Hi, long time no post. My computer has a SATA 120GB HDD designated Drive C: which is running XP Home. I recently added another SATA 750GB drive and created several partitions. The primary partition is 20GB on which I have installed Vista. At the time of the install I did not have internet connectivity with Vista because my wireless networking card was not compatible, so I was not able to download updates. After the installation and while setting up my preferences etc., I noticed that Vista became very slow, so I rebooted. I can get to a screen where I may choose to either boot into Vista or into "an older Windows OS," (I'd like to find an easier way to do that,) but when I try to boot into Vista, it hangs up on the screen with the progress bar. I can boot up into XP just fine.

Should I have done something to the new hardrive to make it bootable? I thought Vista would have supplied the boot.ini upon install. I was going to get BootItNG to see if it would do the job but the documentation says, "BootItNG supports Multi-OS only in a FAT or FAT32 primary partition." All of my partitions are NTFS. I have not yet tried booting into Vista from the install disc. Wanted to hear what y'all had to say first.

Thanks,
Jude

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1. Vista system requirement specified 20 GB or greater hard disk with at least 15 GB of hard disk space available.

2. Unlike XP where you have the choice of FAT32 or NTFS, for Vista it is NTFS or nothing.

i_Xp/VistaUser

Are you able to get to your Vista desktop in safemode?

OK, so I have the requisite 20GB for Vista, and I have NTFS for both Vista and XP. So I guess I have to assume that BootIt won't work for this circumstance.

Now, do you know what I need to do to be able to boot up into Vista and the new hard drive?

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sabretooth,
I haven't tried that, but then I haven't gotten back to my Vista desktop yet. When I try to boot to Vista, it just hangs up. Should I try booting from the disc?

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Try to see if you can get in from safemode. If you cannot do that let us know.

"OK, so I have the requisite 20GB for Vista, and I have NTFS for both Vista and XP. So I guess I have to assume that BootIt won't work for this circumstance."
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I have dual boot xp/vista64 on the same drive and I use BooTit with no issues. both partitions are NTFS.

BootTit will simply not format as NTFS, but it runs fine and reads well with NTFS.

"BootTit will simply not format as NTFS, but it runs fine and reads well with NTFS.

Thanks, that's good to know.

OK, I booted up Vista in Safe Mode, no problem. So that teels me that the hard drive is functioning properly, I suppose. I rebooted Windows normally into Vista and had the same experience as before. I should clarify something here: Vista is not "hanging up" as I stated earlier. The progress bar is moving, just very, very slowly. So I left it alone for a while to see what it would do. I had to leave the house and before I left I checked to see what my computer was doing. It had gone to a black screen as if it were about to go to the login screen. I left the house for about an hour and a half. When I got back, the login screen was up, but all of my input devices were non-responsive and I was unable to enter my password and login. So, I rebooted again. It has now about 45 minutes and I'm back up to the black screen. But Oh Joy... I can actually see my cursor and it responds to my mouse, if somewhat jerky and slowly. This is how it was responding the last time I actually saw my Vista Desktop, which is why I rebooted in the first place, (see first post,) sometime yesterday.

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Just an update. Fully an hour after I rebooted, my desktop came up. Twenty minutes now I've been trying to establish a network connection. I saw another thread where someone said that Vista would be slow until all outstanding updates were downloaded. However, I find it difficult to believe that this level of sluggishness is to be expected. I have more than enough hard drive, I have 3GB of good RAM, I have a fairly good dual core processor. I think I should be able to expect a little better performance. I am willing to give Vista a chance to prove itself, but it is for this very reason that I installed it separately and kept my XP.

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I decided to format the partition I had Vista and reinstall. Any suggestions before I do so?

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The new install went well. No issues and everything seems to be fine. Just waiting on the new wireless card to arrive.

I'm guessing that my earlier issues were somehow tied to when I attempted to go online after the initial install. That is when my problems started.

For future reference and future Vista users, be sure to pay particular attention to the results of you Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor scan. That may have been the beginning of my problems.

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