cannot install xp on my pre-installed vista home premium?

hello every one,

just like to try this dual booting stuff bu with no luck, first when i try to load my xp pro cd, it did not autoboot, nothing happens. my computer just boot on my to original vista. also,when i insert the xp cd it said set run set-up/browse cd. when i click run set-up, the install set-up is disable, am i'm missing something here. thank in advance

 

XP is built years before Vista, so it will have no clue about the newer Vista boot loader and therefore you will have those problems. Vista on the other hand have boot information on the older XP.

You will have to remove Vista, install XP, then reinstall Vista to get the dual boot up.

Alternatively you can run XP off a Virtual Machine such as VMWare or Virtual PC 2007

 

You have to go in and edit vistas bootloader and make it have priority over xp's then add the xp boot info into it. Its rather simple but I dont have it all memorized.

best guide I have found:

http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp

I had to go thru a similar process I had XP on my machine first but with a corrupted boot.ini file so when I installed vista it didnt see the xp install, so I had to go edit the vista boot loader to find the xp manually and in addition I had to go into the xp repair console and manually repair my boot.ini from dos !! fun stuff.

You need to do the same thing except, you dont have to repair your boot.ini, and you need to make vista have priority over xp again.

Its all in that guide so enjoy!

 

Vista does not need to be uninstalled in order to dual boot. There is a way to rewrite the MBR after installing XP on a machine with vista allready loaded using a 3rd party program. Quoting from a post that I posted in a similar thread earlier (WAY earlier) this morning:


" Quote:
Originally Posted by Arla
Hey all,

Quick question, I've found lots of guides for dual booting an XP machine with Vista, is it as easy to dual boot a Vista machine with XP (basically create primary partition, install XP, it automatically has a boot manager?)

Just trying to check any "problem" areas before I start this venture.


As far as easy goes, its fairly simple if you allready have XP on the machine. If you are currently running Vista, like i was, it takes a few more steps to do it, and the help of a third party program, but is still just as possible and works just as well.

The biggest problem with attempting to install XP on a PC with Vista Allready on it is that XP will totally rewrite the MAster Boot Record, and take Vista right off the list, meaning it wont allow you to choose to boot vista, it will just automatically boot XP. This scared me when I did it, but found out the fix was fairly simple, with the help of an additional MBR program.

heres a link to one of the sites I used:

http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp

If you dont feel like using the DISKPART program they use in this totorial to create a partition for XP, you can use the Disk manager utility in vista to create a new partition from your primary partition, a nice feature i dont think XP had. Just follow the rest of the instructions to finish the procedure.

and remember, after XP is installed, Vista WONT boot untill you use your third party program to rewrite the MBR.


Of course this all assumes you have Vista on your PC now."

 

first he needs to get XP installed....

EgoZum, go to the bios and check the boot order. Make sure CD/DVD is set as the first boot device.

You need to boot from the XP cd to install it. You cant start the installer from Vista.

 

right, xp doe sneed to be installed first, I was simply correcting a false statement.

If you click the link in my previous post, it takes you to a page with an entire totorial. starting from when Vista is installed, on how to dual boot both OSes when Vista was the first installed.

 

thanks everyone.

 

i already configure the bios to boot from cd/dvd, but still cannot boot from xp pro from cd. when i restart the machine it say cannot boot from cd error boot sector 4 then go straight to boot on vista?

 

Then something is wrong with your XP disc. Iv installed XP after Vista for a dual boot a few times and it all worked well. I would first go into Vista and carve out a separate partition for XP though (it unrelated to why you cant boot off the disc however).

 

I had no problem at all installing XP alongside a pre-installed Vista on my HP nc6320 laptop. On the other hand, I get stuck right from the start, when I try to do the same thing on a Dell Inspiron 6400.

When I reach the point where XP installer asks where the XP partition should be located and I select an unallocated area (same problem appears even if I create and format an empty partition beforehand and select it), I get the following error message : “To install Windows XP on the selected partition, installation program must copy certain boot files on Disk 0 with ID 0 on bus 0 on atapi [MBR]. However, this disk does not contain a partition compatible with Windows XP”.

I don’t know whether this has to do with the SATA disk. On the HP, I disabled SATA Native Support in the BIOS and everything went fine. In the Dell Bios, I found no equivalent option.

How can I create a “compatible partition” ?