Power button to boot XP and mediadirect button to boot Vista possible?

Here is what I want to do:

1) create 3 partitions one for (XP, Vista, data).
2) reassign mediadirect button to boot Vista.

I assume install XP and create 3 partitions in XP setup and install XP on C:.
Then install Vista. Vista bootloader should load up and boot into XP.

Use diskpart to set XP partition to active so power button should boot directly to XP.

Then run dellkit\rmbr.exe DELL X Y command with the Dell Mediadirect CD to map the mediadirect button to Vista.

Would this work or would I run into complications?

 

i dont know if it would be possible but sounds like a great idea

 

Why? Wouldn't it give you the option to go into vista or xp at start up like it does for me with Ubuntu and xp?

 

Oh yea, I forgot, but that can be easily changed by editing the bootloader for vista and set the timeout to 0 and set default to vista.

 

Sorry to say I don't think this is possible. I currently dual boot Windows XP and Windows Vista on my Inspiron 1520, but I've had to preserve media direct. I'm sure you've heard about the "self destruct" button, and the issue is MD uses a small (50mb) FAT partition and a secondary (3GB) FAT32 partition, which by the way, is in it's own logical drive labeled "MEDIADIRECT". I do not believe you will be able to install the bootloader on one of these partitions without rendering them useless - the system MD uses is proprietary. The only thing I could think of would be to reverse engineer their MD bootloader so it points to a vista logical drive instead of a MD logical drive.

Good luck,
Lou

 

I know this is possible with a Windows and Linux combo and google search found that someone had a power button to boot vista and media direct button to boot XP.

What I really want is to reverse that for the power button to boot XP and mediadirect button to boot Vista.

 

Link please? That is exactly what I would like to do, as I reckon I can strip down XP a lot more than Vista, hence making it use less battery and function as a media player OS when traveling.

 

that sounds like an awesome idea.. it's irritating having to sit around while my computer boots in order to select the right O.S..

i have no Media Direct anymore anyway ( had to remove it while playing with the partitions, currently i have 120GB Xp parition, 140~gb Vista64 partition, and the"hidden" recovery partition which i've left alone.) so to have one button for one O.S and one button for the other would be really handy, regardless of which way around it is.

 

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-413292.html

right at the bottom is how they do it. i suppose it would be the same as right at the bottom, but instead of grub you'd assign it to XP.. be careful though because playing around with your boot loader can be hard to replace (though in Vistas case, if you have the original DVD, you can always boot from DVD and use the fix boot record option, then rescue whatever your second O.S was afterwards)

other resources..
http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=102227&st=0 (contains a further two links inside of it to other parts of this forum detailing how to do it).

good luck xD if you guys have any success i may try my hand at it at another point.

 

It's definitely possible and you shouldn't even need a Media Direct partition either. Vista has a much better partition manager than XP and so you might want to install Vista first. I used the Ubuntu LiveCD to do all my partitioning - I believe you can do the same w/ the Media Direct CD; just make sure to choose custom or else it'll create a Media Direct partition IIRC. Besides that, you've got the right idea.

 

Any updates on this topic? I'm interested to know how to do this, but the opposite way:

Power button = vista
Media direct = microXP (slimmed down version of XP)