Dual Boot Installation with Windows Vista and XP

How to Setup a Dual Boot Installation with Windows Vista and XP​

   Information

This will show you how to install Windows Vista and XP to dual boot with when you already have either Windows Vista or XP installed first.

   Note

With a dual boot installaton, you will have two operating systems (OS) installed. When you start the computer, you will have the choice to choose which OS you would like to start up to. This method is the easiest way of doing a dual boot with these two operating systems.

   Tip

To stop XP from deleting your Windows Vista System Restore Points everytime XP is started, then see System Restore Points - Stop XP Dual Boot Delete to hide Windows Vista from XP.

   Warning

Windows XP Minimum Hardware Requirements:
NOTE: For more information on this, see: System requirements for Windows XP operating systems

• PC with 300 megahertz (MHz) or higher processor clock speed recommended; 233-MHz minimum required;* Intel Pentium/Celeron family, AMD K6/Athlon/Duron family, or compatible processor recommended
• 128 megabytes (MB) of RAM or higher recommended (64 MB minimum supported; may limit performance and some features)
• 1.5 gigabyte (GB) of available hard disk space.*
• Super VGA (800 × 600) or higher resolution video adapter and monitor
• CD-ROM or DVD drive
• Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device

Windows Vista Minimum Hardware Requirements:
NOTE: For more information, see: Microsoft Windows Vista: Recommended System Requirements


Vista Home Basic

• Processor: 1GHz (32 or 64 bit)
• System Memory (RAM): 512MB
• Hard Drive: 20GB with 15GB available for Vista
• Video Card: 32MB Memory and DirectX 9 Support
• DVD-ROM Drive

Vista Home Premium, Business, or Ultimate

• Processor: 1GHz (32 or 64 bit)
• System Memory (RAM): 1GB
• Hard Drive: 40GB with 15GB available for Vista
• Video Card: 128MB Memory, DirectX 9 Support with: WDDM Driver, Pixel Shader 2.0, 32bits per pixel
• DVD-ROM Drive

EXAMPLE: Windows Boot Manager
NOTE: This is the boot screen where you select what operating system that you would like to start. By default, you have 30 seconds to choose another operating system before the default operating system will start automatically.

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METHOD ONE

When XP is Installed First

1. To Create a New Partition from the XP Hard Disk Drive​

A) With your Windows Vista installation disc boot into the Command Prompt from the System Recovery Options screen.​

NOTE: Make sure that the CD/DVD drive is selected first in the boot order in the BIOS.​

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B) In the command prompt, select and shrink the XP volume by how many MB (1024 MB = 1 GB) you want to have for this Windows Vista partition. (See screenshot below)​

NOTE: You would do steps 2 to 9 in METHOD TWO at that link. Windows Vista Home Basic will need a minimum of 20 GB (20480 MB), and Vista Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate will need a minimum of 40GB (40960 MB).​

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C) Click on the X at the top right corner to close the command prompt. (See screenshot above)​

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D) Click on the X at the top right corner to close System Recovery Options. (See screenshot below)​

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E) Go to step 3.​

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2. To Use a Separate Hard Disk Drive than the XP Drive​

A) Boot from your Vista installation disc.​

NOTE: Make sure that the CD/DVD drive is selected first in the boot order in the BIOS.​

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3. Click on the Install now button. (See screenshot below)​

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4. When you get to this point, select the partition (step 1) or hard drive to install Windows Vista on. (See screenshot below)​

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5. Finish installing your Upgrade Windows Vista or Full Windows Vista version.​

NOTE: You would do the STEP TWO section at either link to finish installing Windows Vista.​

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6. When finished, restart the computer to have the option to boot from XP (Earlier Verision of Windows) or Windows Vista. (See screenshot below)​

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METHOD TWO

When Windows Vista is Installed First

   Note

• If you have a RAID setup, you will need to have the XP RAID drivers on a USB flash drive available to select and load (F6) while installing XP.
• If you have a SATA drive, then see How to Load SATA Drivers in Windows XP Setup on your Dual Boot PC with Vista or Windows 7 for how to load your SATA drivers during the installatioin of XP.

