Hi, I have one hard drive that has WinXp32 and another with WinXp64.
I can go into bios under the BOOT tab, then under Hard Disk Drives and select which hard drive I want to boot up first. Works fine with these two drives, never had a problem.
I just installed Vista32 on a seperate drive and it overrides this bios setting. WHY ?
I make it the second one on the list so I can boot up the WinXp64 and the Vista drive takes over and boots up.
I do not feel I should have to buy a "Vista Ready Motherboard".
I have not gotten my monies worth out of this one yet !
I do not feel like removing covers and unplugging drives all the time.
Any help would be great, thanks !

A8N-SLI Premium bios 1302

If you have three separate SATA drives with three separate installs, there will be no override, BIOS governs the boot order of physical drives. Your specs list only one hard drive. If you install on one physical drive in three logical partitions, you're at the mercy of what Microsoft thinks is the best option.

Ok, I did not update my specs yet until I get this problem figured out.
I have three seperate SATA hard drives with three separate installs.
In BIOS I select WinXP64 drive to boot first and Vista drive second.
Vista drive overrides BIOS setting and it boots first when WinXp64 drive is selected to boot first.
So Vista is ignoring Bios boot setting order, but how and why?

Key question for you. Were your other two hard drives in the system when you installed Vista? If so, Vista has probably updated their master boot records. When I said three separate installs, I meant just that. Install OS1, unplug the drive, install OS2, unplug the drive, install Vista. Plug all three back in and use BIOS to determine the boot order. That should allow you to select the OS in Bios. If you install when another OS drive is on the system, you will end up with either an "upgrade" or a dual boot system where the choice is determined between the POST and the Windows screen.

The other two drives where in when I first loaded Vista on the third, new drive.
I went to reboot and got a blank screen nothing.
Guess it was because it was Driver Letter E: when loading OS ? dunno ?

So I reformated the new drive again and it was the only drive plugged in and reloaded Vista.

So now I have a Windows Boot Manager pop up for 2 seconds to choose a OS after POST.
So this gives your dual boot idea a run for its money but why would this pop up now after I reformatted the new drive and loaded Vista as the only drive plugged in ?
Reformating should have cleaned everything out, right ? But it did not....why ?

The only way I can get the WinXp64 to boot first now is to select it in Vista by using directions below.
1. View System Information from the Computer window
2. From the System Properties window select the Advanced tab
3. Push the Settings button under Startup and Recovery
4. Select the default OS from the Default operating system dropdown box.

Ok, so after doing that list above I was able to boot into WinXp64.

After that I tried to use BIOS to set Vista to boot first and it worked and WinXp64 no longer shows up in the Vista OS drop down box and vise versa.

The BIOS boot order works now with no problems.

So something got screwy and is fixed, YAY !

Thanks, Arlie !

Ok, so here's my 2 penneths ...

The BIOS boot order is exactly that. It informs the BIOS which drive to search for first, working in pretty much the same way to the boot order for FDD and ODD's. This generally has no bearing on which OS will be loaded, which is evident when setting an FDD/ODD above the HDD's in the boot order list.

As for why it loaded to a black screen on initial windows load, I'm unsure, but you're possibly right about the drive being allocated E:.

As you reloaded with no other drives installed, the boot.ini (which governs the boot order as far as the OS is concerned, and is also updated when you go into startup and recovery to select your OS/timeout) would have been configured for just Vista. Your XP HDD's would have been configured in a similiar manner, or in the way for a dual boot, with both locations of XP in the respective boot.ini's. Therefore, as you installed Vista with no other drives installed, the respective boot.ini's would have been reconfigured.

I have to admit, I'm slightly confused. Before you were getting the option to select XP from the startup and recovery OS selection box, and now you don't? If that's the case, I'd imagine you won't get the OS selection menu at boot either, meaning you're effectively back to square one having to change the BIOS boot order if you ever want to load XP? The aim of the boot.ini is to remove this step, and save you having to do that.

When you went into startup & recovery in Vista, it should have updated the boot.ini for Vista with the paths for XP (as it couldn't do this at install due to the drive not being installed), which would then give you the OS selection screen for the period you indicated. If you don't have this, and more attempts to add the location for XP don't work, you may have to add the lines manually to the boot.ini for XP to show in the OS selection menu at boot ..?

If you ever do decide to edit the boot.ini manually, please be aware that any changes (manually edited or otherwise) to your boot.ini may result in you being unable to boot your OS. Before making any changes, make a safe backup .

