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

ihpsn:

i was wondering if there was a way to extend the xp partition after it is installed. i kinda want more space on my xp partition now =p

HaiiiIii:

hmm the situtation that am in has mayby nothing to do with the boot.

anyway here it goes.
the trouble is when i start Vista
my resolution is like the lowest so i need to change it for my own settings

and when i boot Xp its the same setting as last time.

does anybody know what am doing wrong or what the probleem is,

thanks in advance

Bill Irwin:

Hi - great article. Built a new PC, installed Vista Home Prem, had issues with old sw/peripherals, so installed XP Pro on another drive, set up dual boot as described here with BCD. Works brilliantly.

Now have decided I can do without Vista completely, would like to delete the partition it is in. I have BCD in the Vista partition though, so want to know if there are any traps if I:
1. disable dual booting via bcd in vista (C)
2. boot to XP in D:/ and use disk management to delete Vista (c:/)
I'm hoping that the XP part will now become c:/ - is it that simple? i suspect there could be a big stuff up!

Any pointers appreciated, Bill

Applebag:

I would just use an Imaging tool like Acronis True Image, make an image of your XP partition. Then just put it on top of Vista (it will completely overwrite it sector for sector).

Just need to make sure you have the Vista drive set as the system boot drive in the Bios.

After that (if necessary) just use the /fixmbr feature of the XP boot disk, and format your first XP drive for the extra space or whatever you want to do with it.

Bill Irwin:

hey thanks, that sounds like a simpler option. I'm using Ghost for backups so *should* be able to restore my XP partition to the Vista one right? The only thing that worries me is all the paths set to D:/ by various software installed... might be a bit of tidying up to do afterwards.

Bill

David Provost:

Just took delivery of a new Dell XPS 410, and prepping to make this system dual boot. One thing I notice is that the system currently has a D: drive that is set as the recovery partition. Is there a way to designate space on the C: drive for this purpose so I can use D: as my XP boot partition? Between the partitions on the hard drive, a second hard drive and two optical drives, its just alot of drive letters to be shuffling with. Any thoughts or suggestions from the other readers of this forum are greatly appreciated.

Applebag:

There should be some program that came with the Dell to make a recovery cd out of the recovery partition. You could try making the cd to be safe, and then just formatting that partition for your double boot.

David Provost:

That would be a good idea, since everything I'm reading tells me that partition takes you back to INITIAL state, no need to keep it on the hard drive when a CD copy will do, thanks. I'll look to see if there's a utility that came with the machine.

Troy:

I just scanned through the previous comments and didn't see anything about something I have been considering. What I was thinking of doing was installing XP onto a second HD but first I was thinking about disconnecting the current HD with Vista then connect new HD, install XP then plug Vista drive in. Can anybody tell me if this will work and what I may need to do to make it work.

chhuck12:

I tried this. I installed Vista on a SATA drive, disconnected it. Plugged an IDE drive in, installed XP. This method worked perfectly, but NO boot menu/manager, when you boot you always have to change the hard drives priority to choose which OS you want to use. After days trying to find an issue, nothing worked.

I uninstalled all my OS, reinstalled XP first on my IDE (because SATA is not comptatible with it first versions of XP). When the XP finished installing, booted from de Vista CD without changing the hard drive priority. Let your second hard drive without any partition until you're in the vista install menu, let Vista partition its own way. Remind that your hard drive priority have to stay the same...the XP first and Vista second.

David Provost:

following these instructions worked like a charm. Just a couple anomolies. The first was that even though I created a new partition on the primary hard drive (using vista) and set up the D: drive for XP, that partition was seen as F: by the XP install. Now my XP has system installed on F: (not really a big deal) Second issue, I may have selected the wrong option when update the SATA BIOS. Now when I reboot, the bios waits about 20 seconds for me to hit CTRL-I to set up the RAID on my two sata drives. I dont want run these as raid, so I just let it time out. Anyone have thoughts on who I can revert this BIOS setting (I *think* its a bios issue anyway)

David Provost:

Figured out my last problem, it was the boot order of devices, I had put the SATA/RAID controller ahead of the system disk, which caused the long pause before booting. Changed those around and all is well. Also had to download drivers from the dell website for the Intel chipset, sound card (integrated) and modem.