1. To Create a New Partition from the Vista Hard Disk Drive​

NOTE: If you want to install XP on a separate hard drive instead, then skip this step and go to step 2.​

A) In Windows Vista, select and shrink the Windows Vista volume in Disk Management by how many MB (1024 MB = 1 GB) you want to have for this XP partition. (See screenshots below)​

NOTE: You would do all of STEP ONE and STEP TWO at that link.​

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2. Insert your XP installation disc, then restart the computer and press any key to boot from it when prompted. (See screenshot below)​

NOTE: Make sure that the CD/DVD drive is selected first in the boot order in the BIOS.​

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3. From XP Setup, Press Enter. (See screenshot below)​

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4. Press F8. (See screenshot below)​

NOTE: On some multimedia keyboards, you may need to press the F-Lock or Function key before pressing F8.​

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5. Select the new XP partition that you have just created in step 1 using the arrow keys and press Enter.​

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6. Finish installing XP.​

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7. In XP, download and install .Net Framework 2.0 (for 32-bit (x86) XP) or .Net Framework 2.0 (for 64-bit XP) and EasyBCD.​

NOTE: Net Framework is required to run the free program EasyBCD.​

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8. Run EasyBCD.​

NOTE: This is required to repair the Windows Vista boot file and add XP to the Windows Boot Manager list.​

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9. On the left side of EasyBCD, click on the Add New Entry button. (See screenshot below)​

A) In the top section under Operating Systems, click on the Windows tab. (See screenshot below)​

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B) To the right of Type, select Windows NT/2k/XP/2k3 from the drop down menu. (See screenshot below)​

WARNING: Be sure to leave the Automatically detect correct drive box checked.​

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C) To the right of Name, you can leave the default Microsoft Windows XP as the name to be displayed in the Windows Boot Manager, or you can type whatever name you would like to have instead. (See screenshot below)​

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D) Click on the Add Entry button. (See screenshot below)​

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10. On the left side of EasyBCD, click on the Bootloader Setup button, select (dot) the Install the Windows Vista/7 bootloader to the MBR option, and click on the Write MBR button. (See screenshot below)​

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11. Close EasyBCD.​

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12. Restart the computer to have the option to boot from XP or Windows Vista. (See screenshot below)​

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That's it,
Shawn

Related Tutorials

---

• How to Setup a Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and Vista
• How to Setup a Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and XP
• How to Dual Boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu
• How to Change the Default Boot Partition Settings in Vista
• How to Change the OS Name in Windows Boot Manager
• How to Stop System Restore Points from being Deleted in Vista when Dual Booting with XP
• How to Do a Clean Install with a Full Version of Vista
• How to Do a Clean Install of Vista with a Upgrade Version
• How to Create a Vista SP1 Slipstream Installation DVD
• How to Create a Bootable USB Flash Thumb Drive to Install Vista
• How to Do a Custom Installation of Vista
• How to Load SATA Drivers in Windows XP Setup on your Dual Boot PC with Vista or Windows 7
• How to Properly Delete a OS in a Dual Boot

 

[kavita]

Great work and efforts Shawn, just wanted to update you about VistaBootPRO - Windows Vista BCDEdit Dual Boot XP and Windows 7 as it also provides a function to replace the custom boot loader and vice-versa.
Also, you forgot to add poll for this tutorial. :D

 

[Brink]

Hello Kavita,

Thank you for the additional program to choose from.

I'm moving away from the polls. I prefer to have people post what problems they had with a tutorial instead to make it easier to update the tutorial for it.

 

[Phantomas]

Great job !!!

 

[nikhil2020in]

Hello Shawn,

Nice work and this forum is really very helpful. I was successfully able to create the Dual Partition of Vista and XP after following the steps mentioned above:D. Though goofed up somewhere... but coz of my mistake.
Also this forums has helped me a lot to improve my Vista performance from worst to better now hoping to make it best
Thanks a lot..........

 

[Brink]

You're most welcome Phantomas and Nikhil2020in, and welcome to Vista Forums.

Shawn

 

[vash79]

Hopefully someone can help me. I currently have a dual boot system with xp on one hard drive and vista on another. XP was installed first. I want to get rid of the dual boot any only use Vista. How can I safely remove XP, erase the hard drive it is on so I can use it for storage?

Thanks!

 

[Brink]

Hello Vash79, and welcome to Vista Forums.

You could boot from the Vista installation DVD and delete and format the XP drive under step 4 in METHOD ONE above. Afterwards, you will just need to run a startup repair to repair the boot file for Vista.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[vash79]

Awesome, that seems simple enough. Now what if I wanted to replace the XP drive with Windows 7? Could I just insert the Windows 7 disc and format and install over the drive with XP and automatcially have a dual boot still with Vista?

 

[Brink]

Yep, you could do that as well.

Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and Vista - Windows 7 Forums

 

[nikhil2020in]

Hello Vash79, and welcome to Vista Forums.

You could boot from the Vista installation DVD and delete and format the XP drive under step 4 in METHOD ONE above. Afterwards, you will just need to run a startup repair to repair the boot file for Vista.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Dear Shawn,

This is in relation to Vash79 problem, i would like to know that can we remove the XP in the following way (assuming XP installed in other drive) :
1) Boot through Vista
2) Format the drive where XP is installed
3) Use the EasyBCD software to repair the boot manager.

