Hi,

I am about to install Vista and XP as dual boot on a laptop with a SATA
disk. The laptop does not have a floppy disk drive. As an alternative to a
normal install is it possible to copy or clone an existing XP installation
into a disk partition and "massage" the installation to boot, e.g., by
fixing the MBR with EasyBCD? Assume the Vista boot is there - I believe the
OEM Vista disks I have require Vista be installed first.

The laptop is a Compaq F572US running Vista Premium. The BIOS does not have
an EIDE disk setting. I spent a long week trying to install XP on my
desktop without a floppy. Slipstreaming in a SATA driver didn't work. I
finally succeeded only by getting the floppy drive working. I am trying to
avoid another exercise like that.

Thanks,
Gary

"Gary Brown" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:%(E-Mail Removed)...
> Hi,
>
> I am about to install Vista and XP as dual boot on a laptop with a SATA
> disk. The laptop does not have a floppy disk drive. As an alternative to
> a normal install is it possible to copy or clone an existing XP
> installation into a disk partition and "massage" the installation to boot,
> e.g., by fixing the MBR with EasyBCD? Assume the Vista boot is there - I
> believe the OEM Vista disks I have require Vista be installed first.
>
> The laptop is a Compaq F572US running Vista Premium. The BIOS does not
> have an EIDE disk setting. I spent a long week trying to install XP on my
> desktop without a floppy. Slipstreaming in a SATA driver didn't work. I
> finally succeeded only by getting the floppy drive working. I am trying
> to avoid another exercise like that.
>
> Thanks,
> Gary

The MBR is not a problem but the hardware is. In the vast majority of all
cases, a WinXP installation ported from another machine will crash
immediately.

Installing WinXP without an FDD is not too hard. Here is how you can do it:
1. Boot the laptop with a Win98 boot CD from www.bootdisk.com.
2. Use fdisk.exe and format.com to create a primary & active FAT32
partition.
3. Make the disk bootable by executing the command sys C:
4. Include smartdrv.exe in c:\config.sys.
You should now be able to boot the laptop into DOS7. From there you can
start the Windows installation process with this command:
E:\i386\winnt
where E: is the CD drive letter where you have your WinXP CD. Later on you
can convert the system partition to NTFS if you wish.

You should always install the older O/S first (Windows XP), then install
the newest O/S last (Windows Vista).

For help on installing Windows XP, visit the HP Notebook Support Forum:
http://h30434.www3.hp.com/psg/board?board.id=OS


Gary Brown wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am about to install Vista and XP as dual boot on a laptop with a SATA
> disk. The laptop does not have a floppy disk drive. As an alternative to a
> normal install is it possible to copy or clone an existing XP installation
> into a disk partition and "massage" the installation to boot, e.g., by
> fixing the MBR with EasyBCD? Assume the Vista boot is there - I believe the
> OEM Vista disks I have require Vista be installed first.
>
> The laptop is a Compaq F572US running Vista Premium. The BIOS does not have
> an EIDE disk setting. I spent a long week trying to install XP on my
> desktop without a floppy. Slipstreaming in a SATA driver didn't work. I
> finally succeeded only by getting the floppy drive working. I am trying to
> avoid another exercise like that.
>
> Thanks,
> Gary
>
>

my rule of thumb is
one o.s. per disk.

so if you have only
one disk then

install virtual pc
in vista,

then install winxp
in virtual pc.


--

db·´¯`·...¸><)))º>
DatabaseBen, Retired Professional
- Systems Analyst
- Database Developer
- Accountancy
- Veteran of the Armed Forces
- @hotmail.com
"share the nirvana" - dbZen

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>

"Gary Brown" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:#(E-Mail Removed)...
> Hi,
>
> I am about to install Vista and XP as dual boot on a laptop with a SATA disk. The laptop does not have a floppy disk drive. As
> an alternative to a normal install is it possible to copy or clone an existing XP installation into a disk partition and "massage"
> the installation to boot, e.g., by fixing the MBR with EasyBCD? Assume the Vista boot is there - I believe the OEM Vista disks I
> have require Vista be installed first.
>
> The laptop is a Compaq F572US running Vista Premium. The BIOS does not have an EIDE disk setting. I spent a long week trying to
> install XP on my desktop without a floppy. Slipstreaming in a SATA driver didn't work. I finally succeeded only by getting the
> floppy drive working. I am trying to avoid another exercise like that.
>
> Thanks,
> Gary
>
>

You will need iether a usb floppy to install raid controller drivers via f6
option when you repair your winxp installation, which you will have to do
anyway to install the new hw drivers
Or create a slipstreamed winxp disk with tha sata controler drivers
intergrated

"Gary Brown" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:%(E-Mail Removed)...
> Hi,
>
> I am about to install Vista and XP as dual boot on a laptop with a SATA
> disk. The laptop does not have a floppy disk drive. As an alternative to
> a normal install is it possible to copy or clone an existing XP
> installation into a disk partition and "massage" the installation to boot,
> e.g., by fixing the MBR with EasyBCD? Assume the Vista boot is there - I
> believe the OEM Vista disks I have require Vista be installed first.
>
> The laptop is a Compaq F572US running Vista Premium. The BIOS does not
> have an EIDE disk setting. I spent a long week trying to install XP on my
> desktop without a floppy. Slipstreaming in a SATA driver didn't work. I
> finally succeeded only by getting the floppy drive working. I am trying
> to avoid another exercise like that.
>
> Thanks,
> Gary
>
>