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How-To Geek Forums / Windows Vista

My horibble booting problem

(14 posts)
  • Started 5 years ago by crazlunatic
  • Latest reply from Zig
  • Topic Viewed 1937 times

crazlunatic
Posts: 21

Hello. Do you know how to clear ALL contents of a hard drive? The thing is my MBR is messed up really bad. I deleted all my partitions but when I go to install XP and Vista, it shows that I have 5 installations of XP and 2 installations of Vista.

This is driving me insane and all this happened because I deleted Ubuntu, forgetting about the GRUB Bootloader =(

I'm sure the GRUB bootloader is gone since I installed Vista, but the fact that 5 XPs are showing up, and none of them take me to the XP I installed is giving me a headache.

I think the best thing to do would probably be to erase my hard drive and start fresh, but I'm not sure. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Posted 5 years ago #
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thegeek
The Geek
Posts: 2059

For XP, you should take a look at your boot.ini file in the root of that drive, which will contain all the entries for XP.

Otherwise, you might want to try out EasyBCD from neosmart, which will let you edit your vista loader... maybe it's just pointing to the wrong drive for XP.

Posted 5 years ago #
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thegeek
The Geek
Posts: 2059

Another thought... do you have a single partition? You can't install XP and Vista in the same partition.

Posted 5 years ago #
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crazlunatic
Posts: 21

Oh no I got 2 partitions. XP is on a primary and Vista is on a logical. This has worked for me previously. The thing is when I install Vista, it will make Vista my C Drive, so my drive letters will screw up. The odd thing is I download VistaBootPro to make that correction, but when I run my XP discovery disk, it says there is NO XP on Drive E. I am certain my XP is on E Drive because all my other partitions are empty for the time being

Posted 5 years ago #
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lesi2
Posts: 16

What's happening there is that XP isn't seeing the XP partition as drive E, more likely as C or D. My dual-boot setup is weird, both XP and Vista think their partition is drive C and the other is drive D... so every time I boot into a different one it changes.

Posted 5 years ago #
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crazlunatic
Posts: 21

What do you suggest I do in my situation? I've been reinstalling OSes for almost 3 days now and I've just had enough.

Posted 5 years ago #
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thegeek
The Geek
Posts: 2059

If you want to get to a pristine setting, here's what you should do:

  • Format your XP partition from Vista.(or you could do it during the XP install process)
  • If you still have grub bootloader, boot off the XP cd into the recovery center area, and then run the fixmbr command line utility to make sure that grub is gone (if it's not gone) Here's a guide on other methods.
  • Install XP first. Delete all partitions on the drive, and then make a new partition for XP. Remember that you should always install the oldest OS first when dual-booting, and always install linux last if you are using that
  • Install Vista into it's own new partition.
  • If you have problems with XP killing your restore points, follow this thread.

That should get you rolling with a pristine environment.

Posted 5 years ago #
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crazlunatic
Posts: 21

I have done exactly what you have said before. But I have 5 Windows XPs to choose from (none of them work) and 2 Windows Vistas. Should I delete all my partitions again?

Perhaps GRUB is not completely gone? Although it does not come up at all.

Posted 5 years ago #
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thegeek
The Geek
Posts: 2059

I think that your computer has a boot.ini in the root partition of one or both drives that has the wrong data in it, which is causing most of the problems.

Posted 5 years ago #
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crazlunatic
Posts: 21

Sorry geek (haha it's so weird calling you that), but I'm not sure I understand. I'm going to unplug my IDE so nothing fishy happens but I mainly just use a 320 GB.

These are the partitions in order:

E (Windows XP primary partition)
Extended partition with 4 logicals (C - Vista, F - Storage, G- Storage, H - Fat 32 Storage)

I suppose if I repeat the steps you wrote about earlier, the problems wont persist? I'm just afraid the same will happen which was why I originally wanted to complete erase everything from my hard drive

Posted 5 years ago #
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crazlunatic
Posts: 21

hmmm something very strange is that I put no password my Windows installation, but when I go to recovery console and it asks me for one, I put nothing, and it says wrong password...

Posted 5 years ago #
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crazlunatic
Posts: 21

geez not only am I horrible at getting things right, I'm also horrible at reading -.- Your tutorial clearly states how to skip the administrative password prompt =(

Posted 5 years ago #
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thedudester
Posts: 34

If you have 4 logical partitions, maybe you have remnants of old installs on the other drives too... that might cause part of the problem. Check for the boot.ini on the other partitions as well.

Posted 5 years ago #
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Zig
Zig
Posts: 140

Man I would say you should back up any important info and do a format from DOS and then do clean install following The Geeks directions.

Posted 5 years ago #
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