How to boot off of other HD partition?

[Stephen]

So, on my desktop XP machine, the operating system decided to curl up and die on me, as when I tried to load it up this morning, it came up with an NT loader not found, press Ctrl alt delete or something like that. Well, I did that, and I still got the same message. After that, I decided to do a little experimenting, and I tried to load Vista on it (seeing as it was compatible, but barely). It loaded. However, Vista on this machine does not work as well as I had intended, so I need to load it off of it. I did leave the recovery partition on the drive when I installed Vista. So, I restarted the computer, and pressed F10 to boot off the other partition. However, it's giving me this garbage:

Edit Boot Options

Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe

Partition: 2
Hard Disk: bce1bce1

[ /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN   ]

ENTER=Submit  ESC=Cancel

I press enter, and that just boots me into the OS partition. So, I'm not exactly sure how to proceed from here. Anybody have any ideas? It will be very much appreciated.

[lfmusiclover]

Is XP still on the machine? If so, you need to boot from the XP CD. Then, it should ask if you want to install XP or repair a current installation with the Recovery Console. Choose install XP, press F8 at the agreement screen, and then it should ask if you want to install a fresh copy of XP, or repair the current installation. This time, repair, This is not the same as the prior repair request, as the RC is not used. You'll go through the same process as with a clean isntall, only it'll take half the time, and instead of starting from scratch, its going to replace the XP files already on your machine. This should take care of your booting problem. Once you get XP up again getting Vista off is relatively simple. I'll save that part for when you do get XP up.

[Stephen]

Is XP still on the machine? If so, you need to boot from the XP CD. Then, it should ask if you want to install XP or repair a current installation with the Recovery Console. Choose install XP, press F8 at the agreement screen, and then it should ask if you want to install a fresh copy of XP, or repair the current installation. This time, repair, This is not the same as the prior repair request, as the RC is not used. You'll go through the same process as with a clean isntall, only it'll take half the time, and instead of starting from scratch, its going to replace the XP files already on your machine. This should take care of your booting problem. Once you get XP up again getting Vista off is relatively simple. I'll save that part for when you do get XP up.

No, XP is NOT on the machine, and I do not have an XP CD.

[lfmusiclover]

I don't know then. It shoulda booted from the recovery partition. I very seldom come in contact with machines set up with a recovery partition, so I'm not sure what to tell ya.

[Stephen]

I wound up sticking with Vista on this machine. Vista doesn't run slow, it actually runs quite good for the age of the machine, it just doesn't run as good as it should (not that I was expecting that). It does not have the capability of running Windows Aero, or Windows Vista Standard (Aero without transparency) for that matter (not surprising), it uses the Windows Vista Basic interface. BTW, it will only run for 30 days, because it can't activate it self because it's running on the same Vista license that my laptop with Vista does. This isn't exactly a problem, though, because I plan on replacing this machine sometime in the future, and I have my laptop to fall back onto.

I'll post a screenshot of the Windows Experience Index in a sec...

[Stephen]

Windows Experience Index:



Didn't turn out exactly as bad as I had expected, which is pretty darn good for the age of this machine.