thanks a tonne
 

the best dual boot guide ever...i never had problems installing vista over xp....bur i always screwed up when it was the other way round....thanks to your guide....i am not only able to do it....but now i also understand why i wasn't able to do it....keep up the good work...and 3 cheers to you....

Hello!

You tutorial is very nice and easy to work with :)

But I have a problem....

Everything works ok till step 3, up to the Bootrec step.

After typing "Bootrec.exe /fixMBR" it says "The operation completed successfully."
But after typing "Bootrec.exe /fixBoot" it says
"The volume does not contain a recognized file system.
Please mae sure that all required file system drivers are loaded and that the volume is not corrupted."

And the computer is constantly bootin up Windows XP and I can't get it to boot up Vista.
I tried using Startup Repair, too, but it says that system booted normally and it fixes nothing.

What do I do????

Thanks :)

Im suspect I'm on a snipe hunt....
 

First...thx for all the info here. I've read every single post on this thread and now believe I may have saved myself a lot of grief by doing so. Mr. Wilson: you are a very patient & giving soul, indeed.

I suspect that an answer to the following question(s) will help quite a few people here....

Please confirm that I will NOT be able to set up a dual boot on my new system (or....if I actually CAN, then tell me where I can send a large bottle of your favorite adult beverage!)...

Have brand new HP Pavillion model a6257c. Specs are available here: HP Pavilion a6257c Desktop PC - Product Specifications

It comes with Vista Premium Home installed. No Vista CD is included (don't get me started....letters are already on the way to HP & M$ for THIS insidious omission). I did however, make Recovery Disks (2 dvds vs. 15 cds that it said it needed.), whatever those are. I doubt that they include a full Vista install, but could be wrong.

I do own a legal XP Pro w/ SP2 CD, however, and have the product key handy.

According to HP, there are NO XP drivers available for this machine. They also state that, while MS supports "going backwards" from Vista to XP, HP does not. So not finding XP drivers for this machine on the HP web site comes as no surprise. However, the other odd & unusual thing is ASUS, the MoBo maker doesn't seem to have a manual or drivers or anything for this MoBo on their site either. This is odd. They've always been very supportive in the past.

This is a 64 bit duo core with one SATA HD. Not sure I read some posts right, but this may be yet another reason that a dual boot set up won't work on this machine.

No problem using Vista to re-partition. It was quite EZ. This is what I ended up with:

Note: All 3 partitions have the same Layout, Type, & File System. That is: Simple, Basic, and NTFS.

HP (C:) Healthy (Primary Partition) >aprox. 172 GB size
(This is the volume I shrank to create the 3rd partition....for XP)

Factory Image (D:) Healthy (System, Boot, Page File, Active, Crash Dump, Primary Partition) > aprox. 9 GB size

New Volume (K:) Note that this drive letter was necessary due to all the removable media devices that came built in...I could have chosen A or B (and still can change it, of course), but feared that would cause problems. >aprox. 117 GB size

I formatted the New Volume.

That's where I am at this time, and fear proceeding. From all the reading & research I've done, it would appear that I'm out of luck on creating a dual-boot on this system.

Do you agree???

If so, can you instruct me how to return the C: drive back to it's original size?

If you disagree, then please tell me how to obtain XP drivers that'll work with this machine, and how to proceed from here.

Thanks so much for all of your efforts here. As a newbie, I'm very impressed.
Chris

I succeeded in installing dual boot on a number of HP, Dell and Toshiba machines. You'll just need to work a bit and I'm sure you'll succeed. It's worth the effort to avoid this Vista crap.

You can find the xp drivers on the sites of device manufacturers. For example, for your 945G Intel chipset : Intel® 945 Express Chipset Family - Intel® 945 Chipset family information and downloads. You'll find the storage manager driver for your sata disk and a great deal of detailed information. Especially, how to implement your storage manager driver at xp installation time (the F6 routine).

The first thing I would do is run Everest (version 4.20.1170 or higher runs on XP and Vista) to find out what specific devices are installed on your pc. Then, go to the respective maufacturer sites to download the drivers you need.

Since you don't have a Vista DVD handy, here's the procedure I used which just requires your XP cd and freeware you can download.

Install EasyBCD 1.7, a freeware described in the attachment of Message 242 above. It will fix the MBR and boot.ini for you.

Verifying this will work...
 

Again, as others have said, thanks for keeping everyone up to speed with all the questions being asked - no small task!

I have a new system pre-installed with Vista Basic. According to the Disk Management, my single 250GB HD goes like this:

1st partition: EISA Config (15MB)
2nd partition: Recovery Partition (D:\) (10GB)
3rd partition: Vista OS (C:\) (233GB)


If I've disabled the auto-recovery features of Vista (how do I know I've totally, and completely done this?) , can I blow away that 2nd partition (D:\), and install XP on that 10GB partition? Will there be any wierd issues with having the D:\ drive sit before the C:\ drive on the physical disk?

Lastly, it appears that the /ntldr directory which normally sits with the XP installation, is written to the C:\ partition (where Vista is, the Active-Partition) Correct? This is why some posters asked, "why am I having the Vista Boot Loader boot XP from the C:\ drive, when it's actually on the D:\ drive?"

I executed the instructions last nite, and everything worked perfectly. I was lucky; the XP SP2 CD I was using had SATA drivers for the NVidia chipset, so I didn't get the error about "I don't see a HD to install on..."

worked for me!

last night i backed up and wiped my whole system (dell e520, core 2 duo, 3 months old) and then reloaded a fresh vista using my dell disc on the smallest partition (cant really use vista with my software, just wanted it there in case for the future!)

Then I loaded xp pro on the main partition. your instructions were literally ""1,2,3" and it was all done in an hour or so.

thanks for the great guide.