Hmmm
 

Hi, i am on XP now, i just put XP disc and done fixboot and fixmbr in repair console, and now only XP works lol (i do know that i can just put vista disc and do same to make vista work, but still not dual boot).

Anyway, my XP OS shows up as partition/drive (I) when i check on my computer on XP, and when i checked on vista it showed it was on (X). And my Vista is on partition/drive (C) when i look on my computer on XP and Vista.

The bcdedit looked very similar to the one in your guide, the screenshot you put up.

Thanks, hope this helps a little towards finding the solution.

Disappearing CMD prompt
 

I also have this problem!

XP installation can't see HD
 

Hi,

I had similar problem and, as you suggested, did a slipstreaming of sp2 into my XP installation disc.

Using the SP2 disc, I boot up my new notebook again. The installation halted saying that there is no disk...

Anyone can help?

Regards,
Wongster

I followed this great guide and got my dual boot working! However, I am afraid to install any drivers on my Windows XP, because how do I know the programs won't install the drivers to C:\windows (vista), instead of the place they *should* go-G:\Windows?

Please help me with this, and thanks for helping me get the hardest part done! :happy:

if you are in XP, they can get the default drive, in this case G, the drive selection is dynamic, not static. I have installed many drivers etc on my laptop with an XP partition of E:

Many thanks
 

Thank you for sorting it out so clearly (especially the bcdedit setup) I had installed VistaBootPro and had been getting the ntldr missing error. After following your bcdedit steps I am dualbooting fine

Anyone have a fix for this?
 

I am getting his same error. Was there a fix for this?

I am trying to open the bcedit.exe file but cannot - I right click and run as administrator, the screen flashes black and the returns to the vista screen.

What am I doing wrong.

I don't understand why this happens either, but I was able to fix it.

Type cmd into the dialog box on "Run", and hit enter. Your current directory should be "C:\".

Then type "cd windows", then type "cd system32", last simply type "bcdedit" and there you go!

Thanks Wilson. Your tutorial is great. I successfull install dual boot.
But I have one problem that my drivers for Ethernet, VGA some other are not working. Is there any way that i will redirct drivers from Vista to XP.

Nangialali

nice one
 

had a few probs with the dos commands but on double check I must have been typpppinnnggg wrong.
Great Work

Nangialai:
Drivers have to be installed on each OS on your drive... you cannot "redirect" them, this does not exist.

stuck in windows xp
 

Hello,

i followed your 4 step tutorial and was doing great until i got to step 3. :(

i have a brand new HP Compaq laptop that came with windows vista home premium and no disk, only the preinstalled backup drive for vista.

-AMD Turion (64x2) Mobile Technology TL-50
-1.61 GHz
-NVidia Geforce Go 6150
-1 gig ram
-no floppy 2.5 drive
-DVD/CD burner

when i got to step 3, i have no disk to load the original boot loader. :(
windows xp (E:\) will load perfect. no problems but far as it is concerned i have no vista or (C:\) drive at all. :( i dont know where to go from here. :confused: i see all these messages about using some kind of bootfix software but when it comes to that i am lost, no idea what to use...if i should try or not...or where to go from here.
Any help u can give would be appreciated. thanks

Colecat7


ps...thought i would post that the only way i could find to fix my xp vista not loading problem as above was i installed vistabootpro Windows Vista Support and News - PROnetworks Technology and did the bootload and added the information for windows to see both drives and it works great now....i can dual boot and using xp online once i find the driver for my hp. thanks for all the posts to help me find what i needed.

THANK YOU!!!:sbiggrin: :sbiggrin: :sbiggrin: :icon_mrgreen: :icon_mrgreen:

Tony
 

Hi ya problem when i have tried to install XP it gets to the bit ware you choose the drives to install it on and my new drive is not there you can only see the C: drive it has been shrunk but you cant see the X: drive thats what i called it
do i need to make the new drive active as when i go to do this it advises me that it may crash out the pc

please help

Tony

tony
 

Hi Ya

i shrunk my vista drive and now have an x: drive however when i try to install XP i get to the screen were i should be able to see the x: drive but it isnt there there is only the c: drive which has shrunk in size but does not show the extra drive can you help please

