Dual OS Help

[Riddler6777]

Hi Guys/Girls

A little help with a problem i have would be greatly appreciated, I am currently running dual OS with XP Pro and Vista 32bit and it was working fine up untill about a week ago & for the life of me it wont let me choose to boot up XP anymore.

Im not sure if i have changed a setting in Bios or perhaps msconfig ? when i start the computer it says would you like to run current version of windows or would you like to run an earlier version of windows but it wont let me highlight the earlier version.

I have reformatted the partition with vista on it but i cant reformat the partition with xp because it wont let me boot from cd even when i change it in bios to primary boot cdrom. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Captante]

First, the bad news is that you have made the problem worse by formatting the drive with Vista on it ... next time come here & ask for help first before taking such a drastic step, because you almost certainly could have repaired your XP install using Vista Boot Pro to restore the bootloader ... be sure to install it on both OS's when you eventually get back up & running so this doesn't happen again.

Even if you can't format the existing partitions on your drives, you should still be able to boot the PC using your XP disk & then delete & create a new partition to install XP ... if for some reason this still won't work, you may have to use a 3rd-party utility like Partition Magic to wipe the drives clean before you can re-install, or you could just use the program I linked below (or somthing similar) to erase the drive & then create additional partitions after XP is up & running again.


Heres a very good program to wipe your drives ... it creates a bootable CD which loads its own OS & is very easy to use, plus it will detect & erase most external media as well, but costs $40:

Wipe-Drive

 

[Riddler6777]

Hey Captante,

i Installed Vista Boot Pro and got lucky it worked and allowed me to get back into XP, wish i had of known about this program before i formatted vista (oh well) hehe thanks for the help much appreciated cheers

 

[Captante]

Great ... glad to hear it!