Booting up Vista... ???

[Amante18]

Ok so i upgraded to vista and everytime i reboot my system a black screen pops up and it prompts to manually select

1. Boot up Vista
2. Boot up earlier version of windows...
a few other options.. safe mode.. etc..

anyways... IF i wanted to boot up an earlier version of windows... XP perhaps... since that was runnin on my pc b4 i upgraded...

would I be prompted to select the os the next time i booted up if i wanted to go back to Vista at a later date?
As it stand right now.. Vista obviously has some issues with certain hardware.. etc.. so id like to use XP in the time being..

But im scared i wont get that OS select screen if i go back to an earlier version of windows...

Any help or advice would be great....

 

[PC Hobbyist]

When you say you "upgraded", do mean you replaced XP with Vista? Or did you install a retail or OEM version of Vista all on it's own in a different partition than XP.

Anyway, that screen that you are seeing is part of the boot process after installing Vista (if there is still another operating system installed that you could also boot to).

So, all that to say that you WILL have the option to choose every time no matter what OS you last used.

Also, I assume that right now, if you don't press anything on the keyboard, it will automatically boot Vista after so many seconds. If you use XP more than Vista, you can set it up so that when that screen comes up, it will automatically select the "boot to the earlier version of windows" option and after - oh, say 2 seconds or whatever you choose it will go ahead and boot to that.

 

[ghost]

Might be worth seeing is Vista has a Boot.ini file just like XP, if so you should be able to config it in there.

 

[Rambo]

Might be worth seeing is Vista has a Boot.ini file just like XP, if so you should be able to config it in there.

No, Vista doesn't use a Boot.ini anymore. It uses a file called BCDEDIT.exe.

But yeah, Amante18, I have installed Vista alongside XP, and the option to choose which OS to boot will come up every time.

 

[Amante18]

by uprgraded i mean used the upgrade vista disc as opposed to the full reatail version...
and it sits on that boot up vista screen until i press enter...

so that means i could boot up xp ?

 

[el_diablo]

well, i had the vista beta, and after i formatted, then deleted the partition it was on, it still gave me that screen and whether or not to boot vista or xp, i think theres like one file in there that gets stuck somewhere in your boot info that registers it as being still there.

if you try to boot xp though i'm almost positive it will give you an error message about how it couldn't find "x" and it will tell you the name of the file and where it should be located, most likley something in the windows32 folder or w/e and a .exe that loads up windows.

it won't do anything harmful to your pc or take away that screen, it will just tell you press esc to go back to the OS choosing screen, or restart your computer and it will bring you back to the OS choosing screen.

 

[PC Hobbyist]

if you try to boot xp though i'm almost positive it will give you an error message....

Yup, that is my guess too, since you actually upgraded xp to Vista. Some glitch left a boot.ini info for xp hanging around.

it won't do anything harmful to your pc or take away that screen, it will just tell you press esc to go back to the OS choosing screen, or restart your computer and it will bring you back to the OS choosing screen.

Yeah, I don't see a problem there either. You should get that screen every time you boot. What you can do is (in Vista) change it so that boot option screen doesn't appear anymore - or appears for only 1 second. I can't tell you off the top of my head how to do that exactly. I'll have to boot up to Vista and take a glance at it, so I will post tomorrow any new info I have. Or someone else here can post sooner and tell you the best way to correct the problem (rather than my approach to alleviate the symptom).