Thanks and Regards,
Nikhil.

 

[Brink]

Hello Nikhil,

Yes, you can also use that method as well.

 

[VRV]

Hi guys..I just joined and I have a question about the tutorial.

Shawn I have a working xp sp3 32-bit on one drive and I just installed a vista business 64-bit on a seperate drive (not partition). when i updated and restarted, I did not get the boot selecting page. any ideas?

thanks

 

[Brink]

Hello VRV, and welcome to Vista Forums.

While in XP, go ahead and do steps 7 to 15 in METHOD TWO to add Vista using EasyBCD. When you get to steps 10 and 11, use the settings boxed in red in the screenshot below for Vista instead of for XP.



Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[VRV]

Hi Shawn,

thanks for the welcome and the reply.

funny thing...about that...:huh:...I already did install vista from cd boot through dos before posting the question, and thats why i cant see xp anymore which is (was) on an entirely different drive.

i read somewhere that i can press down key repeatedly to get the boot list, so i did..and strangely enough xp wasnt there (just vista), although when i went into vista, i was able to see the os windows, program files and all my docs & files on that other drive which had my xp installed on!

in any case, in the line of making this the clean way..now i have a working vista 64 bit..and another freshly formated drive that i would like to install xp on again.

should i do it from inside vista or dos (boot cd)?
...and anything i should take into account..regarding restore points being deleted and god knows what else?

thanks for your help

 

[Brink]

If you can boot to Vista and are going to reinstall XP, then you can just do METHOD TWO to do so.

XP will wipe out Vista's restore points everytime you start XP, so you may want to do the tutorial below in XP to prevent this after installation is complete.

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

 

[DA1745]

Hey Shawn,
Thanks for replying on my other problem thread. I'm preparing to reinstall (clean install) Vista again but I wanted to dot a few i's before I do that.
Refresher on my set up, XP professional was installed 1st on one drive, then Vista was installed on a 2nd hard drive. The dual boot was all set up & working fine.

Now I NEED to start over on Vista's end. I'd ultimately like to go from the 400GB drive that Vista is installed on, to a 1GB or 1.5TB drive ((since the Video files even on the lowest settings are HUGE)) but what I think I will do is simply do the upgrade clean install on the same 400GB HD that's it's already on & then later I'll clone the drive over to a 1GB or 1.5GB drive later.
Am I correct in assuming that doing an upgrade (clean install) installation of Vista Ultimate on that same drive I won't mess up anything with the bootloader etc.?

Also do you know of anyway to save out my TV SERIES Recording/settings? I have at least 30 (likely more) shows set to record, some are on a break right now, some only come on seasonally and I often forget about them until the recording shows up etc. so it would be great if there was a folder somewhere that I could save or export (like exporting Favorites, cookies). I have spent the last few days transferring over shows, documents, videos, bookmarks/favorites. Thank you.

 

[Brink]

Hello DA1745,

If for some reason that it does mess up the bootloader, you can use EasyBCD to repair it like in METHOD TWO of this tutorial.

I'm not sure about how to backup your TV Series recordings and settings though. You might post that in the Media Center forum to see someone may know of a easy way for you.

 

[dniaak]

Hello Brink. I followed Your instructions (method 2). [On Acer Aspire 1410 laptop] I
resized the Vista partition to leave 55Gb unalocated space for XP [XP Pro SP2] and created a D: primary partition. I then inserted install disc and restarted. After XP setup loads initial files/drivers, and tries to start Windows, instead of startup I get this notice
screen:

"A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer. Check for viruses and remove any newly installed hard drives or hard drive controllers. Check your drive to make sure it has been properly configured and terminated. Run CHKDSK for any drive corruption; then restart your computer.

Tech Info: *** STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF78D2524, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)"

When I looked up the above STOP code on the Microsoft site I got this: "If you receive one of these error messages [STOP: 0x0000007B] while you are installing Windows XP, update the computer BIOS or obtain Windows XP drivers for your hard disk controller .....", which didn't help much.
There are no viruses. I ran an error check and this drive [Hitachi, less than 3mo old]
has no corruption. As far as controller/configuration goes, Vista has started and functioned without a hitch repeatedly. The only change has been the C: resizing and creation of D: primary partition. I am at a loss as to what to do. If you have any ideas they would be very much appreciated, Dan T.

 

[Brink]

Hello Dniaak, and welcome to Vista Forums.

Could you post back a screenshot of your Disk Management to help see how your drives and partitions are layed out? This may help if there's a problem with the layout.