Hi,

I had Vista installed on a Raid 0 array with an extra HD for storage. I decided to use this extra storage HD to install XP on so I could set up a dual boot system between two different HD setups, one raid with vista, and one single drive with XP.

I unplugged my raid HDs from the power and sata cables then proceeded to install XP on my single storage HD. After a few attempts due to sata driver issues I finally got a smooth clean install of XP on a single HD. I re-connected my raid drives that had Vista 64 installed on it. I rebooted and got an error message: DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER, which I did of course. Vista loaded and showed my partitioned Raid 0 array but no operating system is shown. It should show Vista 64. So I disabled my Raid option in Bios and XP booted up no problem. So now my question is...how do I get vista to boot back up on my Raid stripe?

sorry to be more clear when I said vista loaded, I meant to say that it booted to install, as in copying files and getting ready to repair, or fresh install etc. However since I posted I have in fact got Vista to load somehow by inserting the system disk after getting a boot file error before this message:

CLIENT MAC ADDR: 00 1F BC 00 09 F6 00000000-0000-0000-0807-060504030201
PXE-E53: No boot filename recieved

PXEM0F: Exiting NVIDIA Boot Agent
DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER

And it worked I put in the Vista disk and my old Vista install came back. But now how do I configure both drives to dual boot so it's not so much of a hassle to switch between Vista and XP?

I'm not aware of any free boot managers that would work in your type of set-up. I think Acronis could do it, but short of something like that, you could just change your boot drives in BIOS when you start your system up.

The question to my main problem is located on the last sentance of the last paragraph. You can skip to it if you are tech savvy and don't need any background info.

For those of you having similar problems dual booting from two seperate SATA HD setups here is what I ended up doing:

First I backed up all my Vista files including device drivers and saved them to DVD-R. Then I created a floppy disk containing my RAID and SATA controller drivers from an .exe program I found on my motherboard driver installation CD (EVGA 750i FTW motherboard). Then I deleted and created new partitions on each HD setup by booting from the Windows Vista system disk. I inserted the Windows XP system disk and rebooted my computer to enter Windows XP installation setup.

Now in case you didn't know, Windows XP (older version) does not recognize SATA drives. I happen to be running three SATA Seagate hard drives (one single and two in RAID 0 array), a SLI setup consisting of two Geforce 8800 GTS cards, as well as a SATA optical DVD-RW drive,and an extra IDE optical DVD-RW drive. I am also using a Windows XP SP2 installation disk from an old Dell computer to perform the XP installation, and a retail version of Windows Vista 64-bit. What this all means is that I will have to install the RAID and SATA controller drivers before the XP installation can occur, otherwise it will simply not recognize there being any hard drives to install on. So I pre-made a floppy disk for the RAID and SATA Controller Drivers that my motherboard driver installation CD had nicely placed for me in a .exe floppy disk setup program just for this purpose (kudos to EVGA) and I was ready to install XP onto my first HD.

Through the F6 feature at the beginning windows xp install (this window of opportunity comes quickly after booting to CD), I used my floppy disk to install RAID and SATA controllers. After windows installed and desktop began loading I crashed to blue screen with an error message pointing to a file named NVGTS.SYS, so I called my motherboard manufacturer (EVGA) and learned it had something to do with nvgts.sys file for the SATA controller. I have two Nividia Geforce 8800 GTS video cards in SLI, so I took one out of my case and then booted back up and I still got the same blue screen with an error associated with nvgts.sys file. So I also unhooked my SATA optical DVD drive from my computer and BOOM, my desktop finally loads up in Windows XP! Good thing decided to buy an extra IDE optical drive when I built this system.

Then I decided to install Windows Vista on my RAID 0 Stripe and it installed flawlessly. I restarted I finally got what I was looking for: "Choose an operating system" I choose "Earlier Version of Windows" and XP booted up just fine. So now my windows XP and Vista is set up to dual boot! However, if I do not have the Windows System Disk placed in the optical drive when I restart my computer, instead of a boot menu, I get this message:

CLIENT MAC ADDR: 00 1F BC 00 09 F6 00000000-0000-0000-0807-060504030201
DHCP....... (it was stuck here for about 7 to 8 minutes looking for DHCP or something)

then once it found the DHCP after 7 or 8 minutes of searching, it modified the message to read this:

CLIENT MAC ADDR: 00 1F BC 00 09 F6 00000000-0000-0000-0807-060504030201
PXE-E53: No boot filename recieved

PXEM0F: Exiting NVIDIA Boot Agent
DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER

I quickly learned that the message above only appears when there IS NO DISK IN THE OPTICAL DRIVE when rebooting. In fact, it doesn't matter which version of Windows installation disk I use, either an XP or Visa disk is absolutely required to enter the windows dual boot menu. So now my question is: How do I load my windows boot menu without having to have my Windows system disk already in my CD drive?

Creflo, this was already covered above -- PXE is a network boot attempt. Remove the network from your boot sequence. Leave CD/DVD as the 1st boot item so you can use bootable CDs or DVDs. Set the hard disk or RAID set with the boot manager as the second 2nd boot item.