XP fails in first step of installation
 

Thanks William for the wonderful notes on dual boot.

I have a basic problem here. I am a newbie. Please elaborate on any answers that you post on this question.

I have Vista Home Premium pre installed.
I have successfully partitioned my 160 gigs of hdd into 3. One of them is named as XP F:
I went into setup screen and gave the priority of CD as "Primary" boot loader.
On booting the system got CD of XP SP2 correctly...
I got a message as "Press Enter" to set up Windows... which I did...

However, this is the last message that I got and I need to quit installation of XP... got unsuccessful here:



Windows XP Professional Setup:
Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed on your computer.
Make sure any hdd are powered on and properly connected to your computer and that any disk related hardware configuration is correct.
This may involve running a manufacturer supplied diagnostic or setup problem.

Setup cannot continue. To quit set up Press F3.

Please Help !!!

Many Thanks.

as posted a couple of comments back, try this first.

Boot Options not Loading Windows XP
 

Hello William, Thanks for the tutorial.

I have 2 Drives with 3 paritions each.

Before Vista, I had XP Home on "C" and XP Pro on "D". I clean installed Vista on C, and after installation it stopped showing PRO, so I followed your steps. everything was OK, but as when i try to load XP from start up, it doesnt and gives error.

is there anything that I needed to change in the code? or do I have to re-install windows XP. as i have installed Windows VISTA in a C drive, and keeping XP PRO
as it was in Drive D (of second Drive).

Thanks for the tutorial
after finishing all 4 steps, I can dual boot into both vista and xp
but XP cannot detect my audio card and some other hardware properly...
even installing drivers cannot be succeed...
any thoughts that can help?
THANKS!

DVD/CD rom erased!
 

I've made a dual boot system but in the process my D: dirve which used to be my DVD/CD drive seems to be overwritten. I noticed that from your screen shoots you seem to have the same set up. When I boot in vista the E: drive is partitioned for XP but my D: drive is still not visibale. If I boot to XP the D: drive is associated with my XP os system so there is no dvd/cd drive visable there either. I would try to change the path of my dvd/cd drive in the Vista disk manger but as I said vista is not displaying that as a drive anymore. Do you have a fix for this problem?

both of these last 2 posts: Biuyau and Unregistered, have nothing to do with a dual boot. Both OS will have individual setups, so if there are problems with XP, it is only XP and is isolated from Vista.

Primary Partition
 

I am trying to install Win XP on my new Dell with a Vista OS. I partitioned my hard drive but can't get it to become a primary. There are already 3 primary partitions. One is Vista(C), one is recovery(D) and the other is labeled EISA config.(no drive letter) and we can't change that one. Do you know if we can change the recovery partition or the EISA to something other then primary? The recovery partition is something that DELL installed at factory and they don't recommend it being changed.

Thanks for your help.

dell creates these partitions in case of emergencies to allow for easy booting and re-installations.
Primary (active) partitions are on the front of a drive, and cannot be changed unless moved elsewhere on the drive... which is more difficult than it sounds.

try this:
shrink the logical partition, and add the space to your vista or recovery partition. Then use this to create a new primary partition. Vista should not have a max limit on primary partitions, even if it does, it should be more than 6.

Portable Hard Drive
 

So after failing to get my partition problem solved I decided to load win xp on my portable hard drive and run it from there but when i try to download it to the portable hard drive i get a message saying i already have a newer version of windows and can't download this one. Any ideas on how I can get it installed on my portable hard drive?

Thanks

the problem that i have is ive done all the steps up to installing xp. the problem is that when i go to install it doesnt detect any hard drives and only option is to exit. is it because im running raid for all my drives?raid 1 = 2x160 gig and raid 2 = 2x250 gig.

bcdedit –displayorder {ntldr} –addlast <--- this one doesn't work for me. I get a message that says (I am translating from swedish so it won't be perfect): "The given postlistdata is incorrect"

Everything until that step has worked out perfectly.

William you are very patient. I have scanned all of the posts but haven't been able to find the answer to this. (It might be Me)

I have an HP that came with a recovery partition (D:HP_RECOVERY) as opposed to a CD with vista. Can this be done without the cd using the recovery partition?

Where to find boot.ini,ntldr,ntdetect.com files in vista
 

Hi Willi,
where to find all three above files in vista, so that can be cpied in c:/xp directory?
I am tryinf to find these files but could not get it.

