About to Dual boot my Vista x64 with XP 32

[vfreak]

Ok, I'm going to ask on here if I've got everything right, wait for 10 mins and then take the plunge anyway cause I think I've got all points covered.
​

I have a Dell Vostro 1700 laptop with two HDDs, vista x64 on drive C, and just created a smallish partition by shrinking the second drive.

I'm ready to dual boot and install my old XP 32-bit SP2 on. What I have noted down so far:

- Before install XP, change AHCI to ATA mode in bios (to avoid BSOD)
- install xp
- have the necssary sata sontroller drivers ready, for both XP and vista, to manually install them.
- Vistaboot pro
- reinstall vista sata controller driver if necessary
- change back to AHCI in bios.
- finished, flawless dualbooting.


anything missing? will it all work?
thanks if anyone sees this and knows in 10 mins.

 

[vfreak]

Okely Dokely, down I go...

 

[vfreak]

...and up again! That was excellent, painless and simple.

Mind you I didn't have my wifi's driver for xp 32-bit, and luckily I had a phone where I could check my gmail for an email I sent to my flatmate containing the new WPA key that I just set today and that was only configured on my vista installation and then use his computer to download an XP driver for my wifi module so that I could download .NET 2.00 in order to install VistaBootPRO! (I'm so stupid.)

Anyway I followed two guides, EXACTLY.:

Install Windows XP in a Dual Boot with Pre-installed Windows Vista
Notebook Forums and Laptop Discussion - View Single Post - Installing Vista Ultimate on Vostro 1700 BSOD loop!!

Worked flawlessly.

Hope this comes useful to someone in the future.

 

[Dzomlija]

Glad that worked for you - I have just one question though - Why would you want to dual boot between Vista x64 and XP?

I also went the dual-boot route between XP and Vista x64 when I first got Vista x64 over a year ago. After about a month, I happily discovered that in that time I never booted into XP once. So I re-formatted all my drives, and installed only Vista x64. I've been using Vista only since then.

...until of course mother nature popped by computer, and I've been forced back to a dog-slow XP box. My new Vista machine should be up and running by the end of the week.

 

[vfreak]

Glad that worked for you - I have just one question though - Why would you want to dual boot between Vista x64 and XP?

I also went the dual-boot route between XP and Vista x64 when I first got Vista x64 over a year ago. After about a month, I happily discovered that in that time I never booted into XP once. So I re-formatted all my drives, and installed only Vista x64. I've been using Vista only since then.

...until of course mother nature popped by computer, and I've been forced back to a dog-slow XP box. My new Vista machine should be up and running by the end of the week.

Yeah...I resisted from dual booting at the start, but then figured there were a couple obscure but unique programs which would simply not run under vista no matter what I tried.

So I simply created a 4GB partition to install the XP on, using the vista disk manager...which I'm actually starting to regret (filling up already, just with essential apps!) To further shrink my big partition on the same drive (with 40GB free) do I have to defrag first? Acronis doesn't seem to work...any suggestions?

 

[Dzomlija]

Glad that worked for you - I have just one question though - Why would you want to dual boot between Vista x64 and XP?

I also went the dual-boot route between XP and Vista x64 when I first got Vista x64 over a year ago. After about a month, I happily discovered that in that time I never booted into XP once. So I re-formatted all my drives, and installed only Vista x64. I've been using Vista only since then.

...until of course mother nature popped by computer, and I've been forced back to a dog-slow XP box. My new Vista machine should be up and running by the end of the week.

Yeah...I resisted from dual booting at the start, but then figured there were a couple obscure but unique programs which would simply not run under vista no matter what I tried.

So I simply created a 4GB partition to install the XP on, using the vista disk manager...which I'm actually starting to regret (filling up already, just with essential apps!) To further shrink my big partition on the same drive (with 40GB free) do I have to defrag first? Acronis doesn't seem to work...any suggestions?

I used to use Partition Magic - until they got bought out my Symantec and the product became bogged down by the usual Symantec incompetence.

Which Acronis product did you use? Disk Director?

 

[h.soeiro]

I have the same issue. Have 2 hdd, one with XP and other with Vista 64. I want to boot on any other ocasion between these two so. Until now, each i wanted to change between them, i had to go to the bios. I only found now the Vista Boot Pro. Is it the best way to change betweenthe so's, without going to the bios ?