Tony

you will need to supply more information. How did you resize your C: partition, with what program? Did you create a new partition on the 'x:' partition, eg format it with any file system?

hi,

having the same problem as one of the previous posts settting up the bcdedit keep getting error messages

if i run bcdedit it tells me that my bootmanager is in partition F: (the drive with xp on it )

Windows Boot Manager
----------------------

Identifier {bootmgr}
device partition F:
default {current}
Despalyorder {current}
Timeout 30

Windows Boot Loader
---------------------


IDentifier {Current}
Device Partition C:
Path windows\system32\winload.exe
description windows vista (tm)
os device partiton=C:
systemroot \windows



the vista is on drive C: the Xp is on drive F:

any help with thanks !

I used vista to shrink the drive and vista quick format

NTFS Vista can see both C: and my new X: drive its just XP that cant see the x: drive

the drive labelling will be different under XP, it will not be labelled x:
Do you have XP and Vista on the same partition? This is a big no-no.

Same
 

I am having the same problem, how did you fix it?

No did not compleet the xp install as could not see the new partition to install it on vista is on c: so i f3 out and canceled the xp installatio vista still works fine

tony
 

Hi

I did this but when xp gets to the bit ware you choose which partition to choose there is not a choice just c: a shrunken c: but xp cant see any other drive

i followed your instructions to shrink my vista c: drive and vista can see c: and the new drive x: but xp cant. i F3 out and did not continue with the xp install as i no you cant have 2 os on the same drive

please help

be sure that the partition you see is the vista partiton, and not the new partition. the installer will label the first or only partition it sees as C:\ no matter what Vista would name them.

help
 

I shrunk the x: drive as well now sop i have 3 drives but xp only see's c: drive which has vista on it i know this only buy the size of the drive

Vista Xp Dual Boot When Installed On Separate Drives
 

I've followed the guidlines in your article although I beleive these are for dual boot on seperate partitions and not for seperate hard drives, which tag needs to be altered?

it should be as simple as changing the boot letter for XP to the other drive letter (the drive which Vista shows under My Computer which has XP installed) It is likely to be D: or E:

hi,
:)
when i did the shrink from my vista i jus made sure that it was not part of c drive any more (vista), IE an unpartitioned area on my hard drive along with drive c with vista on it. :) then i put my xp home disk in, let my xp disk partition and format the unpartioned space and installed xp on the new formatted space and it went fine from there. :)

Colecat7 :) :)

how do i make my partition a primary partition, it's currently an extended, logical drive partition

Dual Boot Vista and XP with Vista already installed
 

hi,
i followed all the instructions properly, and now i am booting left and right between operating systems. comp starts up like it should, choicing me with both OP systems, and everything else is super.
But i do have a little prob, and i hope someone can help me. /i am using a comp with vista pre=inst, on a sata HD. getting XP as a second OP to run was no problem at all, the problem now is, that i can't seem to make my hardware work properly with XP.The proper display driver(nividia), adapter, network, and so on are giving me grief....i can't get onto the internet with XP to update them,because the networking won't work.

anybody have any ideas how to resolve this???

it has nothing to do with the dual boot, it is a strictly XP issue. All drivers need to be installed on both OS, things installed on 1 OS will not be available on another.

Thanks for putting these instructions on a forum. I just bought a PC with Vista installed. I'm going to try this. Is it easier to have a separate drive for each OS?

HP Vista Disc
 

Everything went smoothly until step 3. When I load my Vista DVD, I do not get the same green screen. It tells me that 'Windows is loading files...' and then an HP Recovery Manager window pops up. It doesn't give me an option to 'Repair My Computer', it only tells me that I can click next to recover and recreate a factory image on my hard drive or I can click cancel. Clicking cancel automatically makes the computer reboot and open up Windows XP. Any help would be much appreciated. I believe this is due to the fact that HP did not send me a generic Vista disc, but one of their own. If the problem is not fixable, and I am not able to successfully dual-boot, I am willing to reverse the changes (if I could just figure out how to get Vista to come up again). Then I could just delete the partition that XP was installed on.

problem with dual boot
 

First, thanks. This has been a biig help. I've unfortunately run into problem at last step. I've gone through process to rewrite master boot utility and all appeared to go as planned. I got confirmation of file changes as you noted and I'm now able to get screen with choice of OS on start-up. If I choose Vista all is fine. However, if I choose XP receive error as follows:

Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause. To fix the problem

1. Insert Windows install disc & restart
2. Choose language
3. Click 'repair'

If you do not have the disc, contact system administrator or computer manufacturer for assistance.

