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    What are the hazards of trying to install XP aside existing Vista?

    Discussion in 'Dell' started by hotplainrice, Apr 22, 2008.

  1. hotplainrice

    hotplainrice Notebook Guru

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    Hi guys,

    I would like to know what are the issues that would hinder me installing XP beside Vista.

    I have
    Partition 1: 40mb partition
    Partition 2: Windows Vista
    Partition 3: Data

    Extended
    Partition 5: MediaDirect

    I'm using Gparted, planning on creating some space after Partition 5. So that XP is Partition 6.

    I see that installing XP at Partition 6 is an issue since, its not within the bootable area.

    How could I make this to work?

    Thanks Peepz
     
    hotplainrice, Apr 22, 2008
    #1
  2. Commander Wolf

    Commander Wolf can i haz broadwell?

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    Just out of curiosity, why do you jump from Partition 3 to Partition 5?

    Anyways, I think you're facing a real non-issue here. I don't know what you mean by "bootable area", but it doesn't really matter where you install XP so long as it is on a "regular" partition so to speak. Any sort of booting issues should be taken care of by the Vista boot manager.

    ... that is, if you installed Vista second. With a Vista-then-XP installation I think you need to do something tricky to get the boot manager to work right. I don't remember exactly how it goes.
     
    Commander Wolf, Apr 22, 2008
    #2
  3. hotplainrice

    hotplainrice Notebook Guru

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    Its what I saw in gparted.

    Yea, that'd be true. Any expert here that can give me some idea on how to restore Vista's bootloader?
     
    hotplainrice, Apr 22, 2008
    #3
  4. JoeNewberry

    JoeNewberry Notebook Evangelist

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    Commander Wolf is right, if what I've read is correct. If you install Vista second it's no problem because the Vista bootloader will rectify the partition situation and make both OSes play nice with each other. If you install Vista first and then XP, the XP bootloader overwrite Vista's and will likely make it not a boot option anymore. You're supposed to be able to rebuild the Vista bootloader with the Vista disc, though I couldn't find any instructions for this. I did find this thread about a piece of software that is supposed to facilitate a repair of the bootloader VistaBootPro.

    As for the partitions, why not resize your data partition with the Vista disk manager and install XP to the new smaller partition 3, leaving partition 4 or 6, however it gets numbered as your Data partition.
     
    JoeNewberry, Apr 22, 2008
    #4
  5. pygo

    pygo Notebook Consultant

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    pygo, Apr 22, 2008
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  6. hotplainrice

    hotplainrice Notebook Guru

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    Thanks pygo, rox
     
    hotplainrice, Apr 22, 2008
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  7. hotplainrice

    hotplainrice Notebook Guru

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    :)

    Im in dual boot config.

    There is no M1330 Whine in XP :D

    Glad I tried it

    Thanks
    pygo
    JoeNewberry
    Commander Wolf - Yea, I found out that "bootable" limitation doesn't exist with XP. Thats something from the days of win98 :)
     
    hotplainrice, Apr 23, 2008
    #7