Security Nightmare Vista Security Discuss Security Nightmare in the Windows Vista forums; Originally Posted by felix8406 One minor issue; after you do the step above, your computer may not be able to access Vista. That can be easily correct, but you need ...

[Znod]

Originally Posted by felix8406

One minor issue; after you do the step above, your computer may not be able to access Vista. That can be easily correct, but you need the Vista DVD. If you don't have one, send me a PM.

Basically, you boot from the DVD and run Startup Repair and you'll be able to boot to both OS. Again, I'm assuming you have Win XP installed on your older drive. If that's not the case, let me know.

felix, have you done the Vista startup-repair thing before to get a dual boot with XP installed, in effect, second working? I though that he would have reinstall Vista again from DVD--which he might not want to do. But, what you are saying is a lot easier than what we used to say.

An alternative would be for him to "unplug" his vista drive and repair XP as you suggest; plug the Vista drive back in afterwards, and boot from the boot loader.

[felix8406]

To be honest, I can't remember whether it worked or not. When I began building my PC a few months ago I was confronted with this issue. I remember inserting the Vista DVD and running Startup Repair, but the EIDE hard drive where XP was installed went bad and had to be sent for repairs. Then I couldn't get XP to install on a SATA drive and that took a few days to solve. Between those and other issues, I lost track on whether or not the Startup repair worked, though dual-booting is working fine.

Just in case, I'm including a link from Microsoft, which details the step to take: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919529.

[Znod]

Got it; that's a good link to have. I remember when Sandi worked out a procedure, presumably similar to the MS procedure, that allowed her to get an XP installed-second dual=boot working. It took her a lot of work to figure it out.

[Splinter]

Originally Posted by Znod

An alternative would be for him to "unplug" his vista drive and repair XP as you suggest; plug the Vista drive back in afterwards, and boot from the boot loader.

I like this idea, obvious really - as long as I can access the files I can back up to DVD and then copy into relevant folders once rebooted with vista.

This should bypass the conflict between the two systems and at the very least give me a back up.

If you see an obvious flaw in this please let me know.

Many thanks

[Splinter]

Originally Posted by Znod

How about copying some of your files to the Vista drive using a flash drive and seeing if they work from the Vista drive.

Unfortunately Vista wont allow me to move, copy, backup, read or in any way access anything that is MS Office or for some strange reason my favourites, from the old drive. Anything else e.g. music, photos, artwork no problem.

[Znod]

Originally Posted by Splinter

I like this idea, obvious really - as long as I can access the files I can back up to DVD and then copy into relevant folders once rebooted with vista.

This should bypass the conflict between the two systems and at the very least give me a back up.

If you see an obvious flaw in this please let me know.

Many thanks

You are very welcome. I think it will work, but, of course, no guarantees since I am not the OEM. Good luck. Let us know what happens.

[Splinter]

I'm not quite sure in my mind quite how the security settings operate - seems a might complicated to me. However it seems that the drive was assigned SYSTEM control (not sure what that means). When I took ownership of the drive and all subcontainers and objects (which took the computer about 20 minutes to process), I suddenly had full access again.

I have copied what I need over to the new drive and as the old drive seems to be fully functional again, started to reinstall some programs to run from it - lesser used stuff which doesn't need to load on start up.

Certainly been a learning curve and I feel the security level might be set at a more manageable level for the home user editions of Vista.

Thanks for all help and comments

[Znod]

I am glad that you got it working. And, you are very welcome.