Dual Boot w/XP Home Gone Wrong..........

[Jeff Ingram]

Hello,

I've got a dual boot situation that's gone painfully wrong. I just
purchased Windows Vista Premium Upgrade and soon after that a Dell XPS 410
(This system would be able to support Vista). But this system came with XP
Home installed. I had created a 40 gig partition using Partition Magic out
of the installed 160 gig drive. So then I installed Vista Upgrade, booting
to the DVD and running the install from there. Everything seemed to go
without a hitch, but after it rebooted I didn't get the boot screen where it
would allow me to choose Windows XP or Windows Vista. Then I allowed it to
boot into Vista and checked in System Properties/Advanced, under Startup and
Recovery clicked Settings. Then looked under Default operating system and
only Microsoft Windows Vista is in the drop down list.

So next I went to Computer Management, Storage, Disk Managment and on Disk 0
the 106 gig partition that XP Home should be installed on doesn't even had a
drive letter assigned! It says "Healthy Primary Partition". When I right
click on that partition the only option I get is "Delete Volume". The
option to assign a drive letter is greyed out, along with all the other
options.

So how do I get my boot menu so that I can boot back into XP? Secondly, is
there a way that I can have a drive letter assigned to my Windows XP
partition without wiping it out.

Currently my drives are assigned as follows:

Disk 0
C: 39 gig (Vista is installed here)
106 gig (Primary Partition) (WindowsXP is installed here)
3 gig

Disk 1
D: 34 gig

Disk 2
F: 1 gig
E: 30 gig
G: 203 gig

System Specs:

Dell XPS 410
2.13Ghz Pentium Core 2 Duo
1536MB RAM
Phillips 16X DVD-ROM
Plextor PX755SA 16x DVD Writer
Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic sound card
SATA Western Digital 160Gig 10,000 RPM
SATA Maxtor 250 Gig 16mb cache
SATA Western Digital 36 gig 10,000 RPM

 

[Michael Jennings]

Since you bought the Upgrade, not the Full, Vista install was likely
programmed to replace XP with itself, which is what you paid for.
Being able to boot into either is set up by Full, not Upgrade.

There's a way around this, but you're on your own with it:
http://forums.techarena.in/showthread.php?t=691781

 

[Jeff Ingram]

No, that doesn't seem right at all. Why would it hide the entire Windows XP
partition then? It didn't overwrite the partition during the install, it
allowed me to install on a different partition, but then it purposely hid
the XP partition from all views? That just doesn't make sense at all. What
a frickin' waste that would be if that were true. "Let's see, we're going
to 'upgrade' you from XP to Vista and then hide all of your shit (the entire
partition) so you can't get to your old stuff" I don't think even Microsoft
would be that stupid.

And then you wouldn't even be able to use the Windows Transfer program to
continue to "upgrade" to Vista.

Sorry, I just don't think that's very logical. Do you know this to be true?
Is there a MS document that states this?

Other ideas?

Thanks,

Jeff

 

[Rock]

The Vista end user license for the upgrade version specifies you can't have
the qualifying OS (in this case XP) and Vista installed at the same time.
It's one or the other. If you want a dual boot, you need to have a second
licensed copy of XP to use the upgrade version or use a full version of
Vista with the current XP license.

 

[Gary VanderMolen]

Something is not ringing true.
If you booted from the Vista upgrade DVD, it would have refused
to continue when you entered the product key, because the
upgrade version requires that you start from an existing Windows
installation.

You should have installed Vista by opening the Vista DVD
from within Windows XP.

I have also heard a rumor that PM-created partitions are not
valid in Vista, but I have no solid confirmation of this.

Gary VanderMolen

 

[Jeff Ingram]

Something is not ringing true.
If you booted from the Vista upgrade DVD, it would have refused
to continue when you entered the product key, because the upgrade version
requires that you start from an existing Windows
installation.

You should have installed Vista by opening the Vista DVD
from within Windows XP.

I have also heard a rumor that PM-created partitions are not
valid in Vista, but I have no solid confirmation of this.

Gary VanderMolen

I did exactly as I stated. I booted to the Vista DVD and ran the install.
Now, I'm pretty certain that this is the upgrade version of Vista, not the
full version, although there are no markings on the box cover stating so. I
purchased it online and the price was considerably cheaper being the
"upgrade" Premium version. (Around $120 something at www.zipzoomfly.com
about 2 weeks ago)

As far as PM created partitions not being valid in Vista, well, all I can
say is that it installed on to. I cut out a 40 gig partition and checking
in Disk Management it definitely installed onto that partition that I
created. Now, why my XP partition seems to be hosed I don't know. It's
there, it just has no drive letter and I've got no boot menu to be able to
boot to it. (Very very strange.......)


Thanks,

Jeff