I have Vista and Win 7 dual boot from 2 HDD's. I would get the black and
white screen that let me choose which I wanted to boot. I had to reinstall
W7 and now that option is no longer their. I booted from the W7 update DVD
and when I got to the part of selecting the partion I chose the one that did
have 7 on it and formatted it then installed it. Why am I no longer given
the dual option and is thier anyway to get it back? I have checked and my
files for Vista are all still there.

Hi, J.

At the time you ran Win7 Setup.exe again, which HDD was designated in your
BIOS as the boot device? THAT HDD is where you should find Win7's startup
files.

Windows Setup.exe puts the \Windows folder tree into the partition where we
tell it to "install" Windows. That is, \Windows\system32, and all the many
GB of other files and folders that comprise the operating system. But it
puts the startup files, including the POINTER to that folder, into the
System Partition, which is the Active primary partition on the designated
boot device at the time Setup is run. In the typical computer, everything
is in good ol' Drive C: on the only hard drive. But in a multi-drive
multi-boot computer, the System Volume and the Boot Volume are often
separate.

So, for example, if your first HDD was disconnected when you were doing the
new install, both the operating system and the new startup files would have
been written to the second HDD. And if the disconnected HDD was where Vista
was installed, then Win7 Setup would not know about Vista and would not
provide for it in the opening menu.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
rc@newsgroup
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8089.0726) in Win7 Ultimate x64

"J" <J@newsgroup> wrote in message
news:62635A84-508D-465A-A43F-8B0D6D5F910E@newsgroup

> I have Vista and Win 7 dual boot from 2 HDD's. I would get the black and
> white screen that let me choose which I wanted to boot. I had to
> reinstall
> W7 and now that option is no longer their. I booted from the W7 update
> DVD
> and when I got to the part of selecting the partion I chose the one that
> did
> have 7 on it and formatted it then installed it. Why am I no longer given
> the dual option and is thier anyway to get it back? I have checked and my
> files for Vista are all still there.

On Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:22:01 -0800, J <J@newsgroup>
wrote:

>I have Vista and Win 7 dual boot from 2 HDD's. I would get the black and
>white screen that let me choose which I wanted to boot. I had to reinstall
>W7 and now that option is no longer their. I booted from the W7 update DVD
>and when I got to the part of selecting the partion I chose the one that did
>have 7 on it and formatted it then installed it. Why am I no longer given
>the dual option and is thier anyway to get it back? I have checked and my
>files for Vista are all still there.

You probably deleted the BCD (boot configuration data) when you
formatted the disk. Boot from the Windows 7 DVD, and run startup
repair. It should detect the Vista installation, and let you add it to
the BCD.