CDIZZLE:

so in theory i could do the whole dual boot thing to put xp on there with vista, then remove vista because it sux, keep the xp, and not lose all the stuff i have on my hard drive? if so, how would i remove vista?

David Provost:

why not back up all the DATA (not programs, OS) on your vista machine to CD/DVD/USB drive then reformat your drive and install XP from scratch?

ptownprinc:

Thanks for your great article, I was able to install both,
they are up and running, and I am a happy camper again!

KUDOS!

ptownprince

burritobrother:

Argh, help!
When I tell it to shrink (using that shift+F10 thingy), it gives me this message: "Virtual Disk Service error: The specified shrink size is less than the minimum shrink size allowed. The arguments you specified for this command are not valid."
Cheers in advance.

thanks:

the informatic need people like you...
thanks.

wutdlandish:

after reading this:

"More importantly, applications which have installation paths hard-coded into their install scripts rather than using Windows system parameter variables could easily dump files into C: when they should be installing to E:. This isn’t such a great situation."

i notice you don't actually offer any solution to the problem, or explain why you are giving us advice on this dual boot when infact it could mess things up. why?

Grum:

I followed the above instructions to the pin point until realising that the vista disk i have was actually a recovery disk that came with my Asus lap-top and not the install dvd. Right, as you've probably presumed i carried on probably out of stupidity but i like to think i was just being adventurous!
As it stands i have installed vista (c:) and XP (e:), the EasyBCD was already installed from when i tried before and it simply didn't work (which when i tried to install again i noticed Vista recovery had actually deleted the XP partition).
Well now i want out and would settle with W2K!

I have a toaster as far as my knowledge takes me, when i boot up i get the 'Asus' welcome page and it just sits there, if i reboot and press F2 for BIOS i get the system specs and 'entering SETUP...' followed by auto detecting the USB, IDE Hard Disk, ATAPI CDROM then Pri Master details but it just sits there.

Anyone any ideas? Please, please, please!

dbplists:

Basic overview on how to get back to square 1:

1. Get a boot cd and use it to re-format your hard drive (there are many freely available, e.g. gparted)
2. Use the recovery dvd to re-install vista.

Your system will be perfectly fine. If you want more details, e-mail me at dbplists-at-gmail-dot-com

granny52:

Hi all I had all the above problems, too (Vista on drive C, XP installed second on D:) The solution for me was to reinstall XP (it asked if I wanted to install into same directory as before, I said yes, & it kept all my files & settings) I was then able to boot into XP & run VistabootPRO from within XP & it set up the dual boot perfectly. hth.

Guy:

We followed all the instructions and finally got the duelbooting to work but when ever we go onto XP there is no sound devices available for some reason when they still work perfectly fine on Vista what would we have to do to get the sound to work on XP aswell?

V15T4:

I had the same issue after installing XP today to dualboot with Vista Ultimate. For me it was simply a matter of having individual driver packages for each OS. In comparison of Vista Ultimate and XP, I have found that in most cases you DO NEED OS specific drivers, depending on the hardware.

eg.

ATI Drivers are OS Specific, A few sound cards I have tested are also.

You can usually download OS Specific Drivers from your OEM's website.

Good Luck.

thatpolodude (New user):

download the xp driver for your sound card. it has to be THE right driver for the brand and model and it has to be for xp. same thing should aply for the rest of the hardware pieces that are not working, which i'm sure, they're more than only the sound card one.

