vista boot problem!

hi,
i have recently had to do a clean install on XP and can no longer get onto vista. normally i get the option of both OS's, but now it just loads XP. XP is on my 200GB primary HD and Vista is on my 120GB slave HD. the bios seems to only let me put 1 HD as a boot device but this has always been the case with no problems. even when i put the 120GB HD as the boot device it just tells me that there is nothing to boot and to re-start. the only other thing that has changed is that the XP i have installed is the original with no updates. ie. no SP2.

Apparently, the boot.ini files "was" on the drive with XP and now it's not. (this is a real common problem with dual booting) Plus I think Vista has a new boot loader.....Not sure where to go from here but am sure someone will...

well if no one else knows then i have a possible get out clause. i have the Vista installation CD and a spare partition. if i installed it again on the spare partition will it boot up normally as my primary OS without XP? as i will have to remove XP to put Vista on it's partition.

If you install it agin everything will go back to normal, and you'll get your dual-boot back. This sort of thing happens all the time when you reinstall an older version of Windows. I very much hope that when Vista goes gold it will have a better bootloader arrangement than they've had so far since NT was introduced.

I'm planning on installing Build 5342 64-bit this weekend if I can get it downloaded in time (10 hours to go as I type this). Then I'll have a triple-boot MCE2005, XP Pro and Vista setup :)

I downloaded 5342 the other night. Came down at a whopping 190kb instead of the usual 25...It was done when I woke up which was unusual...

well it's my turn to make you jealous then. i can get the new build in about 30min :) . as i just have to copy it off the uni servers rather than dl it. only problem is i won't be back there for a few weeks.
And regarding MCE you have there Super can you get it as an add-on? Because on the same uni servers I get Vista off there is a 200-300mb MCE file. I’m not sure if I can install it to my current XP as an update or if the file might just be a very large patch for MCE? Any guesses?

Well the MCE files are a superset of XP Pro, and 200-300 MB extra sounds about right (MCE comes on 2 CDs as oppsosed to XP Pro's one). But I've never heard of the MCE files being available separately like that, so I'm a bit baffled. On the MSDN subscription site MCE is supplied as the 2 CD set anyway.

See if there is any info that comes with the files.

ok i shall investigate further. the only thing i could have thought it would be is a kind off 'SP2' style patch for MCE. and if it's on MSDN anyway i will see if i can get it off there. also i know you have the same TV card as me. so does it work with media centre fine? and can you use the in built program planner?