If you want to install Vista onto an XP computer, try the reverse tutorial: (XP already installed) (How to Dual Boot Windows XP and Vista)Click here to read the entire tutorial

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-William. § (marvin_gohan)

Mr Wilson,
where have you gone? pls back to help me..............

Everything is good till trying to repair boot mbr.
Computer did not come with Vista CD. Only Recovery Partition and we created Recovery DVD set. Downloaded Torrent file and Torrent program. After 2 days, still no Recovery disc created by Torrent. Did I miss something.

PLEASE HELP. Until I stumbled across this website, I have formatted and installed Vista and XP a dozen times over the last 2 months.

Thank you, William, for helping me with the dual boot process.
My Vista Computer Management program has created a Logical drive, not a partition. Does this make a difference? How can I make a logical drive into a partition? My Dell XPS420 has the OS Partitioned in C: and a Recovery partitioned in D:.

A partition is just that. A dedicated sectioning of a harddisc. A HDD can have up to 4 primary partitions and up to 24 logical partitions based on the archetecture of the operating system.

The differences are that primary drives are made as bootable (active) and are given a priority for assigned drive letters than what logical partitions are given.

To change the logical to primary (bootable) ......while in disc management
in the lower window rt. clk. the partition that you wish to change and select "make active".

Ok, I downloaded Visual Boot Pro (which I recommend, very easy and free) to fix the boot loader issue. After that when I rebooted I got the error message that the file was missing or corrupt, which I think people have referred to in earlier posts. The problem was that I referred to drive letter F: (where XP Pro) is installed, instead of to drive C: which is where ntldr is located.

Thanks!

Joel


Wow, I thought I was going to fly right through this, but I too ran into problems at step 4. I'm sure our friend William is sorry he ever put this up!

When I ran
bcdedit -set {ntldr} device partition = C:
I got the response
The device is not valid as specified.
Run "bcdedit /?" for command line assistance.

I installed XP Pro no problem on logical drive F:, and had no problems with the instructions to restore Vista as the default boot OS. So I'm in no trouble, but I'd love to be able to dual boot XP Pro.


If you have any suggestions, great, otherwise I'm no worse off than I was.

Thanks,

Joel

This is my first post ever, so thanks in advance for any advise.
I have an XP image on an external HD, Cloned by Acronis.
I want to install it on a larger HD, now running Vista, on a notebook and make it dual bootable.
The XP image is most important, as it has tons of programs that vista doesent support, and data that i use daily. The Vista can be dumped and reinstalled if required.
So i guess I need to know my best and easiest options. Thanks again!

Hi William,

Your instructions make total sense but my machine doesn't like them after 2nd step. I just got new Lenovo Y710 laptop, made partitions with Vista's disk management system as you advised, and got to run XP installation, (2nd step first xp setup screenshot you have posted) but then I'm getting the XP installation message that my computer doesn't have hdd installed and setup cannot continue. It just doesn't see hdd and there is C: vista partition - 30gb, D: 99gb F: - 48gb , and G - 48gb . D, F and G are empty. I assume it is about some Vista security block. Not sure does it mater but when I got computer I made one restore point. I read somewhere that might cause some dual boot problems.
Any advices?

Thanks a bunch,

Goran

William,
I Followed the directions to the letter and got a message that said I couldn't partition the hard drive because it already had all the partitions it could take. Why did I think this was going to be easy?

Here's the config of my Dell computer in Computer Management:
Volume (blank)
layout simple
type Basic
file system (blank)
status Healthy (EISA configuration)

Volume (blank)
layout simple
type Basic
file system (blank)
status Healthy (primary)

Volume OS (C)
layout simple
type Basic
file system NTFS
status Healthy (System, Boot, Page File, Active, Crash Dump, Primary

Volume RECOVERY (D)
layout simple
type NTFS
File system NTFS
status Healthy (Primary Partition)

Bottom 6 windows appear as follows:
1. Disk 0 Basic 298.09 GB Online

2. 86 MB Healthy
3. RECOVERY (D) 10.00 GB NTFS helathy (Primary)
4. OS (C) 261.02 GB NTFS Healthy (System, Boot, page file, active, crash dump, primary
5. 24.48 GB unallocated (I think I did this when I chose the new simple volume and specified volume size much larger than I should have) --Now it won't let me undo this.
6. 2.50 GB Healthy (Primary)

The biggest let down of windows operating systems is that you can only have 4 primary partitions on any given disk. It is a default action and the only way around this is to use a third party boot manager.

Google for GAG

hi william,i have been reading your tutorial on the dual booting as i am very interested in it myself,i must praise you on the way you have explained it from start to finish,i have checked the same process out on many forums,but you have taken the time to illustrate each step thoroughly,well done thanks heaps