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Vista Xp Dual Boot Black Screen

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by gsparx25

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I've started this thread on a couple other tech forum websites, but no luck. If there is a rule against long posts I am probably breaking it, sorry. The farthest I have gotten so far is trying to reset my CMOS by moving the CMOS jumper over to the first two pins, then back again about 5 seconds later. Didn't work. Mainly I'm wondering if there is a way to reset my whole computer, seeing as the system restore disk that came with my pc doesn't work either.

I'm running a GQ5140 desktop from frys (I know it's not the best rig) with a Celeron D processor, 1.5 gb of ram, I have a eGeForce 7200 GS, 80gb internal harddrive, 500gb WD external drive, a CD RW/DVD Rom, with Vista Home Basic. Even though it doesn't have the best specs, it runs my older games and I can even play Ovlivion on it with out too much trouble. I haven't had many problems with it before.
Just recently I really wanted to play Assassins Creed, and I noticed I would have to upgragde my Ram if i tried to play it on Vista. But on Xp it only needs 1gb of ram to play. So i decided to take my Xp Pro disk from my older computer and install it beside Vista. I partitioned my external drive (I decided to give Xp about 80gb), I installed EasyBCD (I might have done this too early, the info i had said to install it after I installed my other OS and repaired Vista). I read all the warnings about how Vista doesnt like dual booting and all that stuff, but me being the stupid person I am decided that I wasn't going to have any problems. And so i restarted my computer and booted from the Xp disk. I told it to install it on my X: drive (what i decided to name it) and it seemed to go through the setup fine. After the setup it rebooted and the Bios information came up as per usual (I guess it's called the POST screen or something). It then went into a black screen and it said something along the lines of "OS cant be started" or something like that. I thought that was odd, so i C+A+D and told it to boot from the Xp disk again. I went through setup again, except this time it game me a warning about installing two OS on the same drive (I told it to install on the x drive again so i guess xp was already on it) but i didnt think it would be a problem because it was the same OS on the X drive. It seemed to go through setup fine again, although it seemed faster this time but i just attributed that to the fact that it already had all the files on it. Rebooted, the POST screen came up, but now it just gives me a black screen with the dreaded white blinking dash. I can C+A+D to reset, and I can enter the setup for the bios and I can choose what drive to boot from, but no matter what drive I boot from it gives me the black screen. I cant even run a system restore from my factory disk, which REALLY worrys me. I have my external drive unplugged now (which is where Xp was installed) and I cant boot from my Internal HDD or my DVD drive which has the recovery disk it it. I can't even boot into DOS or safe mode to change my boot parameters to (rd=disk0s1) which is what some other website told me to do. Unless there's a way to enter boot parameters into a BIOS setup, or reset my bios or something, I really have no idea what to do. Please help me. Frys was no use, and I really need my computer back. Thanks so much in advance. (srry for the long post)

8 replies

by rob miners

Make sure that the boot order within your Bios is set correctly to read off your optical drives and Boot from your Vista DVD. If you have a Regular Vista DVD follow the instructions below. If it is a Recovery DVD you may not be able to do a Repair. It will more than likely overwrite the Partition.

Here is a link to How to Repair Vista Startup.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial148.html

Startup Repair is an automated repair process that scans your Vista installation for problems and attempts to automatically fix them. When you select to repair Vista from the Vista setup screen, and Vista detects problems, this process will be started automatically.

Let us know how you get on.

by gsparx25

Yeah, It's the recovery dvd that came with my computer. Not a regular Vista dvd. Although, do you think if I found someone who would lend me their Vista Basic dvd would I be able to boot off that?

Thanks

G

by rob miners

Make sure that the boot order within your Bios is set correctly to read off your optical drives and Boot from your Vista Recovery DVD that you can download following the steps below. Remove the external Hard Drive.

One of these keys should get you in and you can set the BIOS to factory Default.

Common BIOS entry Keys
F1
F2
DEL
ESC
F10
You will know when to press this key when they see a message similar to the below example as the computer is booting. Some older computers may also display a flashing block to indicate when to press the F1 or F2 keys.

Press to enter BIOS setup

Tip: Hold a Key down, this will cause a stuck key error, which may allow you to enter the BIOS setup.

The Windows Vista Recovery CD can be used to Boot you PC.

Creating a Windows Vista Recovery CD

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/window-on-windows/?p=622

Download from here:

http://coblitz.codeen.org/neosmart.net/downloads/guides/Vista_Repair/Vista_Recovery_Disc_x86.iso

Boot from the CD and follow the previous instructions.
Startup Repair is an automated repair process that scans your Vista installation for problems and attempts to automatically fix them. When you select to repair Vista from the Vista setup screen, and Vista detects problems, this process will be started automatically.

Let us know how you get on.

< format >

by mamies

since you cant boot from your DVD drive "and I cant boot from my Internal HDD or my DVD drive which has the recovery disk it" I assume that the problem would not be the installation that you have just done. Although just to be on the sure side remove it and reboot your machine.

by gsparx25

Wait, sorry, do you mean remove the recovery disk? or remove my internal HDD. Don't I need my internal HDD?

by gsparx25

I actually managed to fix it. It was my hard drive, Xp inadvertently put some files on it that was causing it to interrupt the boot order. I bypassed it by leaving it disconnected, booting from my vista recovery disk, and then before getting the error that there was no hard drive detected, reconnecting it. I wiped the drive and it works fine now.

Thanks for all the help

G

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