Booting vista alongside xp

[John]

Hi

xp is on my primary sata disk and on my secondary sata disk there is a
separate install of vista. So if I disable the primary (xp) disk in setup
then vista boots from secondary disk. Can I make it easy to boot vista as
needed by adding a vista entry in my xp boot.ini? If yes, what would be the
entry considering the vista is on secondary (disk1?) drive and in first
partition?

Thanks

Regards

 

[dev]

/John/ said:

xp is on my primary sata disk and on my secondary sata disk there is
a separate install of vista. So if I disable the primary (xp) disk in
setup then vista boots from secondary disk. Can I make it easy to
boot vista as needed by adding a vista entry in my xp boot.ini? If
yes, what would be the entry considering the vista is on secondary
(disk1?) drive and in first partition?

Check first to see if your BIOS supports the F8 feature that I use for
switching between drives/OS here, with Vista as the default...

After reboot pressing F8 brings up a menu of drives. Selecting
the XP drive boots into that operating system.

Reboot again, without pressing a key, and Vista loads. Nothing to
change in BIOS. Of course, each time XP is chosen, Vista's restore
points are wiped out - but that is not a concern here and can be
remedied if desired.

 

[John Barnes]

You cannot boot Vista using the boot.ini. That is only for legacy systems.
You can use EasyBCD or VistaBootPro, from your Vista system, and add a
legacy drive to the Vista boot screen. You may then have to copy the ntldr
ntdetect.com and boot.ini files to the Vista drive. Vista should be made
your system drive, by making it the first drive in boot priority, and the
boot.ini entry for rdisk, probably changed to 1

 

[Ronnie Vernon MVP]

John

Use VistaBootPro. This is a free application and you can install it on
either installation. Very easy to use and intuitive to set up.

VistaBootPRO - Go PRO with Microsoft Windows Vista Boot Manager:
http://www.vistabootpro.org/

 

[John Barnes]

Granted you CAN install it on either installation, but it can only work on
the installation booted by the Vista bootmanager. It can't see the
bootmanager if it isn't on the system drive.

 

[Ronnie Vernon MVP]

John

Noted. Thanks for the information.