If you can't figure out how to install it then it's not meant for you to try it. WinVS Beta is for testers whose reponsibilities are to analyze it thoroughly and return feedback to Microsoft.

Maybe. Is your XP & Vista sharing the same drive? If so I'm guessing the file is there and healthy, but cannot be booted because your motherboard BIOS has a disk access limitation or somekind.

Check your harddrive setting in BIOS, note all down and post them here alongwith your mobo model. What is your XP partition size?

EDIT: Some addendum in post.

This post has been edited by eek-1: Nov 1 2006, 10:24 PM

Make sure your vista partition is a Primary partition, not extended or logical drive. You can see that in XP Administrative Tools -> Computer Management.

And then reboot to BIOS, check that your maxtor hdd settings have 32-bit disk access enabled & addressing mode is LBA.

If that still doesn't work, try remove your WD drive & reinstall vista, just to see if it can be booted.

No wonder its expensive.