Dual Boot problem, Windows or MOBO?

[therschbach]

First of all, I had an HDD issue that is discussed in this thread.... http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx..._id=1&model=P5Q+Deluxe&page=1&SLanguage=en-us .... which may or may not be related to my problem. The issue was resolved however and all drives are now recognized in CMOS.

I have a PATA drive and a SATA drive. On my old mobo (also an ASUS) I had XP installed on the PATA and later installed Vista 64 on the SATA and everything worked fine. When I booted, it automatically asked me which version I wanted to boot without having to do anything extra.

I replaced my mobo with a P5Q Deluxe last week and installed Vista (fresh format) on the SATA. It worked flawlessly...that is until I installed XP on the PATA a few days later (also a fresh format). After resolving the issue in the above thread of the mobo not seeing the PATA HD (apparently it's picky about the HD being the master and the DVD drive being the slave), I installed XP which boots fine. However, now I cannot get Vista to boot. When I set the SATA as the primary HD in CMOS, it will ask if I want to boot from CD and when I don't respond, it says "Failed to load operating system" or something to that effect. A reboot is required.

I've tried repairing the Vista install with the Vista disc which it does successfully...the details in the repair show that the boot loader was repaired. But still, if I set to boot from the SATA, it fails to load. If I set to boot from PATA, XP loads fine.

There's another thing that may be related....the CMOS will only let me select one or the other harddrives in boot priority, not both. There is another selection below drive priorty that allows me to select the order of my harddrives. Both drives are shown and this is where I choose which drive I want it to boot from. But I would think that if the first drive fails to load, that it would load from the second one?

Also, I've verified that the SATA drive still works as I can transfer files into XP.

Is this a problem with the bootloader (which I've repaired several times), or is this a mobo/HD issue, or something that I'm overlooking.

Thanks in advance!

 

[notherdude]

Not sure exactly why Vista won't boot without the DVD.

But, Have you tried the 'pop up boot menu'? I think it should be the f8 key on an Asus board. You press it right after powering on and it will let you select which of any HD installed to boot from.

The proper way to get a conventional dual boot is to install XP first and then Vista - that's what I would try now if you have not installed too many apps.

On my Asus p5b board you cannot set the bios to try to boot first from one HD and then from another. you must set the drive you want to boot from as the 'first drive' in the drive order and if that fails it will try the CD or the floppy but not another HD. The way around this is the 'pop up boot menu' when I press f8 the system throws up a menu showing all of my drives and I can choose which to boot - I suggest you try that because it makes the best dual boot loader anyway.

 

[Scotteq]

Vista and XP use different boot loaders. When you installed XP after, what happened is XP over~wrote Vista's boot manager. This is the source of the trouble - Vista understands how to boot XP, but XP's boot manager does not understand how to boot Vista.

To fix it: http://www.msfn.org/board/lofiversion/index.php/t100672.html

 

[therschbach]

Ah man, it didn't sound like it was fixable. Oh well, I went ahead and reinstalled Vista and everything is working fine now. Thank guys.

 

[oleT]

Helle notherdude

Need to set up a p5qdeluxe with both Vista 64 bit and XP 32 bit and I have read about all the trouble people writes they have trying to do this.
I have read your answer quoted below and find it to be the simplest way to solve the issue.

“I press f8 the system throws up a menu showing all of my drives and I can choose which to boot - I suggest you try that because it makes the best dual boot loader anyway”

I have a question you might be able to answer: Is it possible to get this function to pop up every time I boot my pc, so I don’t have to press F8?

If you will answer my question then please send it by email also.

Regards

thingsted@email.dk

Not sure exactly why Vista won't boot without the DVD.

But, Have you tried the 'pop up boot menu'? I think it should be the f8 key on an Asus board. You press it right after powering on and it will let you select which of any HD installed to boot from.

The proper way to get a conventional dual boot is to install XP first and then Vista - that's what I would try now if you have not installed too many apps.

On my Asus p5b board you cannot set the bios to try to boot first from one HD and then from another. you must set the drive you want to boot from as the 'first drive' in the drive order and if that fails it will try the CD or the floppy but not another HD. The way around this is the 'pop up boot menu' when I press f8 the system throws up a menu showing all of my drives and I can choose which to boot - I suggest you try that because it makes the best dual boot loader anyway.