XP Wont install
 

Hi, I have Vista pre installed on my HP Pavilion dv2000 and was hoping to get a dual boot with XP. I have partitioned the HDD as you suggested and that worked ok, I now find that when atempting to install XP the screen says that it has compatibility issues as the current version is a later version.
how can I get around this. I have XP SP2.

Thanks
James

Help
 

When i get to typing the Bootrec.exe /fixBoot i get this message: The volume does not contain a recognized file system. Please make sure that all required file system drivers are loaded and that the volume is not corrupted.

tnx for help

raid should not be a problem, but you may want to disable the option in your bios while installing, then enable it again, once the dual boot is working properly. If the drives are SATA you may need to install drivers during setup to ensure the detection.

It sounds as if you installing from inside of Vista, which it will try and discourage, as XP is older than Vista. If your motherboard supports usb booting, you can try running the same setup as if you were installing on an internal drive (restart w/ cd in the tray) and simply choose the external drive partition.

To be honest i have never seen that before, this step is not essential to the boot process and can be modified from inside of Vista, through the boot.ini boot order after installation.

It sounds like you are attempting to install XP on the same partition as Vista, and i doubt Vista would allow this. Make sure your partition is a primary/active partition and that you are attempting to install on the correct partition.

This is a questionable solution. Unless the partition contains a complete vista disc i doubt it will be enough to install, but it may have the necessary files to alter the boot records. I will see if i can find out what is on that partition and get back to you with a more concrete answer.

Working with Restore Disks
 

Hello, I wanted to thank-you for this excellent Tutorial!

However I seem to run into one hick-up :(

I have the Everex Restore Disk (Vista) and so when I get to the step to fix the MBR I cannot complete it, my disk does not have the normal Vista Options, instead it just restores the disk back to factory default.

I have tried using my friends copy of Vista instead, but it will not let me get to the command prompt as the two versions are different (he has 64x and Everex gave me 32x) so I cannot get to CMD. I have tried installing the 64x version, but Everex does not support it and thus I cannot get any drivers to install :(

I have also tried installing Vista after XP but when I install Vista it formats the partition that xp was on...

Is there any other way to get to the CMD without using the Vista Disk? I have also tried running CMD while in windows but it does not recognize the Bootrec.exe /fixMBR command :(

Thank-you for your time.

Nice tutorial. I'm normally good at following these sorts of things but I'm having a slight problem. After I install the XP files onto the new drive and it restarts (I take the CD out), it just stops at a blinking insert line... It never gets to the XP boot screen. (When I try it with the CD in and don't press enter, it just hangs after the 5 dots appear on the screen).

I'm on a computer with Vista preinstalled. It came with a second partition already (FAT32) for recovery. I made a another new NTFS partition using Vista and I'm using a slipstreamed XP SP2 CD. I made sure I was installing on this new partition.

The first time it happened, I repaired the MBR and Boot for Vista and had to do a Last Known Good config to get it back up. After that, I checked out bcdedit and it said nothing about ntldr (probably because XP did not successfully start?). Then I tried again and it's still doing the same thing.

Any help would be appreciated: thanks.

sharing partitions?
 

Hey thanks for the great tutorial got xp to work on my vista system. My question is... is there a way to share programs without having to install the program again on xp since I already have it on vista? I managed to go to my vista program folder files and click on some of the programs exe files and got them working. I was just wondering if there is a way to integrate them to your xp.

Error Loading Operating System
 

Hi, I've managed to install XP to a 23Gb partition of C: (X:). It's a 500GB Sata drive and I'm hoping the Bios setting will fix my issue (I'm at work and haven't been able to try it yet). But since no one else has posted a similar error I thought I would ask you if there were other possible solutions.

After the 1st half of the XP install it reboots and comes up with the error
'Error Loading Operating System'.

I tried the Vista dvd 'Startup Repair' option (haven't tried the cmd prompt commands as yet as I didn't know about these last night, but I did try WinXp fixboot, but not fixmbr because I was scared it would cock everything up!). Anyway after the Vista Repair which told me I had a corrupt boot loader and it had fixed it, I still get the same error loading operating system.

Cheers for the nice guide though, wish I'd found this before I cocked up my computer!

Dual boot with vista, But XP cannot see SATA drives
 

This is a great guide but i keep getting stuck when trying to install XP. I have 2x Segate 320GIG SATA 300mbs drives . One is partitioned in two equal parts C: & D: one already has vista on the waiting for xp. The other just a storage drive.
On getting to the XP install it just can not see the any of the drives. Have tried loading the correct drivers, they are not 'RAID' just SATA used on thier own, during installation but just no luck.

