Quote:
Originally Posted by William_Wilson  you must have a SATA hard drive as opposed to an IDE drive. XP installs just fine on SATA drives, many people have done so.
You do not have to delete the partition, it is your choice, just be careful that the new partition for XP is also primary. |
I've read all the posts regarding this dual boot issue, but your quoted post particularly caught my attention, as I too had read that XP would need extra drivers, and would not install without them onto an SATA drive. Here is where I am at (not unlike a lot of others here it appears):
1) I have a new Dell with Pre-installed Vista Premium, trying to dual boot with XP Home.
2) Used Vista to partition the C: drive, created an F: drive about 10Gbs (probably more than necessary, not sure, as I do plan on installing some programs that won't run in Vista). I'm not sure, will check later, but think my new F is a Primary Drive.
3) Inserted my XP install CD, rebooted, F12, and it got to the screen than asked to which partition I wanted to use.
4) The only partition listed was c: partition 1(unknown)
5) The new F: partition does not show up. I F3 and fume..... I spent ALL day yesterday futsing around with one issue or another... all a waste thus far.
6) I installed an external Seatgate via eSATA and tried to install on this.
7) Step 3 again, never got to step 4 above. Blue screen with suggestion I remove any new drives I might have installed, or check for viruses.
Back to square one.
I removed my new external drive I tried the F: drive route again. Same ugly results, no option except the c: drive.
I see that a few others here are having no problem actually getting XP installed (unlike me) but that getting the the PC to see both OS as a dual boot is the issue. I'll deal with that later if I can just get past my install problem.
Question:
1) Should my new F: partition show up as F: on my XP install? Or is the C: partition 1 (unknown) actually the F: partition in reality, just showing up as C
I'm afraid to proceed as I don't want to wipe out all the Vista, including the Restore D: partition which came with my Dell in case of a dire emergency.
2) Any suggestions of where I might go from here?
Thanks for your help.