TriBooting? XP, XP, and Vista?

[FlapJack]

Heyyo,


Okay, I used to have my computer double booted between just XP and Vista. Things were great I could select one at startup. When I formatted my computer, I made three partitions, one for Vista, one for XP, and one for another copy of XP. Now, I wanted a second copy of XP to play around with hacking programs in, I'm trying to learn...so I figured why screw up my main build with weird programs if I can have a separate load. So, now that I've installed my second load of XP, only XP and XP show up in the boot selector. So how do I get Vista booting capability back?


P.S.
I originally used Vista Boot Pro for this.

 

[Mike9182]

Boot off of your Vista Install CD, and then choose to repair installation or something like that. Then choose to repair start-up.

 

[EricB]

always install xp first. you always install the oldest windows system first

 

[FlapJack]

I did... I installed XP, Vista, then XP. Should I have installed, XP, XP, then Vista?



Thanks

 

[CntdwnToExtn]

yes
it keeps on re-writing the MBR
i don't think windows has the option yet of simply adding the o/s to the boot record like linux does

 

[ssjheero_yuy99]

Well, I know you can fiddle around with the boot.ini file to get it to see the windows.

I had my drive letters all messed up when I was restoring my computer, (my default windows is D, even though I has a C drive), and it was causing all sorts of problems until I got my windows back into D.

Anyway, once I had the letters back in order, it wouldn't boot. (my fun of unplugging hard drives and repluging them back in), but I was able to fix it just by modifying the boot.ini file to point to the hard drive I wanted it to. Also, this is where you can point to multiple windows to load from. (I have limited knowledge in this area, (mostly just fixing my rig), so make sure you backup things before modifying boot.ini file. If you can't back up whole drive, back up at least the boot.ini file, so that you can put it back if you screw up things. (I use a live linux cd to move around the boot.ini file, (but kinda had to since I couldn't boot)). If you have multiple partitions, you should be able to just boot into one and modify from there.

But know this was for only two windows....

 

[mssssee2]

I think the installation order does not matter.