So I had Vista 64 bit up and running for a few weeks. Today I thought it would be cool to dual boot with XP. I put in my xp disc and was going to make a new partition. For some reason, I wasn't able to make a new partition. Then I tried to boot back into Vista. I got a "error loading operating system" message. I did some searching and found that the problem is xp wrote over the vista boot record. The only solution I have found is to reinstall Vista, which I really don't want to do. Is there another solution other than reinstalling Vista?

Have you tried booting into recovery mode from the vista
DVD and choosing the option to fix the start up process,
Startup Repair.

Startup Repair could not detect a problem

How about chkdisk? Can you run it from the VISTA DVD?

I know how to repair/reinstall the Boot manager files on XP, but I have never had to on VISTA. Maybe someone has more experience. You might post a thread in VISTA Operating Systems.

ok, I didn't see that there was a separate section for vista. I'll post there. Thanks for the help though.

You can try this with the Windows XP disk. It will most definately repair XP boot manager, not sure about VISTA.

1) Configure your computer to boot from the CD drive.
2) Insert your XP CD and boot from it.
3) You'll see some files being copied, then you'll be presented with a choice of installing or
repairing an existing installation. Choose Repair.
4) You'll be asked which XP installation you want to log into. Enter 1. There is usually only
one installation.
5) You'll be prompted for the Administrator password. For Home, the default password is blank, so just hit Enter. For Pro, enter the same password you did during setup for the Administrator account (this is not the same as the password for an Admin level account. It must be the Administrator account password).
6) At the C:\Windows prompt, type FIXBOOT. You'll be prompted to confirm. Do so.
7) When FIXBOOT is finished, remove the XP CD and type EXIT and the machine will reboot.
Reconfigure your computer to boot from the hard drive if necessary.