DavidB:

I was able to do the dual boot install with XP and Vista. I still use XP as my main work environment and boot into Vista to play and slowly install programs there to see what works and what doesn't. I installed office 2003 OK on Vista (It was already installed on XP). Now, I would like to share the "My Documents" folder of XP so that I can read/write that folder and any documents within it from Vista. How do I do this? I don't want to allow "everyone" access to the "My Documents" folder -- only my userid from my Vista boot and my userid from my XP boot. I am afraid to try to take ownership of "My Documents" from Vista because I'm afraid that I will no longer be able to access the files from XP. Is it possible to set permissions so that both XP and Vista can have r/w access to the same files but yet not open up the directory to everyone? (I know that I could do this with a separate server but that's not the question).

Thanks,
David

xyz:

excellent

Roger:

I have upgraded my Notebook from XP Media to Vista Home Premium and have difficulty running some applications. Rather than partition my disc I thought it might be easier to use an external USB HD and then setup the notebook to boot from the external USB first in the bios. Is this a good approach, as I have read there can be issues which I thought this might negate them. Thanks Roger

Tjmax:

Not really,

See you have an issue trying to boot XP from usb. When XP starts booting, it will load the USB drivers and effectivly disconnect the boot drive from the system. The only way around it is complicated and messy.

Slats:

I have been attempting to do this in vain.
I have the following HDDs: 320 GB ATA drive in NTFS format with Vista. Old hard drive is 40 GB IDE in Fat 32 format with XP. To get around the booting problem can I install the old hard drive as slave to the new hard drive? Or are the two incompatible?

slats:

Refer to my previous comment #195. Had more tough experience with this: Found out that the SATA and IDE were incompatible so I got an IDE to SATA converter that works just fine with everything but a dual boot! The system recognizes the slave drive and all its files, but it still will not boot into XP! Anyone, anyone have any ideas about this? I have set up dual boot systems in the past but never with this much trouble. I am at the point of suggesting a new motto for microsoft: If it's Microsoft it suks!

Mike:

I wasted some hours trying to get my Vista to recognize the newly installed XP last night. This morning I found this site and tried what was suggested, ... voilà it worked. Thanks guys.

Marsh:

Hi,

I bought a new Toshi laptop w/ Vista installed and am trying to make it dual boot. I installed XP Pro OK, but things got screwed up with the ntldr issue (I wish I'd read all the comments). So, I tried reinstalling XP Pro. During the install, instead of an EULA and the option to select a partition, I got a message saying there's already a \WINDOWS folder on the drive. Thinking this was the existing XP folder, I went ahead and used it. I was wrong, it was on the Vista partition and broke Vista. So I reinstalled Vista and deleted the XP partition. Now, whenever I try to install XP, I have the same problem: no EULA, no partition choice, just the option of wiping out Vista's \Windows folder or aborting the install.

Can any of you geniuses suggest a way around this?

Marsh:

I too had the dreaded ntldr problem and have a few points that may help others. (1) If you follow the tutorial, chances are boot.ini, ntldr, and ntdetect.com ARE installed on your system. Make sure your viewing options are set to allow you to see system files and go to C:\. The files were there for me: no need to copy them from the XP installation CD. (2) You really have two options on how to configure the system to access these files properly. In my case, the problem was that the files were in C:\, but the BCD was set to boot off of D:\ (which is where I have XP). You can either (a) copy the files from C:\ to D:\ (i.e., wherever you have XP), OR you can change the BCD to point to where these files are (C:\). Since boot.ini points to the partition where XP resides, STARTING the boot process from somewhere else works fine. The advantage of copying the files is that if one of the partitions becomes corrupted, the other one may still work. The disadvantage is that you have duplicate files taking up space; if one copy changes, you have to locate and fix the others; and it's less elegant. (3) I used VistaBootPro to fix the BCD. It worked fine. Don't worry about its need to have .NET installed. Vista has .NET. Just install VistaBootPro under Vista and run it there.

mark:

i have done everything as said and it works

but now i wish to give xp more space as it only has
2gb left where as vista has 25gb free space how do i
give xp an extra 15gbs of vista's space now that the
dual boot has already been made?

