SOLUTION: Fixing Windows 7 dual boot with Windows Vista

You can have a dual boot computer with both Windows Vista and Windows 7, but be careful when installing Windows 7 (assuming that you had first Windows Vista). This is what happened to me: I installed Windows 7, on my "old" machine running Windows Vista (Yes, you can run a lot of new (and old) software) on an empty partition that used to hold Windows XP. At the time of the installation, I selected, surely enough, the reserved partition, asked the setup program to format it, followed the prompts and finally had a brand new Windows 7 RC on my VAIO computer. Everything OK, right? Wrong! I was hoping to see the dual boot screen to pick between Vista and Windows 7 but the machine went straight to Windows 7...! What happened to my more than a year old reliable Vista?! I kind of panicked but I was sure that my Windows Vista partition was intact (I could see it from Windows 7, with another letter, though) and knew also that boot.ini is no longer an option, but rather a more sophisticated and secure loader architecture called Boot Configuration Database or Store (BCD) handled by the Windows Boot Manager program (bootmgr), replacing the traditional Windows NT loader (ntldr). I probably could've used that program directly from within Windows 7 to view and modify the contents of the BCD, but it occurred to me that the original Vista disc would do the trick and I was right. I booted the computer with the Vista disc and selected 'restore' or 'repair', which gave the choice to repair the Windows Boot Manager startup option that was missing (i.e. Vista), and the boot option now reads "Windows Vista (TM) Ultimate (recovered)", creating a copy of the then current boot configuration data at C:\Boot\BCD.backup.0001. I know that this issue is far more complex and requires much more attention and that I was probably lucky. My main concern was that I needed some special partition for my particular PC, but that wasn't the case. On the other hand, what would you do if "Windows Vista no longer starts after you install an earlier version of the Windows operating system in a dual-boot configuration"? Find it here.