re-formating laptop (windows vista)

First of all, are you sure you have two versions of Vista on your machine. I rather believe, you have a previous version of windows, i.e. Windows XP and Vista. Vista comes with a boot manager and you are asked if you want to boot Vista or an older version of Windows. Try loading the older version of Windows and see what operating system it starts.

If it starts XP, you may be able to fix it with the repair function of Windows XP. But therefor you need a Windows XP install CD. Start from the CD and select Repair. Here is an interesting article : http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepa...

This usually restores your master boot record of Windows XP. Try this and let us know if it helped. But this is only valid if you have Windows XP as the other System.

Should you really have two versions of Vista, then it might be a bigger problem. What people call"re-formatting" - which is actually stupid because you do not format a PC, you format a hard drive - involves building a system from scratch. This means you will loose all settings and programs on the partitions you have to rebuild. I hope you have a back up!

Let me know if you have more questions.

Cheers

Peter

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