Dual Boot Vista and XP with Vista already installed
 

I have to make the assumption that the version of Vista most are using is 32-bit. I just bought an HP 9700 laptop with Vista Home Premium 64-bit pre-installed but I was able to get HP to send original recovery disk as the recovery program would not work. I have used them twice trying to get this thing to dual boot. I have been trying for six days now. Have been all over the web and tried everything. Not happening! I have a full version of XP PRO that I am trying to load. I have 3 primary partitions using different software. At step 3 XP says it can not find any drivers for the hard drive and terminates the instulation. The closest I get to XP seeing a partition is when I plug in a 4gb thumb drive, in fact I loaded XP to it just to make sure the disc was not corrupt. I have even gone into the BIOS to reconfigure the boot sequence. No luck. I sure could use some professional help !

The version of the OS 32 bit or 64 bit does not affect anything during istallation as they are not running.

Your XP is likely a version below SP2 and your drive a SATA as opposed to IDE. XP was designed before these drives became mainstream so they do not have default handling for all of them. Try checking your bios for a hard drive setting of "Native" and switch it to "Legacy" (you can switch it back after the install). If that doesn't work you may have to install sata drivers during the initial step of the installation where it asks for 3rd party drivers.

Great Post, great info
 

I found your post and it was exacly what I needed. Excellent procedure.

Thank you - Jon

PS I even registered just so you would know your information is extreemly useful.

some problem
 

william

I am having problem with xp boot. it gives me error
File: \ntldr
status: 0xc000000f
info ; The selected entry could not be loaded because application is missing or corrupt

Any idea what's going on??

thank you

ronit

the most likely cause is an incorrect boot.ini setting, it is checking the wrong partition. Can you list your partitions and what OS is on each and post your boot.ini?

I Need Help !
 

I think I screwed up big time. Heres my situation. On step four, I typed in the four commands but in the first command I typed in E since I thought I had to put in the disk drive in which XP was installed. (PLEASE DONT SAY MY COMPUTER IS DONE). So when I rebooted it, it went to an blue error screen. So Vista doesn't boot anymore, not even with the installation disc. AT ALL. So I was able to boot the computer with the xp installation cd. I deleted the disk drive and reinstalled xp only. But it still doesnt start up the way it should and I cant install vista no more.
I hope you can help. Thanks in advance.

hello william ... thanx for sharing ur important time to post such a valuable info... i want to downgrade vists but i got a problem in the starting itself ...
there are two drives ( C and D) in my inspiron 1525...while i tried to partition the C drive (D is recovery drive) i got the following error:
"you can not create a new volume in this unallocated space because the disk already contains the maximum number of partitions"

could u plzzz help me out.. what to do... its very urgent for me... i'llbe grateful to u...
thanx in advance....

If you use windows disc management then you may only have 4 logical partition to any windows system. This includes all drives and partitions.

In order to get around this you need to use a third party disc manager or boot manager.
You may use GAG a free boot manager to install up to 9 different partitions on installed drives...or you can look into others such as Partition Magic.
If you use the boot manager....you don't have to install any other operating systems ( nice though that it would be pre-set up)

Cannot install XP
 

hello,
after creating a partition for XP when i boot using the XP CD, i dont get the installation page instead Vista loads. i also tried to boot using a usb flash drive but it says "remove disk and other media and press any key to restart", when i press a key Vista loads. Can anyone help with this problem please.

Hello

This tutorial is excellent!

Worked great the first time and no problems since (untill now!)

I had to reload Vista. What do i need to do to get XP working again? I am assumung that I have to reload somethng for the boot record but I am not sure where to begin. Any Help would be Greatly appreciated.

Thanks

<Mark>