I guess it had vista bootloader with boot settings of the restore in BCD, so my unaware XP installation squashed Vista's boot loader+bcdFrom what you write, it appears that Vista has nothing to do with it.Some manufacturer's, including IBM, Dell and, from what you report, HP, do use a F10 or F11 or F12 option at boot time to either change boot order or access a hidden partition.In some cases this