Member Avatar for Adam-Up

Hi

Recently I tried dual booting vista and xp, laptop hp g60-214em originally has vista installed, I partitioned the hd and put windows xp onto the partitioned drive. I installed some drivers to try and get xp to run properly after a restart xp wouldn't boot just goes to a black screen and I think it says ''invalid boot.ini file booting from c/windows/'' very briefly. stumped on what to do now?, I'v tried booting from the xp disc, reformatting and installing a fresh copy of xp but it doesn't work.
Can anyone help please?

Edited by Adam-Up
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Dani AI

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Short diagnosis (why this happened)
Installing XP onto a machine that already had Vista commonly breaks the boot sequence: XP drops the older NTLDR/boot.ini scheme over Vista’s bootmgr/BCD or puts XP’s boot files on the wrong partition. That explains the “invalid boot.ini” behaviour and why XP’s Recovery Console didn’t fix things. Since you’ve got a Vista recovery disc, use it to restore Vista’s boot manager first — that will get the machine back to a bootable Vista state without reinstalling everything.

Repair steps to try from the Vista recovery environment
Boot the Vista recovery disc -> Repair your computer -> Startup Repair (try it up to three times). If Startup Repair doesn’t finish the job, open Command Prompt and run these (from the recovery tools):

bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /scanos
bootrec /rebuildbcd
bcdedit /enum all

If the wrong partition is marked active, fix that with diskpart (choose the 100MB “System Reserved” if present, otherwise the Vista partition):

diskpart
list disk
select disk 0
list partition
select partition X
active
exit

Only delete ntldr, ntdetect.com or boot.ini after Vista’s bootmgr is restored and only if you want to remove XP entirely.

Options and practical advice
If you truly need both OSes, the least painful route is: install XP first, then Vista; otherwise install Vista and restore its bootloader, then add XP properly (tools like EasyBCD can add a chainloaded XP entry). As suggested, running XP as a virtual machine from inside Vista avoids these boot problems entirely. Backup any important files before trying repairs—OEM recovery discs will usually wipe the disk and restore factory state.

Extra troubleshooting notes
If an XP install stalls or can’t continue, check BIOS SATA mode (switch to IDE/Compatibility for older XP installs) and make sure the installer CD is the first boot device while the GUI phase runs. If repairs feel risky, restoring the factory image with your Vista recovery disc is the safest fallback.

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Member Avatar for JorgeM

What I would recommend is for you to install a host operating system of your choice. For me, it wouldnt be Vista. You could go with Windows XP, but it will be out of support in 2013. In any case, one host operating system.

If you want to run additional operating systems on the same machine, rather than setting up complex multi-boot configurations, just install a virtualization application such as VMWare, Virtual Box, or even Virtual PC. All three are free.

What this gives you is that you can run as many virtual guest operating systems as your computer's resources can handle.

For example, if you set up the host computer to run Windows 7 x64 with say 8 GB of ram, you can easily get half or dozen or more decent running guest operating systems, all running at the same time, on the same network, or different virtual networks.

Member Avatar for Adam-Up

Thanks for the reply but it doesn't help me to get windows to boot? i'v tried using recovery console with the xp install disc but doesn't work. Because it says invalid boot.ini file booting from c/windows/ which is the partition with vista on, do i need to use a vista recovery cd to use recovery console?

Member Avatar for JorgeM

So the action you take next depends on what you are trying to accomplish. If you don't have any important data, I'd take either the installation media for the OS of your choice, boot from it and start a fresh clean install.

If you need to recover Vista, you'd have to boot from Vista and perform a windows repair. For a guaranteed working system in the least amount of time go with a fresh install.

Otherwise, the recovery options may or may not work. I couldn't tell you for sure without having access to the system for troubleshooting.

Edited by JorgeM
Member Avatar for Adam-Up

Thanks for the help, well I've had to buy a vista recovery disc, never made one from the recovery drive, my own fault. I tried installing a fresh copy of xp and formatting but after a restart it doesn't continue the install I get the black screen and the "invalid boot.ini file booting from c/windows/"
Well the c: drive is the main partition with vista installed. So I take it that it's vista that needs repairing? So I've bought the vista recovery cd to try and I'm hoping that I can fix it that way?

Edited by Adam-Up
Member Avatar for JorgeM

My suggestion is that if the data is not important, don't bother with a recovery. If you have a Windows XP cd, just install a fresh clean copy of that OS until you acquire a newer OS. During the installation of XP in phase 1 (blue screen text pages), you will have the ability to delete the existing partitions and format the drive.

If your cd is good, the setup should complete without error. If you proceed with an XP install I do not recommend that you try a repair.

If you obtain a Vista install disk, the process is similar.

Member Avatar for Adam-Up

Well the laptop originally came with vista pre installed so I need a recovery disc to re install don't I?.
I don't want xp as a main operating system as I can't find the drivers for it for my laptop, so I think I'm gonna give up on the xp idea to be honest.

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