Dual boot Vista with XP problem
 

Hello,

I have a laptop (Dell Inpirion 1525) with Vista already installed. I wanted to also install XP as a dual boot, so I tried to follow the guide below:

http://www.syschat.com/dual-boot-vis...eady-1946.html

In order to make my problem clearer, I have outlined below what I have done so far:

1. I followed the steps in the guide in the link above. Got as far as where i need to "Shrink Volume" of my C: drive (where Vista is installed). My drive is about 100 gb, with just about 50gb used, however, in the "Shrink C" dialogue box, it was only allowing me a max volume of about 4.5 gb to shrink. As I wanted more space for my XP, i decided to find a way to shrink more volume out of the C: drive.

2. I used Easeus Partition Master to resizing/move partition of the C: drive and got 39.07 gb of unallocated space from the C: drive, and left with 60.13 gb Vista. Now, the one issue is that the 39.07 gb unallocated space shows as a logical drive when displayed by Easeus Partition Manager, and it won't allow me to convert this to a primary drive. However, in the Vista disk management window, the 39.07 gb shows as unallocated with the black tab.

3. When I right-click on the 39.07 gb unallocated drive in the Vista disk management window, and select "New Simple Volume", the "New Simple Volume Wizard" pops-up. When I click next, it shows me maximum disk space in mb as 40007, and minimum disk space in mb as 8. When I click next until I get to where I enter Volume label (as XP), and tick Perform a quick format, and then click next and finish, it keeps coming up as error: "There is not enough space available on the disk(s) to complete this operation" :confused:

Any advice/assistance please? Many thanks

Anybody at all to help? Thanks

Ok, may be I will be able to get some help with this. After not having much luck with my problem above, I decided to just start from the beginning with a clean install. I reformatted my drive, created two partitions of equal sizes, installed XP first, and then installed Vista. Everything seems to be working fine now. The only issue I have got is this:

1. When I boot into XP, I see two drives. XP seems to be on E: drive, and Vista on C: drive, as I can see files on E: drive when I click on it, but files etc on C: drive come up as hidden. When I try to install programs while in XP, the programs' installation folders automatically default to C: drive. I have to manually change this to E: drive every time.

2. When I boot into Vista, I see two drives - C: and D: drives, no E: drive. Vista seems to be on D: drive, and XP seems to be on C: drive. To make matter confusing, when I try to install a program in Vista, the program's folder defaults to C: drive. Also more confusing, is when I use a disc image creator like Macrium Reflect to make an image copy of my drives as back-ups, in Vista, it shows D: drive as active (with 12:22GB used), and C: drive as logical (with 26.03 GB used). In XP, it shows C: drive as active (with 12.22GB used), and E: drive as logical (with 25.63GB used).

My questions are:
1. For the purpose of backing up a disc image of my drives, which of the drives is actually XP to back up, and which is Vista, or which drives should I back-up as disc image for that matter?

2. When installing programs, do I need to change the default drive (C: drive), or does it not matter?

3. In XP, I can't actually seem to be able to navigate to desk top via windows explorer. For example, when I created a folder on my desk top in XP to use as default folder for downloads from Firefox. When I opened Firefox to set my default folder for downloads, I could not navigate to the desk top to select the download folder I have created.

Many thanks

hi, my experience with disk cloning programs is that the default settings would try to detect your root directory and then ask if you indeed want to clone that drive. i suggest you try the cloning program and choose to store the cloned image files to dvds. and then test restoring the image on a new hard disk (if you have a spare hd). afterwards try to restore the dvd images.

this way, you'll be sure to know that the cloning and restoration works correctly. its indeed a weird case that your drive letters seem different and even interchanging depending on the active os.

i myself do not like the idea of dual/multi boot OS on the same hard drive. i prefer to manually set the boot option in the bios everytime i choose to boot from a different drive.

goodluck :)