I have recently installed Vista on my PC as a dual boot. I made a 25gig partition for Vista and XP was on a 10gig. I had two other partitions that were just for data. I had vista up and running for almost 3 weeks when I decided to re-install XP, Now I know that when Vista installs it uses a different boot menu where it says "Windows Vista or boot from Earlier Windows Operating system"(something like that) and when I installed XP I do not have a boot screen anymore it just goes straight to XP. I set my Vista partition as the Active drive, and now everything has died. When I try to boot from my hard drive, I get a Cannot find NLTR error hit control+alt+delete to restart. So now I am on a live CD of ubuntu posting this. Is there anyway to fix it without formatting? Also, I don't care about my XP install so I can delete that partition if need be, but my Vista install I would prefer not to because it has quite a few of my files on it.

Can you still boot from the XP drive if you set that partition active. If you can, you should be able to restore a working dual boot settings from there, but you will need to download EasyBCD ... it will come in handy ;-) Once EasyBCD is installed, launch the program & click the "Manage Bootloader" button, there is an option there to install Vista's bootloader - do that.

The Vista cd can be used as a live cd to repair and run stuff. I am not exactly sure I know what you did and what you want to do. Suggest that you save data off now with live cd to remote storage. Also you would need to see the status of the files. See if you have enough just to repair the vista install. The Vista disk should show you how to fix it as I recall. I read it wrong and answer it wrong too. So get off my case you goober.

This is an excellent link dealing with Vista/Xp boot: http://www.multibooters.co.uk/ Once I thought I was wrong, now I'm not so sure!