Windows Vista build 5456 is just plain cool! I love the new animations and graphics, as well as all the little updates and the stability. But when I installed 5456 last night (the media wasn't corrupt, thankfully), it installed in about 40+ minutes (on a 2GB RAM / P4-HT 3GHz) and I was presented with a black blank screen with a little screwed up strip of garbled pixels at the bottom. Y'know, the kind you get if you yank the VGA cord out of the display card's port. Anyways, if I wait a minute or two, it loads ok - something with the display drivers, I guess.
So, everything is ok, but when I went to reboot into my old WinXP, I saw only one "Microsoft Windows" entry in the dual-boot window. And that led to Vista.
I panicked for 5 minutes, experimented for 20, and went online for help after that. All the info I needed was found here.
The problem is that good ol' boot.ini has been replaced by the new bootloader that ships with Vista. It controls which OS loads, and stays even if you rip out Vista.
Here's what you do. Load Vista, go to START | Programs | Accessories, right-click Command Prompt, and click RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR. Then punch in the following command lines, one by one. The italics lines are my comments.
BCDEDIT /create {legacy} /d "Windows XP SP2"
The /d is just the description, and can be anything you want. I suspect Vista overwrites your description regardless. You may also get some message about {legacy} already existing. Ignore that, and go with the following.
BCDEDIT /set {legacy} device boot
BCDEDIT /set {legacy} path \ntldr
BCDEDIT /displayorder {legacy} /addlast
Each command should return a "operation completed successfully".
Reboot, and you will see the Legacy Windows in the boot list. You can log on to Vista, go to Control Panel | SYSTEM | Advanced Settings | Startup and Recovery, and select the legacy item as the default loader. Or enter the following in the command line as before:
BCDEDIT /default {legacy}
It wasn't too much trouble, but the boot thingie in Vista does have its problems.