File: \ntldr
Status: 0xc000000f
Info: the selected entry could not be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt.

I could of course try to repair or reinstall XP, but worry that doing so will put me back at start and will rewrite master boot utility once again. Help? Any suggestions?

Works Perfect
 

Hey....Thanx for the info...just did this to my 2 comp's and didnt have any issues with it..worked perfect

XP install glitch
 

I've read all the posts regarding this dual boot issue, but your quoted post particularly caught my attention, as I too had read that XP would need extra drivers, and would not install without them onto an SATA drive. Here is where I am at (not unlike a lot of others here it appears):

1) I have a new Dell with Pre-installed Vista Premium, trying to dual boot with XP Home.
2) Used Vista to partition the C: drive, created an F: drive about 10Gbs (probably more than necessary, not sure, as I do plan on installing some programs that won't run in Vista). I'm not sure, will check later, but think my new F is a Primary Drive.
3) Inserted my XP install CD, rebooted, F12, and it got to the screen than asked to which partition I wanted to use.
4) The only partition listed was c: partition 1(unknown)
5) The new F: partition does not show up. I F3 and fume..... I spent ALL day yesterday futsing around with one issue or another... all a waste thus far.

6) I installed an external Seatgate via eSATA and tried to install on this.
7) Step 3 again, never got to step 4 above. Blue screen with suggestion I remove any new drives I might have installed, or check for viruses.

Back to square one.

I removed my new external drive I tried the F: drive route again. Same ugly results, no option except the c: drive.

I see that a few others here are having no problem actually getting XP installed (unlike me) but that getting the the PC to see both OS as a dual boot is the issue. I'll deal with that later if I can just get past my install problem.

Question:

1) Should my new F: partition show up as F: on my XP install? Or is the C: partition 1 (unknown) actually the F: partition in reality, just showing up as C:?

I'm afraid to proceed as I don't want to wipe out all the Vista, including the Restore D: partition which came with my Dell in case of a dire emergency.

2) Any suggestions of where I might go from here?

Thanks for your help.

XP does not install properly
 

i can partition the main drive into 2 fine,
it also contains a 5gb section called EASI Configuration i was told to leave well alone, so i end up with a main C:\ 200gb Vista and a new D:\ 80gb called XP.

go to reboot twice then install XP it comes up with the blue XP installer and i tell it to install on the New partition D: it copies all the install files then reboots to do nothing at all! no XP Setup comes up to actualy install the OS, i can recover it back to vista and see the XP install files on the new drive so i formated all and tried again to get the same problem.

any help would be awesome as i'm stuck as hell!

Cheers

Mat

I'm getting the same issue as outlined by JimR (quoted below).

When I go to installed XP (on my 320gb sata2 drive; on which I have created a primary partition using Vista ultimate (32bit) disk mgmt, 50gb, formatted with ntfs etc) i see 2 options, both 131GB in size (not the 50gb i had created), and both listed as C: partition 1 (unknown)

quite odd.

anyone have any ideas?

XP Install doesn't recognize new partition
 

I had this same problem on my desktop when I installed the dual boot system. I solved the problem by booting into Vista and going into the disk manager via the my computer icon, once there you need to go to "storage" double click, then double click "Disk Management" and look to see if both drives are there. If they are, Delete the XP partition, reboot without a CD in the drive, then go back in and re-create your partiton by shrinking your C drive. Once this is done you should be able reboot this time with your XP CD in the drive and install XP on the new partition.

for some reason my comp had to install then uninstall then reinstall in order for it to recognize the new partition.

it is a hard thing to diagnose... if it works, glad to hear it!!!
XP has some odd quirks with sata drives, not reading partitions, or only reading the first partition. The only thing is to be persistent.

if all else fails, it can be a native mode issue. Enter your BIOS and find "SATA native settings" and make sure it is disabled... XP should atleast detect the drive properly this way.