Vista - uninstall dual boot with XP

Hi,
Before I do this, I just want to know if calling fixboot, then fixmbr
will successfully switch the the bootloader back over to the ntloader
from the Vista bce (or what ever it is called) bootloader so that I can
boot back to my XP and repartition the Vista drive.

Thanks

John wrote:
> Hi,
> Before I do this, I just want to know if calling fixboot, then fixmbr
> will successfully switch the the bootloader back over to the ntloader
> from the Vista bce (or what ever it is called) bootloader so that I can
> boot back to my XP and repartition the Vista drive.


Despite the "no response" I went ahead and did this, and low and behold
I'm screwed. Needless to say I'm not just a little pissed off I'm
really, really pissed off.

Here's the steps:

1) Install Windows XP
2) Install Windows Vista on a clean partition
3) Reboot to the recovery console and type:
fixboot - OK
fixmbr - results in a warning of nonstandard boot manager, continuing
may corrupt partitions, went ahead anyways since I didn't really have a
choice in the matter.
4) Result is: Windows XP boots fine, no problem (phew)
5) Delete Windows Vista partition
6) Install Fedora Core 5 on the new space available from the deleted
Windows Vista partition
7) Reboot - boots to Windows XP, no sign of Linux

It seems that I'm still using the BCD as the boot manager even after
doing a fixboot, fixmbr. That sequence removes grub why does it not
remove BCD?

Now, since I deleted the Windows Vista partition I don't have
BCDEDIT.EXE, so I can't even try to configure my boot manager to add new
boot options!

Is there some way to repair the BCD boot manager without installing
Windows Vista?

Microsoft needs to release and make apparent documents that describe the
steps required to uninstall their freakin' betas!

Looks like another reinstall of Windows XP, great I was really looking
forward to that.

By the way, if anyone is reading this that has not yet tried Windows
Vista Build 53xx, don't bother, it's completely useless, there are no
drivers, you can't even install Microsoft software like VS2005 because
it craps out during the setup and the user interface is so half-baked
it's completely unusable.

John wrote:

> 3) Reboot to the recovery console and type:
> fixboot - OK
> fixmbr - results in a warning of nonstandard boot manager, continuing
> may corrupt partitions, went ahead anyways since I didn't really have a
> choice in the matter.
>
> Now, since I deleted the Windows Vista partition I don't have
> BCDEDIT.EXE, so I can't even try to configure my boot manager to add new
> boot options!
>
> Is there some way to repair the BCD boot manager without installing
> Windows Vista?

I just have to reiterate, how is it possible that MS has released a boot
manager that is not backwards compatible with earlier Windows versions?
I cannot understand this.

It should be - don't forget that sometimes they release patches for previous
versions of Windows so that they are then compatible with a program ready to
be released later on in the future.

But the BCDEDIT is still a bit crap at times, so bare with it )

--
Zack Whittaker
» ZackNET Enterprises: www.zacknet.co.uk
» MSBlog on ResDev: www.msblog.org
» Vista Knowledge Base: www.vistabase.co.uk
» This mailing is provided "as is" with no warranties, and confers no
rights. All opinions expressed are those of myself unless stated so, and not
of my employer, best friend, Ghandi, my mother or my cat. Glad we cleared
that up!

--: Original message follows :--
"John" <no@spam.com> wrote in message
news:OvDPC4wdGHA.2188@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> John wrote:
>
>> 3) Reboot to the recovery console and type:
>> fixboot - OK
>> fixmbr - results in a warning of nonstandard boot manager, continuing may
>> corrupt partitions, went ahead anyways since I didn't really have a
>> choice in the matter.
>>
>> Now, since I deleted the Windows Vista partition I don't have
>> BCDEDIT.EXE, so I can't even try to configure my boot manager to add new
>> boot options!
>>
>> Is there some way to repair the BCD boot manager without installing
>> Windows Vista?
>
> I just have to reiterate, how is it possible that MS has released a boot
> manager that is not backwards compatible with earlier Windows versions? I
> cannot understand this.

John wrote:
> 6) Install Fedora Core 5 on the new space available from the deleted
> Windows Vista partition

I should probably mention that this step should have replaced the boot
loader with GRUB, which didn't happen.

Zack -
I'm really impressed with your steadfastness, personally I'm not going
near any beta or even release of Vista until the dual boot and backward
compatibility problems with the BCD boot loader are resolved.

John

John wrote:
> I just have to reiterate, how is it possible that MS has released a boot
> manager that is not backwards compatible with earlier Windows versions?
> I cannot understand this.

Ok, after all this ranting, I'm feeling a bit like a jerk. It turns out
that the Fedora Core 5 install failed to configure GRUB correctly. So, I
don't actually know if fixboot, fixmbr really did switch back over to
the ntldr. All I know is that Windows XP does boot without problems
after doing a fixboot, fixmbr, after which you can safely delete your
Windows Vista partition.

Sorry for the rant.

what i did was make a copy of my windows xp pro boot ini and if i wanted to
go back i would just login to my xp drive and delete the boot ini and past
the copy i maid than when i rebooted to windows i just formated the vista
drive

"John" wrote:

> John wrote:
> > 6) Install Fedora Core 5 on the new space available from the deleted
> > Windows Vista partition
>
> I should probably mention that this step should have replaced the boot
> loader with GRUB, which didn't happen.
>
> Zack -
> I'm really impressed with your steadfastness, personally I'm not going
> near any beta or even release of Vista until the dual boot and backward
> compatibility problems with the BCD boot loader are resolved.
>
> John
>