extremely slow dual boot

I am dual booting Vista and XP Pro SP2. I have an 80 gig SATA drive that I split in half which already had XP installed. Everything is working but when you boot the machine, it sits at a black screen with the cursor flashing in the upper left corner for about a minute before the boot option menu appears. Once I select an OS everything seems to move along and both operating systems run fine. On another system I have only Vista installed and it boots right into Vista very quickly so it seems to be something with the boot loader. Any ideas on where this hang is coming from and how I can remove it?

Sorry for the double post. I kept saying there was an error.
"Peter D" wrote:

I am dual booting Vista and XP Pro SP2. I have an 80 gig SATA drive that I split in half which already had XP installed. Everything is working but when you boot the machine, it sits at a black screen with the cursor flashing in the upper left corner for about a minute before the boot option menu appears. Once I select an OS everything seems to move along and both operating systems run fine. On another system I have only Vista installed and it boots right into Vista very quickly so it seems to be something with the boot loader. Any ideas on where this hang is coming from and how I can remove it?

Have you reported this as a bug against Vista Mail and the Vista Help and Support Center?
"Peter D" wrote in message

Sorry for the double post. I kept saying there was an error.
"Peter D" wrote:
I am dual booting Vista and XP Pro SP2. I have an 80 gig SATA drive that I split in half which already had XP installed. Everything is working but when you boot the machine, it sits at a black screen with the cursor flashing in the upper left corner for about a minute before the boot option menu appears. Once I select an OS everything seems to move along and both operating systems run fine. On another system I have only Vista installed and it boots right into Vista very quickly so it seems to be something with the boot loader. Any ideas on where this hang is coming from and how I can remove it?

I have not. I appears to be specific to this hardware. I installed Vista as a dual boot on different hardware and the boot times are the same as an XP/XP dual boot, so something is just peculiar about that hardware. Although an XP/XP dual boot on the original hardware is much faster than an XP/Vista dual boot.
"Colin Barnhorst" wrote:

Have you reported this as a bug against Vista Mail and the Vista Help and Support Center?
"Peter D" wrote in message Sorry for the double post. I kept saying there was an error.
"Peter D" wrote:
I am dual booting Vista and XP Pro SP2. I have an 80 gig SATA drive that I split in half which already had XP installed. Everything is working but when you boot the machine, it sits at a black screen with the cursor flashing in the upper left corner for about a minute before the boot option menu appears. Once I select an OS everything seems to move along and both operating systems run fine. On another system I have only Vista installed and it boots right into Vista very quickly so it seems to be something with the boot loader. Any ideas on where this hang is coming from and how I can remove it?

I am dual booting Vista and XP Pro SP2. I have an 80 gig SATA drive that I split in half which already had XP installed. Everything is working but when you boot the machine, it sits at a black screen with the cursor flashing in the upper left corner for about a minute before the boot option menu appears. Once I select an OS everything seems to move along and both operating systems run fine. On another system I have only Vista installed and it boots right into Vista very quickly so it seems to be something with the boot loader. Any ideas on where this hang is coming from and how I can remove it?