Dual booting XP and Vista

Nefarious · 13 Apr 2007 at 13:40

I'm following the instructions of a website, sic;

http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp

But I don't have a Vista disk to restore the MBR to recognise Vista. Is there a disk image I can download or a recovery disk that Vista will let me create that will enable me to do this?

marc2003 · 13 Apr 2007 at 14:39

i don't know if this will work for you?

http://www.vistabootpro.org/

Minstadave · 13 Apr 2007 at 15:09

I didn't have to do anything to get my dual boot setup working. Had XP already installed, out Vista on the second drive and it did everything nicely.

When I boot I have the option to choose XP or Vista

marc2003 · 13 Apr 2007 at 15:47

Minstadave said:
I didn't have to do anything to get my dual boot setup working. Had XP already installed, out Vista on the second drive and it did everything nicely.

When I boot I have the option to choose XP or Vista

well of course it's easy when you do it the proper way.

but the OP has installed vista first, then added xp. i didn't even know you could do that but that tutorial says you can...

Minstadave · 13 Apr 2007 at 15:54

marc2003 said:
well of course it's easy when you do it the proper way.

but the OP has installed vista first, then added xp. i didn't even know you could do that but that tutorial says you can...

Missed that, understand now

Nefarious · 13 Apr 2007 at 16:14

The problem is that some OEM computers come preloaded with Vista and don't supply the disks.

TBH - I'd just go with XP all the way (whatever the arguments it comes down to personal preference and I think that Vista is ghey - uses loads of resources to no effect other than looking pretty)

Priapus · 13 Apr 2007 at 16:50

Nefarious said:
The problem is that some OEM computers come preloaded with Vista and don't supply the disks.

TBH - I'd just go with XP all the way (whatever the arguments it comes down to personal preference and I think that Vista is ghey - uses loads of resources to no effect other than looking pretty)

Then why bother with Vista at all then. Or even bother to post this thread? :rolleyes:

TC1 · 17 Apr 2007 at 07:12

Minstadave said:
I didn't have to do anything to get my dual boot setup working. Had XP already installed, out Vista on the second drive and it did everything nicely.

When I boot I have the option to choose XP or Vista

You had XP on one disc and then put Vista on the other Hard Drive? Was that easy to setup? Ta

marc2003 · 17 Apr 2007 at 14:44

TC1 said:
You had XP on one disc and then put Vista on the other Hard Drive? Was that easy to setup? Ta

dead easy. you run windows vista setup from within xp. choose a custom setup, select the free partition you want to install too (must be pre-formatted). and follow the prompts. you can't go wrong. you then get a nice menu on boot to choose which OS to load.

TC1 · 18 Apr 2007 at 12:29

marc2003 said:
dead easy. you run windows vista setup from within xp. choose a custom setup, select the free partition you want to install too (must be pre-formatted). and follow the prompts. you can't go wrong. you then get a nice menu on boot to choose which OS to load.

Must be on a separate Hard Drive. Not the same one as XP.

TC1 · 18 Apr 2007 at 15:54

Anyone?

csmager · 18 Apr 2007 at 16:00

TC1 said:
Must be on a separate Hard Drive. Not the same one as XP.

Must be on a separate partition, as marc2003 says - not necessarily a separate HDD. Works just as was described - done it a few times.

Nefarious · 18 Apr 2007 at 18:37

I've been trying to use vistabootpro but everytime I do it claims that winload.exe on XP is corrupt or missing

Anyone come across this before?

TC1 · 18 Apr 2007 at 22:25

I want to put XP on one drive and Vista on another.

Nefarious · 19 Apr 2007 at 10:16

TC1 - If you install XP on one disk or partition first then install Vista there is no difficulty at all.

Just make sure you install Vista last and whatever you do DON'T install them on the same partition and you will be fine.

Once Vista is installed just get the boot manager to point to the copy of XP and set the delay to about 5 seconds or less (otherwise you'll put far too long onto your boot time).

TC1 · 19 Apr 2007 at 12:43

Nefarious said:
TC1 - If you install XP on one disk or partition first then install Vista there is no difficulty at all.

Just make sure you install Vista last and whatever you do DON'T install them on the same partition and you will be fine.

Once Vista is installed just get the boot manager to point to the copy of XP and set the delay to about 5 seconds or less (otherwise you'll put far too long onto your boot time).

Cheers

Nefarious · 25 Apr 2007 at 20:35

So.... back to the problem that I was having. I tried using vistabootpro but despite being able to load Vista fine the XP installation tries to load and says:

winload.exe corrupt or missing

And I have to run the XP repair facility.

winload.exe seems to be a Vista thing so what is XP doing asking for it..? Out of sheer laziness and a small amount of curiousity I tried copying the file from vista to XP and then asked for another Vista specific file..

Any idea what's going on and why when trying to load XP it is looking for Vista files? Is this a problem with the way I setup boot.ini file???