[koglaa]

hi,
here's the story
basiclly i bought a lapto with vista pre-installed but then i installed xp on to the other hard drive
can you tell me how to boot back with vista again please
(i have an upgrade cd if that helps?)

[philthomas]

What do you mean by "other drive" ?

A Laptop normally only has one drive ?

[koglaa]

Originally Posted by philthomas What do you mean by "other drive" ? A Laptop normally only has one drive ?

i mean it came with two partitions on the hard drive (c + d)

[philthomas]

Vista bootloader is overwritten during the XP installation,so you need to reinstate Vista’s bootloader to the MBR and configure it to manage both operating systems.
Boot from the Vista DVD and on the screen where you’re prompted to “Install now”, select “Repair your computer”. The next screen searches for local Vista installations – there should only be one, so click Next.
This loads the System Recovery Options screen. Select the first option – Startup Repair. This looks for problems which would prevent Vista from loading (like a missing bootloader) and automatically fixes them.
If you click on “Click here for diagnostic and repair details” and scroll to the bottom of the list, it shows that the problem detected and repaired was a corrupt boot sector (according to Vista, anyway).
Click Close and then Finish, and the system will restart and boot into Vista.

If you want to create a dual boot system, allowing you to choose which OS to boot to, grab a copy of VistaBootPro (freeware) and it will make the task very simple :

http://www.vistabootpro.org/

HTH