I Have 2 Sata HD's with 160GB Each and the following partitions:
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HD1 Drive C:\ --- Windows XP Professional with SP2 (Primary, Active)
HD1 Drive D:\ --- Projects (Logical)
HD1 Drive E:\ --- Games (Logical)
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HD2 Drive F:\ --- Wharehowse (Primary)
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1.1. Using Powerquest Partition Magic 8.0 i have reduced the HD1 First Partition (Drive C:\) and created a new partition after c:\
1.2. The new Partition assumed the drive letter I:\
1.3. I've installed Windows Vista Enterprise (Build 6000) from within windows XP, and installed it to the new partition I:\

1.4. I've Tested the new Windows Vista installation in drive I:\ - Working Fine !
1.5. I restarted the system and went back to XP, by choosig this option on the new vista boot screen options

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2. I'm back in Windows XP (c:\) and at the moment everything is OK!
but now starts where i ruined thing up:
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2.1. In Windows XP i Runned Powerquest Partition Magic and looked at my new Partitioning Table:
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HD1 Drive C:\ --- Windows XP Professional with SP2 (Primary, Active)
HD1 Drive I:\ --- Windows Vista Enterprise (Primary)
HD1 Drive D:\ --- Projects (Logical)
HD1 Drive E:\ --- Games (Logical)
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HD2 Drive F:\ --- Wharehowse (Primary)

2.2. I Changed The Drive Letter of Drive I:\ to Drive V:\ and i've set This drive Hidden
(With other dual boot experiences i had it used to hide one of the OS partitions when i loaded the other one so i thought (wrong) that i could do the same here)

2.3. I Restarted The System and guess what, No more Vista boot screen options and couldn't load any of the OS's.

2.4. I Inserted the Windows Vista DVD and restarted the system choosing to boot from the DVD Drive

2.5. I Selected to Repair my Vista Installation and it repaired it, now i have this Partitioning Table:
So Now I have this Partitioning Table:
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HD1 Drive D:\ --- Windows XP Professional with SP2 (Primary, Active)
HD1 Drive C:\ --- Windows Vista Enterprise (Primary)
HD1 Drive F:\ --- Projects (Logical)
HD1 Drive G:\ --- Games (Logical)
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HD2 Drive E:\ --- Wharehowse (Primary)

So Now i am stuck in windows Vista and i wish to recover my XP Instalation, This is the partitioning i want to have:
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HD1 Drive C:\ --- Windows XP Professional with SP2 (Primary, Active)
HD1 Drive I:\ --- Windows Vista Enterprise (Primary)
HD1 Drive D:\ --- Projects (Logical)
HD1 Drive E:\ --- Games (Logical)
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HD2 Drive F:\ --- Wharehowse (Primary)
Any help?

Hi klandestino,

Welcome to PCHF!

Phew what a mess! The problems with changing the partitions of your Windows installations is that all your configuration and registry settings need to be on the drive letters they were installed on. I've seen many drive remapping software, but have not seen anything that is 100% effective, even after later performing a repair. Your best to assign your drive letters and then do a clean install on each. Your projects and games can be dealt with later.

Your drive mappings should be consective

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| C: Windows XP..............| D: Projects............ | E: Games........... | I: Vista.............. |
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Your primary/active drive should be where your initial installation of Windows XP should take place. The first partition is where you will boot to, even when you select the option to boot in Vista, your boot options are stored in c:\boot.ini.

Does this help?

Got News!

Don't know exatly how but today i've made it to go back to xp by choosing it and loading it, it chashed on load and then i choosed to boot from cd on my bios.... and repaired the xp instalation, so now i'm sitting in front of windows xp but cannot access vista, the multi boot option screen is gone.

Now when i go to Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Storage -> Disk Management .. i see all partitions the way i want them to be :
(i've changed vista partition drive letter to X)

HD1 Partition 1 --- WinXP (C:\)
HD1 Partition 2 --- Vista (X:\)
HD1 Partition 3 --- Projects (D:\)
HD1 Partition 4 --- Games (E:\)
HD2 Partition 2 --- Wharehouse (F:\)

I Have windows vista installed on X:\ and it is perfect but it was installed with a different drive letter.
This system has no reference to other partitions, its programs and documents are all together on same volume.

How can i make vista assume the new drive letter and replace the windows vista OS selection boot screen?

The settings and registry keys will have the drive as well as the path, Your page file for example will have the path it was orginally setup on i:\pagefile.sys? Installing a clean copy of Vista this time on x:\ would kill two birds with one stone. You should automatically have a new boot menu appear as well as a working Vista.

However, if you copy and paste the contents of your c:\boot.ini file here, I should be able to get you at least booting up to Vista. Partition Magic does come with it's own software to change your settings and registry entries (doen't work that well) and as far as I'm aware, Partition Magic doesn't support Vista at the moment, and also you would need to be running it from within Vista.

I am going to follow your advice and erase the partition, re-create it an clean install... but what if i try a repair to vista installation ??

One more question, is there a way to make my system dual boot with XP and Vista but only show one of the primary partitions on windows explorer, i mean, when i had dual boot with XP and 98SE it was that way.

Thanks again for helping me out!

It won't harm attempting a repair installation, but I'm not sure what effect this will have on Vista. I know with all previous versions of Windows, it tends to get at least things working but it's not thorough and tends to leave a lot of settings and registry entries still pointing to your old drive letter. You may not notice until you run a program you haven't used for ages, and it can't find half the files it needs to run.

As for hiding your partitions from each other, I don't believe this is possible between XP and Vista due to the fact they both use the same file systems. I'll try to explain.

The most common Windows filesystems are FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS.

FAT16 can be used by Windows, XP, Vista and NT.
FAT32 can be used by Windows 95, 98, 2000, ME, NT, XP and Vista.
NTFS can be used by Windows 2000, 2003, XP and Vista.

Windows 98 would have been formatted in FAT32 and your Windows XP would have been formatted in NTFS. As you can see from the list above, Windows 98 doesn't use NTFS, and therefore can't read it.

Windows XP and Vista use all three, and will be able to see and read from each other.

If your purpose of hiding one partition from another is to protect certain files? There are alternatives.