Dual boot XP and Vista

[sripeter]

I've installed XP on my C: drive and Vista on my D: drive, and the only way I can access either is to change the disk drive priority in BIOS. Is it possible to have this configuration and have the dual boot option at start up to enable either to be started up, or do I need to install both OS's on the same drive on different partitions.

 

[d00shan]

If some hard drive is the first drive for boot, and has operative system on it, there is no way to boot from another one except to change boot order in bios, but you can put several operative systems if you need dual, triple...boot, on the same hard drive but in a different PRIMARY partition...So let's say that you want to put XP and VISTA for a dual boot: First you have to prepare your partitions, and the best way is from dos with partition magic...than when you have 2 primary partitions, you can install XP on the first one, and VISTA on the second one...after installing vista, you should check your boot.ini which is on the C: drive...it should have 2 entries xp and vista...I suggest you to have XP as a default one, that means you should mark C: as active partition...cheers

 

[rf6647]

This may be a start:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919529/en-us

 

[Ultiweap]

This may be a start:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919529/en-us

I don't think that he has install Xp after Vista on his PC...

 

[smiler1st]

Recovery Cds

Try a Recovery CD - Restore CDs Disk Disks. I got mine from recovery-cds.com and now all is well .......

 

[rf6647]

From the description, I interpret that separate HDDs are involved. Both can boot independent of the other HDD.

1. Bootmgr needs to be added to the primary HDD
.................OR
2. Switch the disks around & Make D: the primary.

Option 2 seems easiest.

Then..........(excerpt from KB)
Use Bcdedit.exe to manually create an entry in the BCD Boot.ini file for the earlier version of the Windows operating system.

This particular KB does not give enough details how to construct the edits.

 

[sripeter]

I think it is possible to have XP and Vista on separate hard drives as I've since seen other threads that indicate this. However, I've decided to re-install both OS's on the same hard drive as I know that works, and I've re-installed both OS's a number of times over the last few days, so know the process pretty well now. By doing this, I'll have the other hard drive as spare capacity. Many thanks for all of the contributions.