Help Pleese

[Wharris]

Hi

 

ive been running xp (on my C: drive) on my pc for a while. but today i decided to install vista on a seperate partition (F: drive) as a seperate os

 

but now ive done it Vista has renames my F: drive as C: drive and i cant access any of my programs i installed on various other drives when i was on xp. also i dont get teh option to choose which os i wanto use when i boot and booting itself takes a while longe, though i did expect this with vista.

can anyone help

thanks very much

[Tony D]

Sounds like it wiped the entire drive when Vista loaded.

 

Go to Computer and see how many drives are listed.

 

What is the total size of your hard drive? Check to see if the size of the hard drives listed add up to the total size of the physical hard drive,

[AdvancedSetup]

Hello Wharris and welcome to Extreme Tech Support - Free PC Help

 

Well you need to stop using the computer for now until you decide how you want to proceed.

The more you use the PC the more chances you have of overwriting the data and making it difficult to recover, repair.

 

You will need to run some recovery software that can restore the previous partitions, and / or do a data recovery to an external drive.

 

If you're reasonably comfortable with doing advanced work on the PC then we can work with you to try to get you going again. If you're not comfortable with it then you may be better off taking it to a reputable shop and having them recover the data and OS or at least recover the data and then re-install XP.

 

If you're comfortable keeping Vista then we just need to run some software to recover the data for you.

 

Let us know if you want to try doing it or if you want to take it to a shop.

 

Thanks.

[allheart55]

Download Vista Boot Pro and follow the directions to change drive letters and dual boot options. Download Here

 

 

 

http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q162/allheart55/computer%20funny/bootpro.jpg

http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q162/allheart55/computer%20funny/vistaandXp.jpg

[AdvancedSetup]

Well hopefully it would be that easy but from my understanding Vista overwrites the old one, but at least worth a try.

[allheart55]

Hi Advanced, Those are screen shots from my computer. I partitioned my drive and installed Vista with XP already on the other partition. I used the option to "Force Bootloader Install" I have a dual boot with Vista being the default OS and a 30 second delay on boot to choose which OS you want.

 

 

http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q162/allheart55/computer%20funny/forcebootinstall-1.jpg

[AdvancedSetup]

Hello

 

Well you chose to do a dual boot and partition accordingly but I don't think Wharris did.

 

I can boot and load 20 different OS no problem. The issue I think is that he did not chose to do it and thus I think Vista overwrote his old version.

 

So hopefully YOU'RE right and Wharris can easily get his old system back. I'll cross my fingers for now.

[allheart55]

Well you chose to do a dual boot and partition accordingly but I don't think Wharris did.

Actually, with the statement he made, I think that's exactly what he attempted to do!

 

today i decided to install vista on a separate partition (F: drive) as a separate os

He specifcally asked for help... he expected on boot to be given the choice of which OS he wanted to select. Now, instead he is unable to acess his folders and documents. With Vista Boot Pro he will have that option and access to his files. The only other work-around that I know of is using the command line with diskpart utility and it doesn't always work.

[AdvancedSetup]

Hi Wharris,

 

Did you get a chance to download and try out the software Vista Boot Pro yet?