New HP DV2315NR... Dual Boot?? Help Plz

Hey everyone, I just bought a brand new HP DV2315NR notebook from bestbuy while it was on sale for $750 this past weekend... this is my first experience with Vista so far and as of right now, I'm not happy with it due to the fact that all my old music production software has failed to work properly.

Here's my question... has anyone tried to dual boot Vista / XP on a DV2000 series notebook? If so, can someone PLEASE explain to me how I would do this? I have a copy of XP and I would really love to run it on this computer but I wouldn't mind having Vista around as a choice just in case it improves in the future. I'd still be happy if I just downgrade completely to XP but dual booting would be my preferred choice.

So... THANK YOU in advance to anyone that decides to help me!!!

 

I don't think there's any difference between that and dual booting on any other laptop. There is only two things you need to do:

1.) Use a program to reduce the size of your current hard drive partition to install WinXP (unless you want to reformat Vista, make two partitions from scratch, and install one to each). This tells you how to go about doing that with Knoppix, it's free and it works.
2.) Install WinXP on the new partition and then modify the boot files so you get a selection menu. Or you can use some program to do it.

 

i did this once dual booting vista and XP on my dv2000. its pretty cool at first but i realized that Vista was a waste. it was no point of having 2 OS. but if u want to do it, download a partition program like partition magic. just use torrent. then install XP first. then install all your drivers. then install partition magic. then resize your XP partition and make a new NTSC partition. thats it. put in your vista disc and restart. choose your new partition to install vista. it might be hard for u because u have vista first. u have to find all the xp drivers and know about the SATA thing when u install XP.

 

i didn't know it was that simple... i've never done it before so i was thinking it'd be a tough task or something... thanks for the quick reply man, it's really appreciated over here... i plan to do it sometime within the next week when i can find some time!

 

so right now do you only have XP on your notebook? i've heard about that SATA thing and needing to get different drivers... would you just recommend to me only to use XP because it's kind of a waste like you said? i love hearing all the opinions

 

yea i got XP onli. i dunno, its up to u. i got tired of getting used to vista. thats just me tho.

 

Alternatively, you may be able to run your legacy software in a virtual machine. Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 is free, VMWare Workstation is probably better but costs. Install WinXP (or whatever) in a VM. Whether or not your app is happy running in a VM... well, it might be worth a shot. You will very much want to upgrade to 2GB RAM if you're going to try this. MWave has Crucial 1GB DDR2-667 SODIMMs for $49.50 each right now.

 

I definitely prefer XP dual booted with Ubuntu. Vista is like a prettier XP in its initial release, gonna have to wait until SP1 and maybe even SP2 before I switch to it. ^^

 

after reading all of this, i'm definitely just gonna downgrade to XP and forget dual booting... right now i see no reason to keep vista unless i just want more problems... thanks for all the feedback - and i think i'm also going to upgrade to 2gb of ram, does anyone know if this thing comes with a 1gb stick installed or 2 512mb's - i don't feel like opening it up right now so i'd rather ask instead

 

Pair of 512MB's. You want to used matched pairs in these notebooks.

 

thanks sir, you've been quite helpful... so the plan is, upgrade to 2gbs, downgrade to XP and see what happens... is there anywhere dedicated to downloading the appropriate drivers for this specific notebook do you know? i emailed HP and they tried pointing me in the right direction but it wasn't very specific... i'm just hoping it's going to work right with XP....

 

Go to hp.com, Support and Drivers, punch in your model name (dv2315nr), select Windows XP. It is considerably safer to get drivers from HP instead of Windows Update.