How to dual boot Vista and XP (with Vista installed first) -- the step-by-step guide with screenshots

JR:

"Windows Vista is not ready for prime time."
That is the understatement of the century. Do you want to hear a very funny joke? I bought Windows Vista Ultimate. The WOW starts NOW. Yeah sure. More like when hell freezes over or when I finally buy a MAC.

FireFly:

Couldn't have said it better myself

cheeseflavor (New user):

Um, yeah. Windows anything is great... if you don't use your computer for more than five minutes or do much more than surf the net. Try actually USING something else (I mean for real using, not just for like five seconds) and you should see how crappy Windows actually is.

With something like linux, if you know what you are doing, (actually know about computers, not just turning it on and hoping the developers weren't morons) you will have a LOT less problems. Programs generally don't conflict with each other, there's usually no memory leaks that slowly drain your performance, no random bugs or crashes that you can't figure out, and 99.9999% of the time if by some strange phenomenon something DOES crash, it won't take the whole system down with it and you can just restart the program. Plus you pretty much never have to reboot if you don't want, except for certain system tool or kernel upgrades, and pretty much NO DRIVE DEFRAGING. Not to mention it makes one of the best servers one can get (aside from BSD or something else)

The main weak point it has is gaming and a few odd programs that you can only make work on Windows (though some Windows games you can play on linux with a compatibility layer, like WINE or Cedega)

Oh, I almost forgot all the nice features it is jam packed with... modular build, REAL user separation and security (none of this crap where programs have to run as 'Admin' when there should be no need for it) uids, gids, pids, chmod, root, CHROOT, extremely powerful shell scripting abilities (with many choices of shell) and heaps upon heaps of useful tools, good logging of things that go on, not to mention excellent firewall and networking capabilities. Most of the crap for Windows aren't real firewalls at all, they are only 'program managers' as I like to call them... while useful, they give a false sense of security due to lacking system security to begin with, the ability to be shut down or hijacked by another program, possibly having spyware IN them, and the stupid popups to confirm every program is a huge risk (you will eventually get tired and click 'yes' on something you shouldn't)

shery (New user):

Microsoft began work on Windows Vista, known at the time by its codename Longhorn, in May 2001 five months before the release of Windows XP website hosting. It was originally expected to ship sometime late in 2003 as a minor step between Windows XP and Blackcomb, which was planned to be the company's next major operating system release. Gradually, "Longhorn" assimilated many of the important new features and technologies slated for Blackcomb, resulting in the release date being pushed back several times. Many of Microsoft's developers were also re-tasked to build updates to Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 to strengthen security.Faced with ongoing delays and concerns about feature creep, Microsoft announced on August 27, 2004 that it had revised its plans. The original Blackcomb, based on the Windows XP source code, was scrapped, and Longhorn's development started anew, building on the Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 codebase, and re-incorporating only the features that would be intended for an actual operating system release. Some previously announced features such as WinFS were dropped or postponed, and a new software development methodology called the Security Development Lifecycle was incorporated in an effort to address concerns with the security of the Windows codebase.

giri (New user):

Hey guys stop criticizing vista its such a wonderful OS Long live Vista.

jack55 (New user):

Quoting giri:
Hey guys stop criticizing vista its such a wonderful OS Long live Vista.


I agree! XP is fine, but VISTA is the Future! XP will go the way of Win 98 and Windows Millennium Edition did. I use XP on my desktop still and Vista on my notebook. Not sure I want to dual boot yet.

Nawin (New user):

Give Me a Break. If you think VISTA is the Future, Go look at Mac & Linux. That's where all Vista's ideas came from.
Do yourself a Favor, Buy Mac.
or Better yet, install Linux; It's Free :)

Stop Microsoft from this Brain-washing Monopoly Controls over You.

Dunky (New user):

My god you’re a twat. Do you realize the amount of people who make a living off of micorosft is pronominal. Nearly every IT / Development / Helpdesk in the world supports some form of Microsoft os or products. I find it difficult to comprehend idiots like you that shout your big mouth off without even realizing the implications of what you are saying. The people that shout and criticize are is most cases the idiots that don’t have a clue. Go Educate yourself fool.

pallavi (New user):

vista in its present state sucks... most programs are incompatible and vista uses ur resources like anything.. to become a future.. it has a long way to go....

