Dual Boot Vista and XP with Vista already installed

If you want to install Vista onto an XP computer, try the reverse tutorial: (XP already installed)
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</Dream In Code>
-William. § (marvin_gohan)

Hello all.
I have been looking through all the posts and did not see a clear example of booting when you have 2 different drives.

I loaded a new drive onto my Vista Machine
I installed xp on the new drive (drive G
I reinstalled the setup on the vista drive
I get the boot option with windows vista and windows xp
Vista loads fine
XP shows the NTldr error
both drives are Serial ATA

I am not clear (need layman's terms) on how / what to edit

I see quotes on editing the bcedit file but I am not clear on what {legacy} means.

help!
Thanks
Noah

Strike that! I got it to work by following your BCDedit instructions on Blind Faith - Thank you!

For others with 2 drives (trying to Install XP on exsisting Vista):

1. insert the new drive
2. boot your xp CDROM
3. Install xp on the unpartitioned new drive
4. reboot into XP
5. Install all drivers and updates (and reboot and rereboot as required)
6. Insert the Windows Vista DVD
7. Select Next and then REPAIR option
8. Now reboot into windows Vista (will happen automatically)
9. Follow Williams instructions (Thank you William again!!!):
"Configuration Data Store Editor" bcdedit.exe:
(Just as an explanation, the loader type for XP is an NT Loader, hence the use of ntldr)

-first open a command prompt with administrative privilages **(right-click and choose "run as administrator")
*Note the following 2 answers from bcdedit for each item are acceptable:
"The Operation Completed Successfully"
"The Specified Entry Already Exists"
Be sure to type each line carefully (replace C in the first line with the drive containing your Vista installation):
bcdedit –set {ntldr} device partition=C:
bcdedit –set {ntldr} path \ntldr
bcdedit –displayorder {ntldr} –addlast
bcdedit -set {ntldr} description "Microsoft Windows XP"
"

** to open this goto Start --> All Programs --> Accessories--> (right click) Command prompt (and select run as administartor)

Once this is done everything should work.... I said should....


Noah

Hi guys, I wonder if someone might be able to help me. I'm trying to install XP on to a machine running 64bit Vista and I'm having a problem at the installation stage of XP. I created the partition of 9gigs in Vista, rebooted with the XP CD but when it comes to choosing which partition to install XP on to, the list is empty apart from four entries of 'Unknown Disk <There is no disk in this drive.>' which I presume correspond to my in-built memory card reader. Any ideas? My computer is new but I would've thought it would still be able to take XP? There was just one partition on the hard drive to begin with, and the size of the hard drive is 320 GB. Thanks for the help.

Just an update on my problem, I managed to get XP to recognise my hard drive. It turrned out I had to use NLite to install the SATA drivers into the XP installation files before XP could recognise my hard drive! I managed to get XP to install, but when it reboots for the first time, this appears.."Error loading operating system" Any ideas? Thanks.



New problem!! Computer keeps saying Disk Read Error, press Ctrl, Alt + Del. I've repaired the MBR with the Vista installation disk, many times, but still not working...help!

Well I have an ASUS A8N-SLI Premium MB and have Vista x64 installed on a NVIDIA Raid 0 drive. I shrunk down the Vista partition to prepare for the XP install. I then booted to XP hit F6 and loaded the NVraid drivers. The install had no issue seeing the partition and copied all install files. On the first restart of the Install of XP I get:

Invalid Boot.ini file
Booting from c:\Windows

Then

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt
<Windows Root> \System 32\ntoskrnl.exe

Well I then booted with the Vista CD and selected the Repair Your Computer option. When it searches for Vista installations it does not find one. I loaded the drivers and it still does not find the Vista install.

I went to a cmd prompt and can navigate to my C: drive and Vista Partition as well as my E: drive that is the XP partition. I ran the bootrec commands with no errors and rebooted with the above issue.

I tried to some bcdedit commands to fix my boot but nothing will bring back my Vista install nor can I boot to XP.

Before I started this I tried using Acronis to back up the partition but it had issues with my other Raid 5 disks and could not copy so I am in a little pickle.

Any Ideas?

Your "dual boot" tutorial could not have been clearer! Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

ClydeD

I have an Acer 5720, step 1 went fine as E:XP with 13GB, but when I try to install XP it says program block due to compatablity issues. Set-up wont continue because of newer verson.
Did I miss something?

I have a Dell Vostro 1700 with 2 internal hard drives When it gets to install XP it tells me It cannot find any hard drives. I can see the new drive created following your method. I have also tried just shrinking a volume to create a blank partition but still get no hd found in xp. I need some help please

Clive

I followed the instructions for installing XP and everything seemed to be fine. However, when the system boots it shows both OSes but XP always boots. When you look at the Advanced setting tab in XP, it lists XP twice.

I tried to go back and rerun the setup. I can get through the boot the Vista CD and go throught he Step 3 part, but then when I get to Step 4 I am stuck, because I cannot boot Vista and XP does not appear to support the bcdedit command.

Vista is on partition C, XP on partition D on the same harddrive. When I looked at the bcdedit file after my initial setup, it looked exactly like the one in the example.

How can I proceed.

I followed all the steps perfectly up until step 4 and I just have typed in bcdedit –set {ntldr} device partition=C: and it gave me either ''An error occurred while attempting to reference the specified entry." or "The specified command line is the valid"
Help
Sorry I am kind of new at this