Unexpected side effect of updating the bios - I don't understand it

[#1]

I have a dual boot system - Win 7 and Win Vista both 64 bit - and because of a problem (I can't remember what it was) the boot failed and I needed to repair using the install disks - first Vista and then Win 7

Following this the boot options were shown as Win Vista recovered and Win 7 recovered and both boot options worked

After updating the bios the boot options reverted to Win Vista and Win 7 with the boot manager still located on the Vista drive
Odd but no real worry

However this morning I tried to boot into Vista as I wanted to check the Office license key used and the first attempt didn't work at all and the second attempt advised that the Vista License key was invalid

I recovered the licence key I wanted and will now be reinstalling Win 7 onto an ssd as a clean install then after that has been done successfully junk the two operating system partitions so This odd effect doesn't bother me but I would be interested in how it could have happened

[#2]

Were the partitions correctly mapped in the boot loader? I.E. It thinks it's booting Vista when in fact it was 7? Just a random thought @Oldjim.

[#3]

They were - but I wonder if it got screwed

[#4]

No idea how it happened but if you're after a reliable boot loader then XOSL is very good. It's not been maintained / updated for years but it does make the experience a lot less hassle. It has to be installed on its own partition though and you have to be very careful when installing (i screwed up once and lost a 17GB partition) but its reliability is rock solid.

It's also got a GUI like Win95 so you can google image it and see images of it in action

Additionally you can hide other partitions so that the running OS can't see them and interfere with them.

The problem with using the built in boot loader with win7/vista is that it runs on the same disk as the OS itself and can allow the running OS to interfere with the other OS on another partition. I had that happen once with WinXP - i forgot to hide the other XP install partition and ended up with the main install running from two drives - i kid you not, having svchost (and others) running from drive E is a seriously weird situation..

[#5]

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@Oldjim wrote:

After updating the bios the boot options reverted to Win Vista and Win 7 with the boot manager still located on the Vista drive
Odd but no real worry

However this morning I tried to boot into Vista as I wanted to check the Office license key used and the first attempt didn't work at all and the second attempt advised that the Vista License key was invalid

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If the boot problem followed immediately after the BIOS update then something has gone wrong with the sequence of events that loads Windows.  The same thing is true if it happened later but if it did happen later then it's more likely to be due to corrupt sectors (or a single sector) on the disk

[#6]

Having now done a clean install of Win 7 on my SSD it is rather moot but I suspect a few disk checks would be in order although the data is regularly backed up

[#7]

You presumably now have a System Reserved partition on the SSD where the boot code resides?  You would then use the bootrec tool (or equivalent) to add the option to boot to Vista (on the old hard drive) and make sure the BIOS selects the new SSD as the boot drive.  That might not have happened if the old hard drive was connected when you installed Windows 7 on the new SSD.