install" screen look at the bottom left,
choose "repair installation". it will then report if your installation is
still valid or rather if it found it. highlight the vista installation in the
box and press next. then at the next box you will be presented with a number
of choices, choose "repair". after it is done repairing click finish and the
computer will restart.
if you are lucky this worked, if not then dont freak out and try it again;
same steps dont try to change things up. try it 3 times (if you need to) if
nothing after the third time the installation may be just done for.
when vista is done repairing and before you click finish you will be
presented with a dialog box telling you that the repair was succesful, click
on "view report" (or something like that) and you will see what vista fixed.
what i have found is that each time Vista fixed a differnt thing. first the
boot loader, then the MBR, then some random program -- which that only
happened once with Beta2.

good luck

"Jeff" wrote:

> I have both XP and Vista installed and had dual booting working well... but I
> started playing and have now lost the ability to boot to Vista (no boot
> manager screen) and system boots directly to XP.
>
> Is there a way to reinstall the Vista boot manager WITHOUT reinstalling
> Vista (as I have added programs/files and customized it)?
>
> I also noticed that I can no longer see the partition where Vista was
> installed ;o( - Partition magic reports my 2nd harddive (containing partition
> for Vista, as "bad"
>
> I was playing with boot-us when I had caused this problem.
>
> Any suggestions?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Jeff

Hi Alejo,

Thanks for the suggstions. here is what I have found:

1. XP computer management reports - Vista NTFS Healthy(Unknown Partition) -
logical drive

2. Ran Vista repair few times - first time boot sector code for system disk
partition corrupt - and corrected.

3. system now shows boot menu for dual boot ) BUT when Vista is choosen it
starts to boot (initial (c) Microsoft Corp) screen then reboots.

4. I still cannot see my Vista drive when using XP windows explorer

5. partition Magic still shows drive with Vista as "bad"

Any other ideas?

jeff

YEAH!!

I think I've got it fixed!!

Seemed that Boot-US was hidding my Vista Partition (because I told it to).
By uninstalling the boot-us manager I've got both OS back and I can see Vista
from XP and XP from Vista.

More checks tomorrow, but now times for dessert.

Jeff