Vista ate XP! Dual boot?

MedlockMedlock Miramar, Florida Member
edited March 2007 in Science & Tech
I recently made the jump from XP to Vista, but after multiple problems (first getting it to install, and now within the OS) I've decided to dual-boot with windows XP.

I created a secondary partition on my hard drive, and installed XP home, but then there were no options for Vista. I popped in the Vista DVD to repair it and now I can't boot to XP. :confused:

Does anyone have some tips to help me dual boot my machine?

Thanks

Comments

  • mtroxmtrox Minnesota
    edited March 2007
    Yea there are a lot of "challenges" to dual booting XP and Vista. Check out this thread...a buddy of mine just gave up and went back to XP.

    I haven't done it, but I've heard from some others that the way to go is virtual PC. You can get it from MS here.

    If you do it, write a note back here. I hear it's a little slower but works well. I've got a client that might have to do this and I'd like to hear some more experiences with it.
  • MedlockMedlock Miramar, Florida Member
    edited March 2007
    I found a guide and fixed it up... here's a link if anyone cares :p It assumes Vista was installed first. (As it was in my case)

    http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp

    Hope my mistake helps someone else out :)
  • mtroxmtrox Minnesota
    edited March 2007
    Interesting....did it work for you?

    Those instructions didn't have the problem my buddy had. His was a brand new Vista box with an OEM of Home Premium. He got the XP install going fine, but after the install files are copied and it wants to reboot to the GUI part of the install, it just went into Vista on reboot. He had no way of getting it to boot back into the XP install GUI. These instructions don't deal with that issue.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited March 2007
    You could've just edited the boot .INI and referenced the XP installation's disk and partition.
  • mtroxmtrox Minnesota
    edited March 2007
    Other way around Thrax. Vista's boot thing was in charge. boot.ini didn't exisit, or was useless. And by that time he was so pi--ed at the whole thing he just took it back and bought an XP machine.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited March 2007
    Oh, load vista and use "BCDEDIT" from a command shell. Check the switches after invoking the /help switch to see what Vista can do to manage dual boots.
  • MedlockMedlock Miramar, Florida Member
    edited March 2007
    Yeah I was going to edit boot.ini but then I found out Vista's bootloader thing was totally different...then I was lost.
  • TheSmJTheSmJ
    edited March 2007
    VistaBootPRO is a great app for editing Vista's boot settings. It uses a very simple GUI and takes a lot of the work out of messing with BCDEDIT.

    http://www.vistabootpro.org/
  • mtroxmtrox Minnesota
    edited March 2007
    Thrax wrote:
    Oh, load vista and use "BCDEDIT" from a command shell. Check the switches after invoking the /help switch to see what Vista can do to manage dual boots.

    That's a lot of dink'n around no matter how you get there. You have to let XP copy its install files, then let it boot back into Vista. Then do the BCEDIT with the proper path for the XP install GUI (and I don't know what that is), then reboot back into XP's install GUI, install XP the rest of the way, then reboot back into...lemme see....I'm not sure what it would reboot into. XP would leave a boot.ini there but I think the Vista's bootloader would take over on reboot and want to take you back into a now non-existent XP install GUI. So then you have to...............it's just not worth it for what he was doing.
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