Nikwagner (New user):

Problems! I have the HD partitioned through Vista and checked it on Diskpart.
All seemes to have worked. The issue now is getting Win XP to acknowledge the new partition on installation. It is giving me an error message that no disks were found to perform the setup.
Any ideas!?
The help is much appreciated!
Nik

captain_bb (New user):

try to check on the bios oh HD menu and make SATA us disable instead of enable. i think that will work with xp... no harm on trying!

wwilliam.klein (User):

yeap. Windows XP does not come with either buslogic or lsilogic drivers, so you will always have to use a driver disk in order for installer to see a virtual disk. Like someone said before, if you select buslogic as the virtual scsi driver, you will need to download driver disk from vmware's website, but if you select lsilogic driver, you will need to get a lsi driver from lsi's webpage. I think ESX defaults to use lsilogic driver for Windows XP VM, website hosting and that's why it did not work for you before.
I hope this helps.

edgey (New user):

Hey man just wanted to tell you we tried for a week to install xp on our 2 brand knew sony vaio FW 17GU laptops, as the critical app we need to use only runs on xp. We got so fed up with it that we bought 2 macpro laptops partitioned the hard drive with bootcamp and had xp working perfectly in 1/2 an hour.... that's it for us with pc from now on we will only use macs. hope some fool will buy them on ebay hahaha

justmefriend (New user):

that's it for us with pc from now on we will only use macs.


OMG! You guys crack me up. Do you know what PC stands for? So9 what you are saying then is a MAC is not a personal computer? So what is it? Is it not a computer? LOL!! ALL computers are Personal Computers, and also remember, a MAC is no longer a real MAC, they too went the way of an Intel chip instead of what they had which was far more powerful. Just remember one thing, A PC is a computer that is capable of running windows, that makes a MAC a PC now and not a MAC anymore, Apple sold out to the mainstream establishment..... And as far as Linux? Well if you still need an interface to run a windows only program, well then it is as flawed as Windows is.... 'nuff said....

davec (New user):

dude ! PC = personal computer (no reference as to OS) only culturally accepted to mean windows because most people use windows so they call them pc's. Macintosh is not defined by having a motorola cpu. It is defined by proprietary hardware and OS (currenly snow leopard ) and is more powerful than ever by switching to an intel chip. Macs can now also run windows, linux etc due to great engineering around a faster intel chip. This fact does not make them pc's ... they always were pc's. just better !! And they are certainly real macs, the OS is distinctive and superior to any competition. It is Mac, through and through.

bigphil:

Great. Couldn't have done it without the article. I had a couple different issues making it work. After installing XP, the Vista startup repair did not work for me (several unsuccessful attempts). So I installed SP2 for XP and EasyBCD. Running BCD from XP, I ran Manage Bootloader and reinstalled the Vista bootloader. Then booted into Vista and installed BCD and Added an entry for XP.

TomS (New user):

I had a similar problem, unfortunately before the benefit of reading this string. I have HP Pavillion with Vista 64. I wanted to put XP on a USB Flashdrive and put that in the boot drive sequence when I want XP OS / programs. The XP installation appeared to be going OK, and I had selected the Flashdrive device from the install menu (I keyed on the description and failed to be concerned that the assignment of drives was off, as has been explained now). The XP install looks like it worked but a boot.ini file was missing from the flashdrive. Somehow the bootloader for Vista on the HP Pavillion HDD was also 'corrupted', as explained and I was unable to use the recover function (could not find boot drive). The recovery disk from HP could not find the HDD either and defaulted to the option to rebuild Vista from scratch. I aborted, bought a new HDD reinstalled Vista and put the old HDD on a USB-- all my files appear to be intact, but could not get help from anyone on how to recover. From your comments it sounds like there are Vista (not HP Vista) recovery disks that could fix this problem. Pls advise on where these can be obtained. I would prefer to recover my HDD without having to reinstall everything. I suspected this was not a fatal error, just need guidance to get it fixed. Thanks

Jigga:

Nice article... thanks a million.

deryckw:

How come there are a couple of guides for installing Windows with Linux and Windows with Windows, but there does not seem to be any on installing Windows with Mac OSX, or is just too easy that a guide is not needed?

Dan Warne:

On a Mac it's very easy with Apple Boot Camp, and on a PC, it's illegal :-)

Nikander:

Our computer-genious incestly demanded on the Mac-based InDesign-program and wow what happened; it falls at least three, or four times per day. Mac never falls, ou jee!

Anonymous1:

you, sir are a mac zealot, so go to hell. Any pc can beat any mac performance wise.

APC administrator:

That's a ludicrous assertion ... Macs ARE PCs these days. They use exactly the same hardware. It's the software that is different on a Mac. 

Anonymous 77:

LOL. Sir, a pc is a "collection of parts". You cant say mac is a pc because it does not have a collection of parts you f*****. Why dont you ponder this statement -All pc's are personal computers but all computers are not pc's.
=)

Anonymous78:

pc stands for personal computer so how is a mac not a personal computer if you use it for personal use its a pc
if a pc was a collection of parts it would be called a cop not a pc ponder that

Anonymous8889:

Great discussion, guys keep up the good work!

