Dual Boot Challenge

[Travis King]

I'm trying to do a dual-boot on a test machine. The reason why it's a
test machine is because I am testing to see if I can figure out how to
dual-boot XP and Vista with Vista installed first. My computer has Vista on
it, and I've been thinking about dual-booting it with XP, but I don't want
to do it if I have to wipe my hard drives and start over, so I decided I
would test it out on a test PC first.

Okay, so I went ahead and installed XP on another partition from Vista.
As expected, Vista would no longer boot, so I did a repair for the booting
of Vista. I now managed to get Vista to boot. I installed a 3rd party
boot-loader utility to create the XP boot entry. That's fine, but when I
try to boot XP, it says NTLDR is missing. As expected, if I do a repair
install on XP, then Vista won't boot any more, then if I fix Vista's boot
loader, then XP won't boot anymore. I'm kind of stuck in an endless loop.
Any suggestions? Thanks.

 

[John Inzer]

I'm trying to do a dual-boot on a test machine. The reason why
it's a test machine is because I am testing to see if I can figure
out how to dual-boot XP and Vista with Vista installed first. My
computer has Vista on it, and I've been thinking about dual-booting
it with XP, but I don't want to do it if I have to wipe my hard
drives and start over, so I decided I would test it out on a test PC
first.
Okay, so I went ahead and installed XP on another partition from
Vista. As expected, Vista would no longer boot, so I did a repair for
the booting of Vista. I now managed to get Vista to boot. I
installed a 3rd party boot-loader utility to create the XP boot
entry. That's fine, but when I try to boot XP, it says NTLDR is
missing. As expected, if I do a repair install on XP, then Vista
won't boot any more, then if I fix Vista's boot loader, then XP won't
boot anymore. I'm kind of stuck in an endless loop. Any suggestions?
Thanks.

=====================
Maybe the following links will offer some ideas:

How to dual boot Vista and
XP (with Vista installed first)
-- the step-by-step guide
http://www.apcstart.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp

VistaBootPRO
http://www.vistabootpro.org/index.php
(scroll down to the download link)

--

John Inzer
MS Picture It! -
Digital Image MVP

Digital Image
Highlights and FAQs
http://tinyurl.com/aczzp

Notice
This is not tech support
I am a volunteer

Solutions that work for
me may not work for you

Proceed at your own risk

 

[Travis King]

Actually, the website you had for instructions on dual-booting was the exact
website I was at to do this dual-booting. Also, I tried Vista Boot Pro and
the utility the website mentioned. Thanks.

 

[Kerry Brown]

Try this method

http://forums.techguy.org/windows-vista/583697-guide-installing-xp-win2k-after.html

 

[John Inzer]

Actually, the website you had for instructions on dual-booting was
the exact website I was at to do this dual-booting. Also, I tried
Vista Boot Pro and the utility the website mentioned. Thanks.

===========
Sorry...for wasting your time.

--

John Inzer
MS Picture It! -
Digital Image MVP

Digital Image
Highlights and FAQs
http://tinyurl.com/aczzp

Notice
This is not tech support
I am a volunteer

Solutions that work for
me may not work for you

Proceed at your own risk

 

[Travis King]

It's okay... You were only trying to help.

===========
Sorry...for wasting your time.

--

John Inzer
MS Picture It! -
Digital Image MVP

Digital Image
Highlights and FAQs
http://tinyurl.com/aczzp

Notice
This is not tech support
I am a volunteer

Solutions that work for
me may not work for you

Proceed at your own risk

 

[DP]

What about running XP in a virtual machine on your Vista box? I realize it's
not quite the same as dual booting, but if you can't figure out the dual
booting thing to your satisfaction, virtualization is an option.
There are several virtualization products, including one made by MS itself,
that are free.

 

[Travis King]

The manual command prompt work did the same thing. Vista will boot fine,
but XP says that NTLDR is corrupt or missing, so Windows XP can't start. I
guess they aren't kidding when they say you should install the OS before the
new OS. When I beta tested Vista, I had XP first then Vista, so that worked
fine, but the other way around is nothing but headaches. Thanks.

 

[Kerry Brown]

The key is that you need to know which is the active partition, not where XP
is installed. It sounds like one of two things is happening. You have set XP
to boot from the XP partition not the active partition. The XP boot files
are on the active partition which is probably the Vista partition. The other
possibility is the boot.ini file is pointing to the wrong partition.

 

[Travis King]

Would not having SP2 on XP have something to do with it by chance? It was a
fresh install of XP, and I didn't even bother putting SP2 on it yet if it
was going to end up messing up the data anyway. Secondly, would it be by
chance that in Vista, it uses the XP partition as drive D:, but XP uses it
as drive F:? Since I'm setting up the dual-boot in Vista, I'm setting it to
drive D:, so when XP boots, it tries to find data on drive D: instead of
F:... Is this a possibility?

