MBR & Vista

[DreamLord34]

I have 3 HDDs each with it's own version of windows on it.
Right now, as I am under Vista, it makes it's drive the C drive which is a 50GB partition on a 200GB drive.
Windows XP x64 is on the E drive which is a 40GB drive & windows XP Home on the D drive which is another 40GB drive.
Now, the other day I tried to load up Home to uninstall some programs from it to clean that drive but instead it gets an MBR error 3 & then loads the Vista boot menu which shows me "earlier windows versions" & "Vista".
If I click "earlier versions", it ONLY loads XP x64 & without issue. I can also boot into Vista without issue.

Now, I want to format that Home "E" drive but how can I do so without messing with the Vista boot file that allows me to load XP x64 & Vista??
I want to format the Home drive so that I can place it into my other machine to give to my mother.

[compygeek]

I have 3 HDDs each with it's own version of windows on it.
Right now, as I am under Vista, it makes it's drive the C drive which is a 50GB partition on a 200GB drive.
Windows XP x64 is on the E drive which is a 40GB drive & windows XP Home on the D drive which is another 40GB drive.
Now, the other day I tried to load up Home to uninstall some programs from it to clean that drive but instead it gets an MBR error 3 & then loads the Vista boot menu which shows me "earlier windows versions" & "Vista".
If I click "earlier versions", it ONLY loads XP x64 & without issue. I can also boot into Vista without issue.

Now, I want to format that Home "E" drive but how can I do so without messing with the Vista boot file that allows me to load XP x64 & Vista??
I want to format the Home drive so that I can place it into my other machine to give to my mother.

What you could try is a little proggy called EasyBCD (http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1) , it's a little program that works with Vista which allows you to edit the Vista boot ini file. Install it in Vista, click the add/remove entries button, and just remove the hard drive you want from the boot menu. save the new boot entry, and restart your computer. It's a great little app to add or remove OS's from the boot menu, you can even edit the name in the Vista boot menu so that XP doesn't say "Windows earlier version" which is just silly.

[DreamLord34]

Got that all installed but under that tab, it only lists
earlier version of windows
Microsoft Windows Vista.
I have moved Vista up above the earlier version line.
Will that allow it to boot straight into Vista without me picking or will it still let me decide on XP x64/Vista?

The part that confuses me is where it lists the D drive under "view settings" tab which is under Entry #2 as the earlier version of windows. But that drive is actually the XP Home drive as it's the only drive without the Program Files (x86) folder like the other 2 have.

There are a total of 2 entries listed in the Vista Bootloader.
Bootloader TimeOut: 30 seconds.
Default OS: Microsoft Windows Vista

Entry #1

Name: Microsoft Windows Vista
BCD ID: {current}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe
Windows Directory: \Windows

Entry #2

Name: Earlier Version of Windows
BCD ID: {ntldr}
Drive: D:\
Bootloader Path: \ntldr
Windows Directory: \Windows

XP x64 is on the E drive while I am logged into Vista that is.
When I log into XP x64, that all changes.

[compygeek]

Got that all installed but under that tab, it only lists
earlier version of windows
Microsoft Windows Vista.
I have moved Vista up above the earlier version line.
Will that allow it to boot straight into Vista without me picking or will it still let me decide on XP x64/Vista?

The part that confuses me is where it lists the D drive under "view settings" tab which is under Entry #2 as the earlier version of windows. But that drive is actually the XP Home drive as it's the only drive without the Program Files (x86) folder like the other 2 have.

There are a total of 2 entries listed in the Vista Bootloader.
Bootloader TimeOut: 30 seconds.
Default OS: Microsoft Windows Vista

Entry #1

Name: Microsoft Windows Vista
BCD ID: {current}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe
Windows Directory: \Windows

Entry #2

Name: Earlier Version of Windows
BCD ID: {ntldr}
Drive: D:\
Bootloader Path: \ntldr
Windows Directory: \Windows

XP x64 is on the E drive while I am logged into Vista that is.
When I log into XP x64, that all changes.

well it looks like the vista boot file only sees vista and xp64, and not home. what you could try to do is just simply disconnect the 40GB w/ XP home installed and see if it interferes with the boot menu. If you're in the clear, just format that hard drive. I had the same issue where my XP hard drive was detected as F in Vista, but D in XP. After some silly tinkering which I shouldn't have done, I finally just re-installed Vista on C, then XP on D. Thing is XP boot.ini completely took over and I couldn't even boot back into Vista. I remedied this by inserting the Vista disk and repairing the startup bootloader in Vista. Then used EasyBCD to re-initiate XP into the boot options menu. Sounds confusing but only took 2 minutes to fix.