Today Coast Runner,

Need some help. Got a new machine with Vista Home Premium installed. Attempted to load Partition Magic 8.0 to no avail. Used Vista to partition the HDD. Loaded Windows XP Professional on the new partition and “lost” Windows Vista? Could not see the partition, only the partition with XP. Formatted the HDD and “lost” the partition that housed Windows Vista? Installed Window XP Professional. I could now “see” the partition that once housed Vista. I installed Vista Premium 64 bit on said partition. Problem is that I can not access XP. I can “see” the “D” drive housing XP, and I can open up files in it, but I can not load it? When I get to the boot screen, if I choose “Earlier version of Windows” I end up with a blue screen that reads: stop:0x0000007b (0xf789e63c,0xv000000e,0×00000000,0×00000000). If I choose Windows Vista, Vista loads perfectly. I have tried “Easy BCD 1.7.2″, and “VistaBoot Pro 3.3.0″. My configuration is: C: Vista Ultimate 64 bit, D: Windows XP Pro, and E: Boot Magic (which isn’t so “magic”…smile…). Thank you in advance for your help. I have already invested several days trying to get this to work.

Well to be honest, I could take you through the long process of troubleshooting this…or I could tell you how to fix it with a lot more ease. Due to not knowing whether this is a Dell machine using a DDO (recovery partition) or another OEM box providing recovery CDs, I am not able to really jump into what your default partition scheme looked like in the first place.

All of this said, I found the solution to your problem from the Technet forums by using your stop error in Google. Basically, follow the directions outlined here. This thread will not only help you to fix the existing problem (assuming there is no problem recovery partitions being hosed), it will also provide you with the proper way to setup a dual boot machine with XP and Vista. Good luck.

Do you have an IT-related question? Perhaps you are just burnt out on writing on the walls with crayons? Whatever the comments may be, drop me a line, and you too can “Just Ask Matt!” Please address comments to the comments section above, my email address is for questions – thanks!