Planetshoes (New user):

Here here, tards!

stuffman:

You sir are pwned. How is a mac not a "collection of parts" like a PC is? Your statement is baseless. The previous poster was 100% correct. Macs are just PCs these days, especially since their departure from Motorola cpus. Apple PCs and notebooks all run out of the production lines in pre-determined configurations, but so do Acer, HP and Dell pcs. Apple's simply have a custom built case which makes them extremely difficult to upgrade - they still source CPUs and chipsets from intel, videocards from ATI and nVidia, and their other components like harddisks and RAM from various manufacturers. The only thing that makes them different, is that the OSX operating system is built for this cut down bundle of "PC" parts to make them "user friendly".

Anonymous25:

Incorrect, the logic board is still built by Apple. And the logic board does not contain a traditional PC "bios". Intel macs use EFI.

Which is 100% incompatible with most PC operating systems.

And in the Motorola days, they still used nVidia and ATI video cards and chipsets. So in that you are also incorrect.

Macs are still not PC's. BootCamp actually activates a bios emulation routine in the EFI chip.

MacMan:

PCs havent been able to keep up with Macs for YEARS now! Do a little research before you open your pie hole!

GerryG:

Just curious, I haven't been interested in Macs for years since I quit having to maintain them, but isn't OSX just their Unix installation? And how does it differ from Linux?
Gerry

anon12182918 (New user):

Are you dumb? You can get a Mac Pro tower with 2 Intel Xeon 4-core CPUs, 8 slots of RAM (up to 32 GB), up to 4 graphics cards, 4 hard drive slots, and even raid card compatibility...you're way behind the times.

back2dafunk (New user):

Quoting anon12182918:
You can get a Mac Pro tower with 2 Intel Xeon 4-core CPUs, 8 slots of RAM (up to 32 GB), up to 4 graphics cards, 4 hard drive slots, and even raid card compatibility...you're way behind the times.


Yes, this is true... but you will do all of that for thousands and thousands of dollars simply because of the Mac name. I can go out and build that same comp but a PC with the same set up for SUBSTANTIALLY less. Macs are great. PCs are great. Simply put: You cant customize the crap out of and build macs yourself. I cant go out and by any mac tower i want with any amount of fans or lights. I can't custom build my own liquid cooling system to cool my motherboard and cpu if i had a mac now could i? Yes Mac can now run windows and microsoft applications...BUT...it still remains NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE to upgrade rebuild and integrate new parts. ONLY MAC MAKES CRAP FOR MAC. and that SUCKS!

NickNov80:

I dont have anything against Mac. The only advantage over a PC is the Mac OS. Other than that, you get can heck of a lot better performing PC, lower price points and more compatible with more software. Also, when was the last time you seen a Mac built for extreme gaming with an Intel Extreme Quad Core, Three 768MB nVidia 8800GTX and a PhisX Acc. You havent. If Mac is so much better and more secure, why does the Government, NASA & Fortune 500 COs use PC?

sagan:

I got this one. The government use PCs not because they are cheaper, but because the government IT shops resist having to maintain two OS skill sets. Tell a Window admin that he needs to learn howto a maintain Linux or Mac OS X, and he will whine. The first thing a government manager will say is we don't have the resources to train people for a multi-platform environment or there is not enough demand (how could there be). This creates an IT pearl harbor scenario, and there is a general who is pushing for mixed environments. Btw, the government ordered a PC for me that was twice cost of a good Mac.

Dick (New user):

yeah, the GOVERNMENT also purchases hammers and such for several hundred dollars each when they retail for $5.00 or less each!!

PC Tech (New user):

"And he will whine...." Not true. I've been doing pc support since 1990. I'm in an MS dominated organization now and I had to recently install an iMac for the kids at the library. I sat down and set it up, and it basically found our network and domain with no problem. I was able to use the help menu and if not Google to find answers. The point: A good PC tech can figure out how to support Macs on the fly, the logic is very similar. I've even supported Linux.
To me, you all sound like a bunch of whiners. That's why this country can't get along. Everyone thinks you're either right or wrong. It should be that you can use what you like. I'm considering buying a Mac Airbook for my wife because I like the way they look and I want her to have something nice. At work I use a Vista PC but mostly ignore the OS and do word processing, email, crunching, and surfing. Everyone get over yourselves and learn how to compromise like the WW2 generation. They used to say, "Can we meet in the middle?" Trying saying it, it won't crack your mouth!

Rustytruck (New user):

PC Tech,
I like the fact you have enough inteligence to figure out different OS rather than the rest of these posts. They sound like school kids touting who runs the fastest, or "My dad can whip your Dad " mentality. Did you ever notice that they can't seem to stay away from forums designed to help people? I came here looking for some research, not these guys boasting about who's better. I guess maybe they're not smart enough to figure out how to use a PC. This forum "How to dual-boot", not "Look at me, I'm better than you!"
Meet in the middle, good concept my friend.

