Vista XP dual boot

I finally got my XP disc slipstreamed in Nlite and ready to try the XP install. I was thinking maybe i will go for dual boot first so i can make sure the XP disc works without loosing my Vista partition and i was wondering if anyone has been successful with a dual boot?? I was hoping for some input before i try the XP install on the slave hdd... but i dont have much patience so well see if i can wait

 

go for it

just remember that vista lives on C:, so xp will install on the next partition

also, don't be surprised if after you finish the xp install, that it boots back into xp. your vista boot manager will be corrupt and you will need to "repair" the vista install with the vista disk

then get a boot manager like easybcd and install

 

thanks for the info... hope it works like its supposed to!!!

 

Well the first attempt at the dual boot was a no go not sure what i am doing wrong... I partitioned the second hard drive with my Nlite XP disc to NTFS and copied all the XP files... but i could never get it to actually run through the XP setup. after the hdd format it copied all of the XP files and then rebooted but i could never get it to go through the XP setup. So then I restarted and tried to boot from the vista partition and it wouldnt work either. now i am back at square one after a vista recovery from the toshiba cd so i now have vista on the C: drive but i am also showing the XP files on my D: drive is there something i am missing about how to partition my drives? or should i just try to format the C: and D: with XP and forget about the dual boot?

 

oh i forgot to mentions a couple other odd bits of info... when i went to install XP on the second hdd i got a warning that i was about to install XP on a partition that already had an OS installed... i thought it was weird because when it showed two 100GB partitions one with Vista one without.... so i intalled on the partition without vista but still got the warning. i also noticed (didnt think about this till after the format) that the two partitions were both listed as "disk 0" which i would think should be "disk 0" for the vista partition and "disk 1" for the second hdd. if anyone has been through this process i would really appreciate any input...

 

I've done it and it worked for me.
Sometimes the drive names ie c: d:, are mixed up from the OS and the install disk. Also if you do a reinstall of both OS, do XP then Vista so you won't need to restore he boot registry.

 

yes, as allan mentioned, the drive letters can get all mixed up, esp from the xp side looking at vista. Some of us also have extra hard drives, partitions for data etc. A simple way to avoid confusion, is to rename the partitions/drives something simple. IE, for the C: (vista) I'll go to My Computer, open it up, right click on C drive and "rename" it VISTA. Then, for the D: partition, I'll name it XP or XP Pro. Then when you go to partition and /or format a partition, the name is simple to figure. The same goes for install the OS, instead of giving you an unfamiliar name, it will say windows os found on "XP" parttion, etc.

Vista has a nice parttion manager built in. --> Control Panel-> Admin Tools-> Computer Management-> Storage-> Disk Management

Umm, lets see, you didn't really say if the XP disk booted properly or not. If you aren't sure if it's bootable, download the trial version of ultraISO. Install the program, run it, open the XP disk in it and in the upper left hand corner it should say "bootable cd/dvd"

I'll check back tomorrow.....

ann

 

Ok so i got everything working with the partitions. but now i am having problems with my XP disk that i made with Nlite. I copied files from an old gateway XP home disk and i slipstreamed only the SATA drivers, made the ISO and burned it to a cd. rebooted and the files are loading but when i get to a certain point i get a blue screen that tells me the installation has shut down to prevent damage to my computer??? this is about a minute into the process where it is loading the XP files. I am thinking it is a problem with the cd that i made because i had another cd i made and i was able to get it everything loaded to the point of copying files to the partition for the XP install. Now i cant even make it to see the partitions. I was wondering if there is any way to load the SATA drivers without slipstreaming so i can try using my original gateway cd. I dont have a floppy so i was hoping maybe there is a way to get XP setup to recognize a USB device for the F6 option...