 

[XS11E]

I am testing to see if I can figure out how to dual-boot XP and
Vista with Vista installed first.

What you need to figure out is how to use Google, I got 1,010,000 hits!
;-)

Here's one that should work for you:

http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp

 

[Travis King]

What you need to figure out is how to look at the previous posts to know
that I already looked at that exact link, and I did use Google before coming
to this newsgroup to ask. ;-) Most of the results from Google gave me a
scenario where XP was installed first, and that's not what I'm looking for.

 

[XS11E]

What you need to figure out is how to look at the previous posts
to know that I already looked at that exact link, and I did use
Google before coming to this newsgroup to ask. ;-)

Sorry, just trying to help. I saw you had looked at that link, I
apparently missed the part where you said you'd checked all 1,010,000
hits. <g>

 

[Kerry Brown]

Since you installed Vista first then the Vista partition is probably the
active partition. This is where the boot files are. Try setting XP to boot
from C:

 

[andy]

If you used VistaBootPro to add the legacy OS, select the drive letter
of the Windows XP system partition (should be the partition that Vista
is in), not the Windows XP boot partition.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

I'm trying to do a dual-boot on a test machine. The reason why it's
a test machine is because I am testing to see if I can figure out how to
dual-boot XP and Vista with Vista installed first. My computer has
Vista on it, and I've been thinking about dual-booting it with XP, but I
don't want to do it if I have to wipe my hard drives and start over, so
I decided I would test it out on a test PC first.

Okay, so I went ahead and installed XP on another partition from
Vista. As expected, Vista would no longer boot, so I did a repair for
the booting of Vista. I now managed to get Vista to boot. I installed
a 3rd party boot-loader utility to create the XP boot entry. That's
fine, but when I try to boot XP, it says NTLDR is missing. As expected,
if I do a repair install on XP, then Vista won't boot any more, then if
I fix Vista's boot loader, then XP won't boot anymore. I'm kind of
stuck in an endless loop. Any suggestions? Thanks.

The older OS must be installed first unless you wish to acquire and
use some 3rd-party partition and boot management utility. (In which
case you have to follow the instructions provided by whatever 3rd party
solution you select.)

However, dual-booting is no longer necessary in most situations.

Why not download a Virtual Machine application, such as Microsoft's
VirtualPC 2007 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.asp?) or
Innotek's VirtualBox (http://www.virtualbox.org/) and run Win2K and your
legacy applications within a virtual computer. Both are free and work
with Vista. (Microsoft does not support the use of VirtualPC 2007 on
Vista Home editions, but several people have reported that it works just
fine.)


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. ~Bertrand Russell

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has
killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot

 

[XS11E]

The older OS must be installed first unless you wish to
acquire and use some 3rd-party partition and boot management
utility.

Not true. It's entirely possible to install the older OS last and then
fix the boot partition w/o using any 3rd party application. BTDT.

It requires a bit of fiddling around but it's not too difficult.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919529

I'm surprised I haven't seen discussed here the easiest way to dual
boot and that's to use two hard drives.

Most computers allow a second hard drive to be installed, hard drives
are fairly reasonably priced these days and most of the newer BIOSs
allow one or the other HD to be selected as a boot device.

One can install a second HD, enter the BIOS to select it as the boot
device and install XP (or whatever) on it. Then to switch back to
Vista one merely reboots, enters the BIOS and changes the boot device
to the other HD.

Works effortlessly, provides extra storage and the only drawback is the
price of the drive itself and the few minutes required to open up the
case and install it.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Not true. It's entirely possible to install the older OS last and then
fix the boot partition w/o using any 3rd party application. BTDT.

It requires a bit of fiddling around but it's not too difficult.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919529

Interesting. Thanks for the information. Although I'm inclined to
question your "not too difficult" assessment. I've dual-booted WinXP
and Vista, and learned that anything requiring the use of BCEdit isn't
for the faint of heart. ;-}


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. ~Bertrand Russell

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has
killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot

 

[XS11E]

Interesting. Thanks for the information. Although I'm
inclined to question your "not too difficult" assessment. I've
dual-booted WinXP and Vista, and learned that anything requiring
the use of BCEdit isn't for the faint of heart. ;-}

All things are relative, I guess. I've always believed if I can do it
it must be pretty easy. <G> I do recall having to make a couple of
attempts to get BCDEdit filled in correctly.

 

[Gary Mount]

You can go into your bios and change what drive is the boot drive. If you
have two drives, then you can install vista on one and xp on the other and
switch to the appropriate one upon booting. No boot loader problems as you
manually tell the system which drive to boot from. When you install the o/s
from the cd, which you boot from, just make sure the boot hard drive you
want the o/s to install to is set up in the bios.
That will work. and after you are finished testing you can just reformat the
hard drive that you no longer want to have the o/s on. You other o/s won't
even know or care about any other o/s install. Just switch to the
appropriate hard disk to boot from in the bios.