John:

Hi,

I used this guide to add an XP installation next to an existing Vista installation, with the difference that I used a second hard disk for XP.

This is what I did:
- Add second hard disk as slave and boot Vista. Vista boots (from primary) and recognizes the second hard disk and I can browse the files on it.
- Boot with XP cd-rom and install XP on the second hard disk (which it calls D:). The XP installation copies its files and reboots. Then I get a boot error.
- Boot with Vista cd-rom and repair the MBR. Vista recognizes the (one) Vista installation, I choose to repair the MBR and it reports that it found an error and fixed it.
- Reboot Vista -> boot error!

And there I get the standard boot error message at the command prompt. I disconnected the second hard disk (with half-way XP install) and set the DVD player on that cable back to primary. Still the same error.

Now I can only boot with the Vista cd-rom. It still finds the (one) Vista install, when I try to repair it it reports there was nothing to repair. But still I can't boot it...

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Regards,

- John

Chown:

I installed xp after vista but i dont have a vista install cd, in gparted i can see the drives, i want to boot to vista to repair the bootloader but i cant even though the vista partition is flagged for boot, the extended partition for xp is flagged lba but it boots into xp and not vista. please help me out =]

Doug Hynes:

The following method has been working for me to add an XP boot to an existing Vista. It has the advantages of not needing to repair the Vista boot AND of having the XP system drive installed as C:

1. Create the available space as described in the article

2. Using Disk Manager from Vista, create a new partition in that unallocated space -- don't use the XP install to do that.

3. Still in Disk Manager, set that new partition as Active. WARNING: That means that the machine will now be trying to boot from the empty partition. That's OK because the next thing you're going to do is install XP from a bootable CD. If you restart and then change your mind, you'll have to have some bootable utility to change the active partition again.

4. Boot from the XP installation CD and start the install. When you get to the step where you select the XP partition, you'll notice that your new target partition is C! That's because the active partition is always assigned that letter at this point. So your new partition will show as C and the existing Vista will show up as some other letter. So XP WILL be installed as C. Vista will remain C, too. Finish the install.

5. Once XP is running, copy NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM, and BOOT.ini from the XP partition to the Vista partition. This is required because the Vista partition will soon be the boot partition again .

6. Still from XP, use Disk Manager to change the Active partition back to the original Vista partition. The Vista partition's letter will show up as something other than C, doesn't matter, it will be C when booting Vista. Since the XP install never touched the Vista partition, NO repair is needed -- reboot and Vista will startup again.

7. Use EasyBCP as described to add the XP boot.

I can vouch from experience that this works very well. In fact you can have any number of Windows OSes all running as C using this method. You can also adjust drive letters using the HKLM/System/MountedDevices registry key. I've used this method to have 5 or 10 OSes installed in different partitions all at one time, and to restore various images to any partition and then fix the drive letters.

OzzY:

Works good .. thanks guys

jim:

Your variation looks attractive since Vista is untouched. I would like to have the two OS's on physically separate drives. Can your method apply to to this case also?

If so please detail the differences in procedure.

Doug Hynes:

This is trickier but possible. You can still use this basic method, but you have to create, at least temporarily, a small empty partition on drive 0.

Windows has the concept of the "system partition" where the actual OS is, and the "boot partition" where boot sector and loader are located. While the system partition can be on any partition on any drive, the boot partition has to be the active partition on drive 0.

Why my method works without modifying Vista is because by changing the active partition, the Vista boot partition isn't mucked with. The article's method requires the repair because XP, not knowing about Vista, wipes the Vista boot information with its own. In either case, the last step is teaching the Vista partition to also act as the XP boot partition.

So, just as in the instructions above, create an empty partition on drive 0 and set it to active. The difference is, this partition can be tiny because it's just going to hold the boot files. Then boot from the XP cd and install to any drive and partition you want. Then follow the rest of the instructions, except you'll need to copy the XP files from the boot partition and not from the main XP partition.

