I've installed XP on my laptop with preinstalled Vista. I used
EasyBCD1.7 to add an entry to VistaBCD, and it gives me the option to
choose XP at boot time, but, if I choose that option, I still end up
booting to Vista. If I go into disc management and set the XP
partition to active, however, I boot straight into XP, so it's not as
though theres a problem with XP booting.

Structure of disc, as seen from Vista

EISA recovery partition - C: Vista - D: XP - extend partion (the first
3 are primary partitions)

The contents of the bcd:

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier {bootmgr}
device partition=C:
description Windows Boot Manager
locale en-US
inherit {globalsettings}
default {current}
resumeobject {1107d851-7158-11db-8f96-000ae4f8e160}
displayorder {current}
{80b8c49e-6a93-11dc-bc9e-0016d35dcc79}
toolsdisplayorder {memdiag}
timeout 3

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {current}
device partition=C:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Microsoft Windows Vista
locale en-US
inherit {bootloadersettings}
recoverysequence {572bcd55-ffa7-11d9-aae0-0007e994107d}
recoveryenabled Yes
osdevice partition=C:
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {1107d851-7158-11db-8f96-000ae4f8e160}
nx OptIn

Windows Legacy OS Loader
------------------------
identifier {80b8c49e-6a93-11dc-bc9e-0016d35dcc79}
device partition=D:
path \ntldr
description Windows XP

Any clues as to why this might not boot to XP?

Thanks

We typically recommend that you install XP first and then Vista, the boot
code for Vista is backwards compat, the bootcode in XP is not.

Joseph W. Conway, MCSE
Windows Server Group

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.