PC Tech (New user):

That is such an ignorant statement, and it's generalized. I'm a government worker and I've done Windows, Linux, and Mac. I recently installed an iMac for kids and all I had to do was follow the directions and google what I didn't know. A good IT person can logic their way through a problem, the hardware and software will always change, the only thing consistent, is your ability to problem solve. This country has become a bunch of buffoons that can only comprehend, he's wrong and I'm right. No in between. Why don't you all learn what the WW2 generation did, they said, "Can we meet in the middle?"

Boufont of Pc knowledge :

Well I would like to state that all the new macs are way faster than windows etc and your not using alot of processing power and ram running virus software And VISTA RUNS BETTER ON A MAC !!!!!!! So when you buy ur mac all you have to do is use bootcamp and that runs Windows to so two machines in one. Ha ha your still game on your PC and how many hard core (i mean all day) pc gamers are there. something like 2% acourding to stats. Everyone uses consoles like PS3 and Xbox.
They are more secure hence the army is switching to them.

yellan:

I'm a hardcore gamer... I don't play all day long, but all I have for a console is a ps2. and I only use it for guitar hero XD PC's in general have much better hardware cababilities than consoles. I play halo, halo 2, Enemy territory quake wars, and lost planet... Hopefully I can get crysis soon... after I get my second 8800GTX :D you don't see two of them babies in a console lol

Keys (New user):

My Dell Vostro laptop came with Windows XP. I installed the Mac OSx as a dual boot. It's all down to the hardware that makes the difference. With the computing power we have available today, both operating systems run quite well.

Keys (New user):

My Dell Vostro laptop came with Windows XP. I installed the Mac OSx as a dual boot. It's all down to the hardware that makes the difference. With the computing power we have available today, both operating systems run quite well.

justmefriend (New user):

If MAC's are so good, then why would they need to have a set-up to dual-boot an OS that MAC users claim is crap? Funny, I've never seen A company that is supposed to be super take steps backwards to move forwards.... What MAC lacks is what Windows offers so how can a MAC be better if they need to do this kind of thing?

Someonelse:

Actually, my first computer, that i still have, is a commodore Pet 2001 from 1978
On the front it says in big letters "Personal Computer"
Commodore dropped this pc titling after the 2001 model, but was probably the first to use that term for errr a personal computer.
It was quite some years after 1978 that Bill Gates got his deal with Ibm to make dos and the term found new use.
Because of this fact and the fact that some (combined) words are unescapeably connected to something there is -as far as im concerned- no copyright on the use.
The same applies to windows. There were windows (xerox > apple) long before MS windows.

harlz86 (New user):

Congratulations gentlemen on absolutely out-nerding any pc vs mac argument ever entered into the world wide web. not only was it an argument about wether or not they would install side by side, or which was better but the argument took a twist i have not seen, is a mac a pc. dont get me wrong. im a techie, i hate macs and have mates who are mac techs (if you could call them that) but never has an argument about what is better ever been performed so well, so dramatically. you guys even managed to call an APC ADMIN a f*****.. not to mention the guy who dribbled on about no viruses on a mac. pfft thats because a mac aint worth hacking (p.s. they are out there...) all this aside i dont see how loading xp and vista together turned into an argument that sounds more like a "my dad could beat your dad in a fight" school playground sort of argument. but gentlement well done and thankyou for showing me that most of the people online with ennough time to research this sort of stuff are actually all keyboard warriors.

p.s. the only way this argument is ever going to be solved is if bill gates and that skinny sixty year old from apple punch it out in a ring. nerd versus nerd. girly arms flailing, tears rolling. thats the only way a winner will be found.

Rustytruck (New user):

Thank you my friend, I was just about to post the exact same thing you just said. Did you ever notice you can't seem to go to a forum without these guys showing up about who's got the better system? I came here for some research, not to listen to that crap. If they're so proud of their mac, why are they on this forum instead of on a mac forum somewhere?
Thanks again for your post!

justmefriend (New user):

Really? I believe that the Atari 400 came out before 1978 and their ad's used the term Personal Computer.... Who cares who used it firast, a Home computer is a personal computer no matter who makes it or what OS it uses... You all need to get a life!

Neki (New user):

hi,
I am Neki Rana from India and i am having same problem in dual booting Vista & XP, so please kidly give me a solution for dual boot Vista & XP.
Thanking you....

Neki (New user):

hi,
I am Neki Rana from India and i am having same problem in dual booting Vista & XP, so please kidly give me a solution for dual boot Vista & XP.
Thanking you....