When you're done and have reset the active partition to the Vista partition, you can delete the other partition on drive 0 -- it's no longer in play.

This still has the advantage of not touching Vista BUT your resulting XP will NOT have drive C as the system drive.

It is possible to have the XP partition end up as C but it's more work, potentially a lot more. What you do is initially install XP on the active partition, then use Norton, Acronis, or some other imaging utility to copy the partition to where you want it, then modify the MountedDevices registry to tell XP to see the partition as C.

I used this method to build lots of test boxes off the same images so the effort was worth it, but may not be worth it to you for one setup. OTH I just find a system drive letter that's not C always eventually causes headaches.

BobN:

Hi Doug,

Excellent posting! You have now given us the definitive solution. It should solve everyone's NTLDR, HAL.DLL etc problems. I wiped my XP partition and reinstalled XP with your system. XP installed perfectly and dual booted correctly with Vista. The trick is clearly to make each partition active as required.

During my previous XP installation, the PC rebooted several times (as normal) but could not find the HAL.DLL file each time. I worked round this, but ended up with the system files installed in a BOOT directory rather than a WINDOWS directory. XP did run, but I was never happy with the installation.

My problem is now to find XP drivers for my HP Pavilion DV6200 laptop. The ones I have downloaded from the HP FTP site do not appear to install correctly. If you can offer any help in this direction I should be most grateful. In the meantime,I shall email HP technical support!

Vanya:

Where do I find NTLDR, NTDETECT.COM, and BOOT.ini in the XP partition?

Joe Searfoss:

Doug,
This is what I was looking for. I want to keep the drive letter for Vista and XP the same (C). One question before I dive into it. Do you have to go in and change the active partition each time you want to switch between Vista and XP to keep the drive letter to C, or does installing it this way and then using the Vista boot manager still keep the drives the same ?

Thanks

Sipa:

I setted the new patition as Active and boot it from XP CD but I only see C: drive with full disk space. I dont see an other drive which should be Vista per your doc. Please help! Thanks!

David P:

Others believe your system works well. I wanted to dbl-chk a couple things before i try it.
My system: HP dv6500t CTO new laptop with Vista Ultimate 64-bit and SATA drives. No system disk; it's OEM only with a recovery disk.
What I want: a dual-boot with Xp Pro SP2 as the other OS.
Questions:
1) No floppy. How get SATA drives in there so XP will recognize it and boot off it? Where find and how to get into machine?
2) Will the recovery disk work (don't have system disk for Vista)?
3) Is Vista/64 a problem if I want to put on XP/32-bit?

Thank you so much in advance for taking the time to share your thoughts!

Razher:

I have same problem and i don't have any drivers! I know that you can use nlite program to integrate sata drivers to winXP installation. Can you send me those drivers? If you need, i can send you nlite
Thanks

Arthas:

So, how can you dual-boot Vista / XP, with Vista being pre-installed and I don't have the Vista DVD. 'Cause as I follow the HOW TO, it mentions to repair the MBR using Vista DVD.

Sonny:

This is a much needed issue that needs attention. Perhaps the generous author of these articles could create one for just this situation?

Hard to derive meaningful steps to follow from all of the various posts found herein.

My experience thus far has been painful in trying to follow these steps with pre-installed Vista.

I used Gnome to resize partition. Then tried to load up XP. But, continue to get hit with .psi problem and corrupted boot files.

I can load Linux but computer won't even load Vista any longer, XPPro can't load either.

Any assistance for those of us with these pre-installed systems without disks would be greatly appreciated.

THANKS! Sonny

sjd:

Before I started all this I created VISTA recovery disks. If you boot up using the recovery disk you will get the same screen as is shown in the turorial. ie - repair your computer, etc.

Esoteric:

This guide look real good and I will certainly be using it to install XP OS but I have a little question:
I have Vista that was pre installed and I will install XP as a second OS but I also wish to install Linux so my question is witch guide do I follow after installing XP to then install Linux?? Or is it a case of any will do??
Thanx in advance for help.