Indeed the messing around with drivers is definitely the downside to Serial ATA.
Yes but that was easily resolved.
The problem is with getting the dual boot to work "properly"
With my other PC as you may recall a few weeks ago when you recommended EasyBCD, that solved the problem within 30 seconds.
But this time it's another story.
If I remember correctly,
On the first occasion the problem was installing the wrong LAN driver/Controller which messed-up the system.
On the second occasion it was just that the drive letters were slightly mixed up.
Now, after resolving the LAN and the drive letter problems, EasyBCD will not get the system to dual boot as it should and has done so on the previous two occasions.
But, we will get there eventually as it has been proved that it can be achieved on the past two occasions.
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And the now for the
FINAL CHAPTER:I did not go for a reinstall again as I figured there just had to be "something I was missing" and I don't like being beaten, that "something" being the "boot.ini file", whether it was corrupt or missing I'm not sure.
But, two things,
1. On my other system I converted to dual booting a couple of weeks ago (Vista installed after XP)
I had to use the XP "Repair Console" on that occasion also before it would boot properly, to repair the boot.ini file, (bootcfg /rebuild)
Which was before loading or using EasyBCD (so nothing to do with EasyBCD because it was only used on that occasion to set the boot and time order, unfortunately it's not now connected so I could not check those settings).
2. Part, Some, or a combination of problems "may of occurred" this time around because of restoring what may of been a faulty MBR after the first few attempts of getting it working.
So whatever I did after that was simply a waste of time.
Plus, Vista is located on my C: partition and XP is located on my E: partition (so what you may think that seems about right)
but no, when being setup in EasyBCD as such it would not work, it also turns out that both XP and Vista should be set to the same "drive C: letter in the settings.
Ps
Thanks for all the help to everyone, as said in the past it is and was much appreciated.