HELP!!! been trying for ages now.

I have answered this one a few times, and no. different OS have different registries logs, etc. If you have a program accessed from a network, there are ways to get around this, but for the average user you will be stuck installing it on both OS if you need it on both OS.

You can get to the prompt without the vista cd, unfortunately this does you no good without the proper programs to install the boot manager. You could try making a windows98 bootdisk or a command.com boot disk and adding the applications to the disk and running them manually. I am extremely busy for the next week or so, but i will add this to my to do list and try and make a copy to be added to the download links here.

Hi there, im also trying to install xp pro onto my notebook, i get quite far but where the instructions get to here


"right-click the drive you want to partition, and select "Shrink Partition"
-The amount you shrink the partition is the amount of space used for the XP partition, so i would suggest making it at least 3-

4GB in size, as a full XP installation will take 1.5GB on it's own.

-now right-click the unallocated memory and select new basic partition"


ive done all that but where it says right click unallocated drive all the options i get are here in the pic ill post, what am i doing wrong?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...01/screeej.jpg

help please

Try this: http://www.syschat.com/8074-post159.html
If you register your username will make it easier for me to know all of the problems that associate to you if you need to post more than once :)

I guess i didn't explicitly say to use the new simple volume, but it is listed in this image:
http://www.marvingohan.com/images2/v...0partition.jpg
this will launch the wizard to follow

A note to anyone who posts here

If i answer many questions, but miss yours, send me a pm, with a link to you post. The link can be found by right-clicking the number above your question and selecting: copy link location in FF, and copy shortcut for IE users.
Sometime i just miss posts or there are just too many to know which have been solved and which have not. :)

ive done this so far but in my confusion i have an unallocated partition, how do i delete this?

Help!!!
 

I dont know why or what happened but the partition I made using this tutorial wasn't in the list of partitions in the OS setup screen so i just canceled out of it and now my computer wont boot to vista. D: It gets as far as a black screen with a blinking white cursor. ****. Someone HELP! I CANNOT LOSE ALL MY DATA ON THAT COMPUTER D:!!!


please email me ASAP IF YOU CAN HELP! [email protected]

Vista(x64) - XP.Pro.SP2(x86) Dual Boot Install Issues
 

Hi there!
Very good tutorial indeed. Nonetheless, I was not able to fully install XP Pro SP2 secondly to a Vista Ultimate x64 machine. I used a perfect original XP CD that began installation by partitioning and formatting the HD (in which I have installed the Vista x64) an then installed the XP files like a dream. However, when it reboots, the computer halts by the message "press any key to install from CD/DVD". Some funny colored ASCI characters also appears on screen (somewhat like a virus, though none was detected thru my previous scanning with both NOD32 and Norton). Any guess (and/or troubleshooting)? Thanks anyway.

you do not wish to delete it, but rather have a partition "absorb" it. choose teh last partition closest to it, and grow or expand the partition. Terminology will differ depending on the application you use.
If given an option to select where to take the memory from, choose the unallocated memory. This will add the memory to a partition which already exists.

First of all, do not swear on the forums. This is likely to get you very little help.
--> I will help you anyway.

there is no worry of losing your data, worst case scenario you can place your drive in another computer to save the data.

Are you using Sata drives, or an xp disc without SP2?

Also to get your vista working again, following the options listed with fixmbr and fixboot should work just fine.

It sounds as if the installation did not finish, at least according to the MBR...
I have not attempted this with 64bit versions, I suppose this could be an issue, but i don't see why.

Is your XP 64 bit as well?

Not Enough Space on Disk message
 

I was able to make an unallocated partition of 5.27 G on my drive, but when I attempted to use the Simple Volume Wizard to convert it to my XP NTFS partition, it gave me the message "Not enough space on disk". Admittedly, the initial screen with G ranges showed more space than the partition graphics did, but I reduced the maximum part of the range to a lower figure with no effect. Any ideas?
Phil

is the vista installation disc mentioned in the tutorial the same as the Vista recovery disc? or is it a completely different CD/DVD?

Still have issue after going through all messages
 

Hi William,

Thanks for all of the insight here!

However, I have gone through everything on this site and tried the various options to no avail. I am still unable to get past the no disk detected error using the Win XP Pro w/SP2 bootable CD. The computer I am using is a Gateway notebook MX8734 bought 07/2007. Any ideas on how to proceed?

cesander