The boot sequence is the part of which is displayed before Windows Vista starts loading. You will usually have options there such as “Legacy (pre-Longhorn) Microsoft Windows Operating System” and “Microsoft Windows”. These enable the user, if installed, to load up two or more different operating systems, so if you feel like an XP-mood, then you can load it up, whilst if you feel like a Vista-mood, you can load that up instead.

In the later builds of Vista, especially 5231 and 5270, they have abolished the boot.ini file to determine what operating system loads up and from where - now they are using an executable file instead called bcdedit.exe. If you go into the boot.ini file now (located on the C: drive, but usually hidden so you can just type it in from the Run command), it will display the following message:

;Warning: Boot.ini is used on windows XP and earlier operating systems.
;Warning: Use BCDEDIT

This basically means that the boot.ini file is now totally redundant and will not do anything! To set about editing your bcdedit.exe file and therefore your boot sequence, try the following.

Updated for Windows Vista RTM:
There’s now a brilliant program which does all the complicated work for you - download VistaBoot Pro.