Can't boot from Vista after XP install

[astahlke]

Tonight I decided to install XP as a backup to a small partition (10g) on a secondary drive. Vista is installed on my C drive. Now, though, when I boot, it automatically defaults to XP. I checked system>advanced>startup/recovery to set the default OS, but Vista doesn't appear in the list. I thought about Editing the info, but have no idea what I would need to fill in.

Currently my C drive is listed as (System), my D drive as (Boot). I need to make C the boot drive. Any suggestions as to what I can do, besides doing more homework the next time i decide to muck around w PC?

Thanks!

 

[PBNinja101]

When you installed XP to the harddrive, it set all the Master Boot Records (MBR) to boot to XP. You will have to,

a. Manually edit the boot.ini on XP, so Vista shows up on the list - you can then set default boot.
b. Reinstall Vista again - but after XP, then you can boot from both (last resort)


Simon

 

[astahlke]

Simon, thanks for the info. I figured I was going to need to re-install Vista...I formatted the partition I had XP on and then couldn't reboot to Vista due to a missing system32/hal.dll file. So I went ahead and just reinstalled Vista and am going to leave it alone for now.