Boot Magic disaster...

[Ploper001]

My friend who has a dual boot setup using Boot Manager of XP and 2000, tried to install Vista on a new partition. The install went fine, but Vista replaced Boot Magic with its own boot manager. This was a problem since it didn't detect Windows 2000 - only XP ("Legacy") and Vista.

So my friend booted into XP and re-enabled Boot Magic. However, in Boot Magic, the Vista option was marked "Unavailable". So he chose Windows XP....and then he was presented with Vista's boot manager! From HERE, booting into Windows Vista caused a blue screen.

So he booted back into XP and noticed loads of programs were missing, and his background was gone, and loads of Windows Installer boxes came up - and kept coming up every minute or so. It appears that he now cannot access any of his other "Primary partitions" - which contain his XP programs, and files.

In a last ditch effort, he got rid of Vista from the Boot Magic menu, and then tried to boot into Vista (by choosing XP in the Boot Manager menu, and then Vista from Vista's boot manager). It appeared to work, but then he got a message along the lines of "Cannot proceed. This image was applied without taking into consideration the possiblity of hard drive letters changing across machine configurations.", followed by a black screen.


So now, he has a crippled XP install and no working Vista. I made a few suggestions in a reply email, but having never used Boot Magic before, I'm not entirely sure any of it will work/help:


"Although I've had no experience with Boot Magic before, I would have thought that wiping the Vista drive with Partition Magic, and then fixing the MBR of XP (can't remember the command, google it), and disabling Boot Magic will allow XP to run fine.

Before this disaster, would disabling BootMagic cause XP's boot manager to take over? If so, it should go back to this behaviour after the steps above. If not, then maybe you can try (after completely obliterating Vista as above) creating a new BootMagic "profile" or whatever the equivalent is - basically, set up your boot options from scratch. Hopefully this will give you back normal 2000/XP functionality. "



Can anyone give any advice on:

- How to get back normal 2000/XP functionality?
- How to, in future, install Vista correctly on a system that is already using Boot Magic?

Thanks for any help.

 

[gpalmer711]

If you can get into the recovery console then you could try using the bootcfg command as discussed in

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/291980

This should pick up the Windows 2000 and Windows XP installs and then use the XP boot manager to boot.

This assumes that the order of the partitions have not changed due to the vista install. The XP boot manager does not work on drive letters, instead it is working on actual physical drive locations. i.e. Drive(0).Partition(0) is the first partition on the first drive etc..


Greg Palmer
Freeware Utilities for Windows Administrators.

http://www.palmersoft.co.uk

 

[linney]

After you have repaired the older operating systems boot problems using the Recovery Console as mentioned by "gpalmer711". Or repairing the actual operating systems themselves if the problem is more serious than the booting problem. I would suggest that you remove any third party Boot Managers (at least until the dust has settled) and rely on something like this program to control your booting.

PROnetworks VistaBootPRO

http://www.vistabootpro.org/

I have been multibooting Vista for months using the above mentioned free software and find it a very good manager designed specifically for Vista multiboots.

Boot Configuration Data Editor Frequently Asked Questions

http://technet2.microsoft.com/Windo...c349-427c-b035-c2719d4af7781033.mspx?mfr=true

 

[linney]

Welcome back Greg (gpalmer711), good to see you on the site again.

 

[Ploper001]

Thanks for the suggestions - he restored his PC using a Ghost backup.

However, he still wants to install Vista. My suggestion was to completely obliterate Boot Magic, and let XP's boot loader take over. Then, install Vista, and it should sort out 2000/XP/Vista boot by itself. Then, as a replacement for Boot Magic's hard drive hiding, use TweakUI.

What do you think?

 

[Ploper001]

Oh, and also, this is Vista Business since he (and I) have received this free from MSDNAA, but in the future he'll want to put Ultimate on there. So eventually he'll need to uninstall Vista Business - now, I know of a method to get rid of Vista's Boot Manager:

"Boot your computer in to Windows XP.
Ensure you have the Vista DVD image emulated or in the DVD drive.
Go to “Start” and “Run”. Type in “e:\boot\bootsect.exe /nt52 ALL /force” (without quotes, and replacing e: with the drive letter of your Vista DVD).
Restart the computer, and you will notice the boot selection menu is gone.
Format the partition/drive where you had Vista installed.
Remove two files (Boot.BAK & Bootsect.BAK) on your XP drive’s root folder (C, these were backup files of your previous bootloader, now no longer useful. "


BUT would removing Vista's Boot Manger restore XP's so that XP and 2000 are once again dual booting?

 

[wolluf]

BUT would removing Vista's Boot Manger restore XP's so that XP and 2000 are once again dual booting?

if it doesn't, you can always do that yourself from recovery console. Make sure appropriate boot.ini, ntldr and ntdetect.com are in root of C: and run fixboot (I'm not sure if bootcfg will do anything other than rebuilding boot.ini).

Must admit other than letting vista manage the boot menu in test scenarios, I haven't put Vista on the same hard drive as another o/s - and still use my old favourite

http://www.boot-us.com

to multiboot Vista where Vista is installed on separate drive - with no other's present - create the boot menu in boot-us later. If I was using partitions on same disk, I'd use boot-us's 'true hiding' feature to hide existing partitions from vista, so it would put its boot manager on its own partition and not overwrite the existing XP/2k one. Then again create boot menu in boot-us.

 

[Ploper001]

That Boot-Us thing should come in handy, thanks for that link!

Turns out a suggestion I made actually worked perfectly - basically, we made a new partition for Vista, formatted it NTFS, then set it as Active. When Partition Magic wanted to reboot after doing this, we ended the process.

Next, we went to Boot Magic, and it detected the new Active Partition. We added it and called it Windows Vista (giving 3 total options - 2000, XP, Vista). Then, we disabled Boot Magic and rebooted with the Vista DVD in the drive.

Vista then installed fine, and when it rebooted, it went straight to Vista - it obviously didn't check for or know about the previous OSs because it saw that it was already on an Active partition I assume. After this, we used the DOS-based Boot Magic utlity on the small Boot Magic boot partition to set XP as the Active Partition.

Next, we restarted and XP loaded, again seemingly unaware of any other OSes. We re-enabled Boot Magic with all 3 options ticked, and rebooted. Now, there is a Boot Magic menu with 2000, XP and Vista, and all work fine!


Phew, bit of a long process, but it worked! Maybe someone else can find this info useful