I have been reading with great interest the material on double-booting XP to a Vista system since I have a new copy of XP media center with both service pacs and a "hot rodded" Vista computer. I also have 2 new hard drives,one 160gbt and a 320gbt, to use. I would like to use the 160gbt drive for the XP system partially because it is a PATA interface simplifying procedures as the Vista drive is SATA and I'm certain I'll need the larger one on Vista much sooner. Now my problem seems to be the initial boot changes since nothing I have read really covers the way my boot setup "looks" right now. I cannot seem to do much with it. The BIOS is a common AMI and the computer is a Compaq Presario SR5210NX. PLEASE HELP!

Dual boot with the GAG boot manager. I have not got the link handy so Google for it...

I have a dual boot with XP and Vista. Whenever I restart my computer my comp comes back with a black screen and cursor only. If I shut it down all the way then it will come back with the black screen, with XP as an option and Vista as an option. I hate having to shut my comp down completely just to get it to restart it.

Please help!

Sounds like you have something hanging in memory. Does this happen restarting from either OS, or both OS?
Run a virus scan.

The other possibility is your BIOS settings are not correct. e.g. -Boot order incorrect or boot type not enabled.
Also I had an issue like this once, turned out to be a slow hard drive that was not ready when the board was. I cloned it to another drive and worked fine.

Lady D,

You didn't mention what type of computer it is that you have.

Also, you mention having to restart (as the same as re-boot) If you are using hibernating as an option....this could also be a major issue...the hybernate proccess (especially in XP) just doesn't work as it should and has always caused issues....

The computer locking up as you describe sounds more hardware than software problem....As squirelandmoose said. Make sure all your drivers are upto date.

You might install this application from Microsoft. "UPH Clean" forces memory to release itself if you do have a memory issue. It needs to be installed on both operating systems. It should be installed in Vista already...check the add/remove program!

I'm sorry; I am not the most computer literate person.


Let's see if I can clear things up. I have an HP Compaq desktop.

My boot order is:

IDE CD, Diskette, USB devices, Hard Drives...integrated Sata (Vista)...integrated IDE (XP).

Whenever I restart my computer (go to start and click turn off computer, then click restart) my comp comes back with a black screen and cursor only.

If I shut it down all the way (go to start and click turn off computer, then click turn off) then it will come back with the black screen, with XP as an option and Vista as an option.

This wasn’t always an issue. XP is on the 80gb ide and Vista is on the 320gb Sata. This wasn’t always a problem. Originally I had the beta version of Vista Ultimate on the 320gb. But when Microsoft rolled out the “final” version I installed it. That is when I started having this problem. I did a clean install (wiped the entire 320gb drive clean). I updated my drivers, but I will try again.

I ran the UPH clean on the XP side and it installed fine but the Vista side had an error
"There was a problem with this windows installer package. A program run as part of the setup did not finish as expected. Contact your support personnel or package vendor."

The UPHclean ...did you check vista add/remove application to see if it was previously installed? I believe that it is encluced with vista installation. That may be why it had a problem.

Let's get on the same track....what operating system are you in when you reboot your computer and it hangs.....vista or xp? Does it happen from both operating systems or just one particular one?

That was the problem with Vista. It has the problem when I reboot from either operating systems.

Need you to check the event viewer logs for both operating systems for any error reports that might show up.

control panel > adminastration tools > event viewer....when the window opens there will be 3 logs in the left pane. Click on them one at a time and see if there are any errors reported from the logs. Scroll down the page...

if an error is seen then highlight the error and dbl clk to bring up a more detailed explanation.

I am thinking that you might also have a harddrive problem as squirelandmoose suggested.

Also, did you happen to download any updates or fixes right before this happened.
************************************************** *****

I checked the event viewer and found errors throughout. When I opened some of the errors I didn't understand what I was looking at. Most of the errors was related to IE7

How can it be my hard drive when the OS's are on separate harddrives and this didn't start until I did a fresh install of Vista since I was going from Vista Beta to the released version? I didn't download anything. Right after I did the fresh install it rebooted and I noticed the problem. I guess I will try to reinstall this weekend. Sorry to bother anyone. I just find this aggravating because it makes no sense. I may have done something wrong, I haven't a clue. But everything was straight forward.