 

[vfreak]

Yeah...I resisted from dual booting at the start, but then figured there were a couple obscure but unique programs which would simply not run under vista no matter what I tried.

So I simply created a 4GB partition to install the XP on, using the vista disk manager...which I'm actually starting to regret (filling up already, just with essential apps!) To further shrink my big partition on the same drive (with 40GB free) do I have to defrag first? Acronis doesn't seem to work...any suggestions?

I used to use Partition Magic - until they got bought out my Symantec and the product became bogged down by the usual Symantec incompetence.

Which Acronis product did you use? Disk Director?

Tried trial of their latest version of Disk Director from their website.

...hang on a minute, it works now! I'll give it a go then...don't know what it's like.

 

[vfreak]

I have the same issue. Have 2 hdd, one with XP and other with Vista 64. I want to boot on any other ocasion between these two so. Until now, each i wanted to change between them, i had to go to the bios. I only found now the Vista Boot Pro. Is it the best way to change betweenthe so's, without going to the bios ?

I've had no troubles so far. It's just the standard dualboot screen that you get, what they do is fix the famous vista boot problem that's caused by XP dualboot for you in one convenient program, rather than having to do it the complicated way.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Hi vfreak

You might want to read this!

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/127417-system-restore-points-stop-xp-dual-boot-delete.html

Hope it helps

Later Ted

 

[h.soeiro]

Thank's. I'll try that and get back to you. Just on thing. The Vista Boot Pro is installed in vista 64, is it ?

 

[vfreak]

Hi vfreak

You might want to read this!

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/127417-system-restore-points-stop-xp-dual-boot-delete.html

Hope it helps

Later Ted

Yes thanks for reminding me I had that on my list of things to do after install. + some other tutorials here look great! Kudos to the contributors.

 

[vfreak]

Thank's. I'll try that and get back to you. Just on thing. The Vista Boot Pro is installed in vista 64, is it ?

I'm not sure how many ways it can be installed, but I followed one of their guides and installed it on the XP system, where it then restarts and boots correctly with dualboot for the first time.

So I have a feeling it can only be done in the *other* operating system to your vista installation. Otherwise, it wouldn't be needed anyway! But check their website it looked very resourceful.

 

[h.soeiro]

I tried that yesterday. Installed in Vista, reboot, but the boot wnet instantly to vista. The only way to boot xp is through bios, selecting the drive that has xp installed. The vista boot pro should show a boot screen, allowing to select the desired so ? I never worked with that, so i don't know what it should do. But vista and xp booted in an ordenary way.

 

[vfreak]

I tried that yesterday. Installed in Vista, reboot, but the boot wnet instantly to vista. The only way to boot xp is through bios, selecting the drive that has xp installed. The vista boot pro should show a boot screen, allowing to select the desired so ? I never worked with that, so i don't know what it should do. But vista and xp booted in an ordenary way.

Yeah. sounds like you have to do it in this order: vista installed, XP installed, then install Vista Boot Pro IN XP. So I'd say uninstall vista Boot Pro from vista then put it in XP and see how it goes.

 

[MonsterMaxx]

Q: Why would anyone dual boot?
A: Because Vista is still very buggy, a resource pig, can only run on the latest hardware, it's 30% slower than XP on the same task and many many applications run poorly or not at all in Vista.

Personally I'm a mechanical engineer who runs his own company. So I have CAD, analysis, financial, MRP and other apps which run perfectly in XP. Same apps run poorly or not at all in Vista. Some are a few years old, but work perfectly, why spend thousands and thousands of dollars just to run the latest wiz bang OS? Totally not worth it.

I like Vista. The new interface is bling. I find it does better on battery management than XP. Other than that XP whips the pants off Vista in the stability, compatibility and speed departments.

Vista is cool, it's the future, but it's not the present. XP is. When you have a job to do and people are counting on you to get your job done and excuses about OS problems are not acceptable, XP is what you should be running.



If you are using a comp for personal use, you surf, maybe write a doc or two and check email, Vista will likely do anything you want, then again, so will a Mac.


I did the dual boot w/ XP first, Vista second and had no problems with the defaults (only exception to this is I had to slipstream HP's SATA driver into the XP install disk.) I did use easyBCD to tweak the boot loader settings. I even used the same directory to install the same programs in for both OSs so I didnt' waste disk space storing the same app twice. So far, seems to work fine.