Friday, January 02, 2009
Dual-Booting Vista and XP*
While Vista can upgrade your current version of XP, you may wish to try a dual-boot configuration. This leaves your XP installation alone and installs Vista in another partition, either an existing one or one you will create just for Vista. Now Vista comes with it's own partitioning tools that can be accessed during setup as run from the Vista bootable DVD. I have never used these myself, preferring Acronis Disk Director to manage my partitions. whatever tool you prefer, you will need a good sized partition, at least 15GB or more, depending on how many programs you will install in Vista later.
Once you have your partition, you can install Vista in one of 2 ways: either start the install from within XP (telling Vista to not perform an upgrade) or you can boot with the Vista DVD, making sure that your BIOS is configured to boot your DVD drive before the hard drive. I prefer to boot from the DVD.
Vista's installation program is fairly straightforward, and if you have installed XP from scratch before, Vista's initial setup screens will be quite familiar. You are presented with a list of partitions to chose from, and once you choose the partition, if you would like to format it or not.
Once Vista is installed, you will notice a boring black & white text screen that presents itself when the PC is restarted. This is Vista's boot manager. You have about 30 seconds to choose between "Earlier version of Windows" (that would be XP) and "Microsoft Windows" (that would be Vista):
Vista has done away with boot.ini and now has something way more complex: the Boot Configuration Data store.
One nice feature is that, if you decide you no longer want Vista, you simply go to the "Change settings" tab and click "Delete Vista Boot Loader!". This 'reactivates' boot.ini in the XP partition and when you reboot, Vista's Boot Manager is gone and you will boot directly into XP. You can then format the Vista partition if you wish. Alternatively, you can access VistaBootPRO from within XP and accomplish the same task.
Note regarding Vista's Bootloader: Each time you install a version of Windows, it rewrites the MBR to call its own boot loader. If you install Windows Vista as a second operating system on a PC where Windows XP is already installed, the Windows Vista boot menu incorporates the options from the older boot menu. But if you install a fresh copy of Windows XP on a system that is already running Windows Vista, you’ll overwrite the MBR with one that doesn’t recognize the Windows Vista Boot Loader. To repair the damage, open a Command Prompt window
in the older operating system and run the following command from the Windows Vista DVD, substituting the letter of your drive for here.
:\Boot\ Bootsect.exe –NT60 All
When you restart, you should see the Windows Vista menu. To restore the menu entry for your earlier version of Windows, open an elevated Command Prompt and enter this command:
Bcdedit –create {ntldr} –d “Menu description goes here”
Substitute your own description for the placeholder text. The next time you start your computer, the menus should appear as you intended.
http://www.windowstalk.org/dual_boot_vista.htm
http://www.windowstalk.org/dual_boot_part2.htm
Once you have your partition, you can install Vista in one of 2 ways: either start the install from within XP (telling Vista to not perform an upgrade) or you can boot with the Vista DVD, making sure that your BIOS is configured to boot your DVD drive before the hard drive. I prefer to boot from the DVD.
Vista's installation program is fairly straightforward, and if you have installed XP from scratch before, Vista's initial setup screens will be quite familiar. You are presented with a list of partitions to chose from, and once you choose the partition, if you would like to format it or not.
Once Vista is installed, you will notice a boring black & white text screen that presents itself when the PC is restarted. This is Vista's boot manager. You have about 30 seconds to choose between "Earlier version of Windows" (that would be XP) and "Microsoft Windows" (that would be Vista):
Vista has done away with boot.ini and now has something way more complex: the Boot Configuration Data store.
One nice feature is that, if you decide you no longer want Vista, you simply go to the "Change settings" tab and click "Delete Vista Boot Loader!". This 'reactivates' boot.ini in the XP partition and when you reboot, Vista's Boot Manager is gone and you will boot directly into XP. You can then format the Vista partition if you wish. Alternatively, you can access VistaBootPRO from within XP and accomplish the same task.
Note regarding Vista's Bootloader: Each time you install a version of Windows, it rewrites the MBR to call its own boot loader. If you install Windows Vista as a second operating system on a PC where Windows XP is already installed, the Windows Vista boot menu incorporates the options from the older boot menu. But if you install a fresh copy of Windows XP on a system that is already running Windows Vista, you’ll overwrite the MBR with one that doesn’t recognize the Windows Vista Boot Loader. To repair the damage, open a Command Prompt window
in the older operating system and run the following command from the Windows Vista DVD, substituting the letter of your drive for
When you restart, you should see the Windows Vista menu. To restore the menu entry for your earlier version of Windows, open an elevated Command Prompt and enter this command:
Bcdedit –create {ntldr} –d “Menu description goes here”
Substitute your own description for the placeholder text. The next time you start your computer, the menus should appear as you intended.
http://www.windowstalk.org/dual_boot_vista.htm
http://www.windowstalk.org/dual_boot_part2.htm
