All Is Not Lost

Had to re-install the OS yesterday for about the 7th time in 4 months.
Have now got it sussed, me thinks.

What the problem is is that Vista wants to be boss when dual booting, so say you hsve initially installed XP and its details say it's on your C: drive, well this gets switched when you put on M$ W. Vista.

So this time instead of partioning and formatting with the XP install options, all I now did was to partion it for solely XP, and leaving half my HD as unpartioned space until it was time to bung on Vista and opt for a custom install, so it goes onto the empty space and the rest was done for me. Now the vista bootloader saves and recognizes the fact i've an earlier version of Windows on it, so I dont require the aid of Easy BCD other than to change the default OS and the names to protect the inoccent.

Which means that the programming I've done over the past month or so, isn't lost, as Vista has another type of burning CD Roms. And luckily everythings back! Thanks Arnie.