Ok, so, with that in mind, here's some further reading;

How to edit the Boot.ini file in Windows XP [support.microsoft.com]
The purpose of the Boot.ini file in Windows XP [support.microsoft.com]
BOOT.INI file for Win2000/XP/2003 [geocities.com/thestarman3]
Boot.ini - Controlling the Boot Process in Windows NT [dewassoc.com]
Additional information and help with the boot.ini [computerhope.com]

Arlie, I always thought boot.ini's had to match on both HDD's for the OS selection menu to recognise which OS to boot from/to?

I've never actually attempted a dual boot without the other HDD installed when loading the other OS, but I'm not aware of individual boot.ini's being loaded at boot and combined to create the OS selection menu.

Because the master boot record on the Vista drive points to the Vista Boot loader.
Before you installed Vista the MBR on what ever drive you set as the boot drive pointed to it's boot loader. Vista uses a separate, different boot loader than that used by previous Windows installs.
Besides that you have royally screwed up the boot configuration. Didn't the drive letters of the two drives change depending on which you booted?

My 2 cents worth (or maybe 8 cents!):

When you install an OS it writes it's master boot record on the first drive the BIOS sees. This MBR points to what ever boot loader the OS installed. This is the only way it can work. During post the BIOS looks at the drive set as the Boot drive for the MBR. It reads the MBR on that drive to find the OS (or at least the OS's boot loader). It can't work any other way.

The BIOS boot order, MBR, and boot loader all have to agree for everything to work properly. What is happening to you (confusion) is all logical if you keep the above in mind.

For multi booting there are two choices. Do it Microsoft's way or just plug in one drive at a time.

Microsoft's way:
Put all the drives in. Load the three OS's. Then the BIOS will boot from the MBR on the drive set as the Boot drive in the BIOS and use the boot loader on that drive. Note: You can't change the boot drive after the first install or it screws up everything.
The problem with this method is that, if that first drive (with the MBR and the boot loader on it), gets fubarred, then all the OS's are fubarred because the MBR the BIOS points to is not available and the boot loader screen ( to allow choosing another OS) will never appear.

The other way:
Install one drive. install an OS. Remove that drive.
Install another drive. install an OS. Remove that drive.
Install another drive. install an OS. Remove that drive.
Install the drive with the OS you want to use and then boot that drive.
The BIOS will point to the only drive present, use it's MBR to find the boot loader and boot the OS that that boot loader points to.
The problem with this method is that, when all the drives are installed, which will be the root drive (C:\)? The BIOS will always name the first drive it sees (in the BIOS boot order) as the root drive, and rename the others as D:\ and E:\ (or whatever is left over after naming the optical drives)....confusion!

Vista did add stuff to the WinXp64 boot.ini so maybe that is what was causing it ?

Correct, I do not get the boot menu anymore.

Actually, Billb, I might be willing to give you 50 cents for that response.

Com'on...That was worth $150.00 to my pay pal account!

All pre Vista Windows OS's modified the existing boot loader when installed. Vista, on the other hand, installs it's own new, separate boot loader (on the boot drive).

Kinda like this with Vista multi-booting:

The traditional Windows NT boot loader, Ntldr, is replaced by Windows Boot Manager (Bootmgr.exe) and a set of system-specific boot loaders. In the new configuration, Windows Boot Manager is generic and unaware of the specific requirements for each operating system, and each system-specific boot loader is optimized for the system that it loads.

So, Vista installs it's own boot loader, then modifies any existing boot loaders as it sees fit.

Yet another genius idea from the brains of Redwood ...

Billb, your post sure was educational. I know Vista has changed a lot of things, but I wasn't aware M$ had changed the boot loader. I assumed Vista was still using a form of ntldr.

Makes me wonder. Had M$ not shelved WinFS along with all the bits and pieces not finished for Vista, what else would have been changed/was planned to suit Vista for it's own purpose as a single entity?

The new Vista boot loader is a vast improvement over the previous.
See: http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/f...6565f5b/BCD.doc

With Vista you get a stable, secure OS with many nice features, unfortunately with Vista you only get a stable, secure OS with many nice features.

For 98% of all users Vista is the grea-*test*-('") thing since sliced bread. For the other 2%, it's a nightmare of too much security, options you can't change, and features you can't disable...without alotta digging. But then the same could be said about the change from DOS to 95, 95 to 98, 98 to XP....