New member who has made a right mess!!

[xx-bernie]

Hi all!!

Apologies in advance if I am seemingly using this forum as a sounding board. Unfortunately, I have a little knowledge and this has proved dangerous and I am hoping you guys may be able to bail me out.

I recently formatted my Novatech computer using the Vista recovery program that is partitioned off the hard drive.

Unfortunately some of my equipment drivers do not have an upgrade for Vista, so in my wisdom I partitioned 20Gb within Windows, put in my XP disc (not a strictly legitimate copy!), then restarted the computer. I then proceeded to load XP on the newly formed D:/ drive.

Only trouble is, the computer only runs XP now...aaargh! XP, quite rightly, won't let me format D:/ drive to get rid of it. I tried to go into 'diskpart' but it only seems to recognise the hard drive in its entirety (no partitions) and I think that includes the Vista recovery section. Within the Disk Management, XP has labelled D:/ drive as the boot drive, C:/ drive as the system drive and the recovery program as an unknown, but healthy, partition.

Is there any way of getting into Vista or getting rid of XP?

If I get this sorted, I may pester your brains to find out how I am meant to do what I was trying to achieve initially!!

Many thanks and best regards,

Bernie

[Conrad]

So you're dual booting, but it boots straight to XP?

Boot from the XP disc, go to the recovery console. Once logged in, type fixmbr - confirm all warnings.

Hopefully, when you start the machine, it'll give you the option of booting into Vista or XP.

[system7]

Conrad, I don't think this is going to be easy to repair.

Easiest option is to phone Nova for the £25 backup disk.

XP won't install a dual-boot loader for Vista. When you dual boot in Windows, you always have to install the older OS first. Happens Windows tramples all over Linux installs too. It's likely the bootloader for the Vista restore hidden partition is permanently lost too.

To recover Vista here, the only option I can think of is to install something like Ubuntu 8.10 or Mandriva 2009 on the XP partition and, hopefully, it will create a dual-boot loader for Ubuntu and Vista, and maybe even XP too if it is the resized partition install. I can't help you a lot if your motherboard and Linux don't get on though. :wink:

[Rappsy]

Ive done it before but I had XP Installed already

Try this though http://www.syschat.com/dual-boot-vista- ... -1946.html (http://www.syschat.com/dual-boot-vista-xp-vista-already-1946.html)

[Conrad]

Failing that there are always aftermarket bootloaders...

[xx-bernie]

Many thanks for the replies so far. :D

Unfortunately with my first day back at work came a whole load of homework so regretfully I won't be able to try out your suggestions immediately. :cry:

Hopefully I shall have a stab this weekend!?!?