I succeeded in creating a dual boot environment with Vista on C: and XP-SP1 on D:

After having backed up XP on a DVD with Acronis True Image, I tried a recovery process, i.e., restoring XP in its original place alongside Vista. When I now go through the dual boot process at pc startup and select XP, I get a message stating that Windows could not boot. It displays "/ntldr", status : 0xc0000225, Info : cannot load selected entry due to missing or corrupt application. There is no problem booting into Vista at startup.

I tried a bootcfg with the XP cd but that did not help. I even copied from C: to D: the BOOT file along with bootmgr, boot.ini, ntdetect.com and ntldr to no avail.

Is there something to be done with EasyBCD?

First, it's best to use an independant 3rd party boot manager to do a dual boot.

Second, If you backed up XP when it was originally on the first partition, and you stick it on the second, then you have to change the boot.ini file to reflect the proper partition.

Third, if XP was originally on the second partition (or D: in other words and you were running dual boot to start with) then you are SOL because XP's boot files were on C:

Forth: I know other people that have used Acronis True Image and ended up in the same boat..... Acronis's True image I don't think is that true to start with.

The way I did it was this:

Start with a blank HDD with 3 or more WIPED CLEAN partitions It's best if your first 2 partitions (your xp and vista partitions) are the same size.... mine are 45gigs each Install XP to your first partition. Do a disk image with BOOTitNG (there is a 30 day free trial) to your third partition. Then WIPE CLEAN your XP partition. Make SURE the partition is WIPED, or at least do a FULL format. You do not want the vista install to sense another OS on your drive. Then install Vista to the first partition. Then recall the XP disk image and install to the second partition. You have changed the location of xp (from the first to the second partition) so use vista to open the xp boot.ini file and change it to reflect the proper partition.

You now have 2 COMPLETELY independant OS's (each one believing that it's on c drive when running) that will not affect the other should something go wrong

Now install and use a 3rd party boot manager such as BOOTitNG or other similar one that will direct your boot to the OS of choice.

Vista was pre-loaded in the 1st partition when I purchased the laptop. I installed XP in the second partition (D:) and everything worked fine.

I'm not sure True Image is the culprit here as I get exactly the same error message when I copy back the XP partition from an external disk where I had also saved a copy previously... just in case.

boot.ini is ok as XP is defined as being in the partition 2. Both are primary partitions of course.

I'm surprised bootcfg did not solve anything.

I'd like to get to the bottom of this situation before going through the process you described.

When using the recovery option, did you try fixboot and fixmbr ? I had a similar problem awhile back and those commands worked perfectly.

No, I didn't try them because they can really clobber things, especially fixmbr. I don't want to lose the Vista boot which is still running properly. Anyhow, I have a copy of that partition on an external disk.

If I can't find the reason for the error message, I'll probably reinstall XP.