How do i dual boot with Vista and XP?

ohreally

After buying a pc installed with Vista, I've decided to install XP pro on a slave hd. On my previous pc all i had to do was edit the boot.ini file to give me the choice from which hd to boot from, Vista is not so easy. My first problem was discovered after connecting up my secondary hd and configuring it as slave to discover windows doesn't see the drive and neither does the bios. If i electrically disconnect the primary master the bios will now report the presence of the other hd as primary slave....re-connecting the master makes the slave invisible again, either in the bios or in Windows. Anyone explain?
Can i install XP on the slave by disconnecting the master? If yes, how do i then configure to dual boot once i re-connect the master?
Would it be easier to have XP as the master drive and Vista on the slave?

Tia.

Red_Rose_Exile

Have a read of this page

banger9365

"As far as i know you are able to do this, but you would need vista install first as you wont be able to boot into xp using there loader you will need the vista boot loader manger."


letts get one thing right xp goes on first main hdd ,vista goes on slave hdd,
vista is the newest operating system and install it lasted NOT first.

first formate C drive and install xp on it like you would any othertime get that running right first .
second install vista on D drive (or your slave /old hdd )
this is the easy way,

vista then xp is the hard way and tust me it's not easy and not impossible just a lott of messing about with different thing and if you not that good xp to vista is a lot easyer to do, it that simple xp on one and first then vista on second and last and then you are duel booting that easy

ohreally

I'm reluctant to format my C drive as it's an oem version of the os and it's likely i won't have access to motherboard drivers etc so i may make that physical hd my slave. The next issue will be to try and locate mb drivers for XP................:mad: I can see me selling this pc and going back to a custom build, at least that way i will retain a degree of versatility which i havn't got at the moment and i can see thgis going pear shape if i can't source mb drivers.

toasterman

I had success using this -> http://neosmart.net/blog/2006/easybcd-15-multidual-boot-vista-linux-mac-os-x-bsd/

Quite easy to use if I recall. You can select which operating systems you have and it modifies the boot loader for you. Makes it easy to remove them when you don't want them anymore too. All based inside Windows, no formatting or moving of drives, etc required.

I had the osx86project version of mac os x on my pc too, and when I tried to add that into the mix, I couldn't get that to work. The boot loader worked fine, i just got some bizarre "chain error" when I tried to boot to os x.

Worked fine with vista, xp, and ubuntu though.

banger9365

source the drivers first best thing really,you should have a back up off the os for vista on a partion and a anytime upgrade disk (it's full vista)and you code (coa)somwehere on your pc.
and you must have a xp disk original yes.
and a utility disk thats vista or xp drivers ?
so when you have all the drivers formate the drive ,put leave the back up partion so you can put vista back on if it goes belly up and install,thats what it would do

indierocker85

The way I did it, I installed Vista on the same drive as the XP, then it prompts me as to which I want to boot into."Vista" or "earlier version". selected earlier, then as opposed ot using two seperate drives used diskmanagement in windows to format the 2nd drive and simply use that as a data holding drive that way I could view and use documents from each operating system conveniently. R.E Wiping the drive and losing the motherboard drivers, who made the PC i.e PB, Dell etyc, as if you visit their support site often they can direct you to the specific drivers by you entering the system serial number etc

bookduck

Why do you want Vista and XP on the same machine? Could you not stick with one?

If you stick with XP you could use VMWARE server - free product and create virtual machines or linux, vista, dos, et all on the same pc. this does make the machine slower than normal, but in many cases it is not noticeable.

Robin_T_Cox

See also:
http://aumha.net/viewtopic.php?t=24408