Dual Boot Between Windows XP and Vista
Elian emailed me the other day with quite a quandary. He’s from the Netherlands, but this seems to be a universal problem:
One of my friends has a computer with windows vista on it. So today he wanted to install windows XP on it because he couldn’t play older games he wanted to. I’ve done it myself successfully but I installed XP before I installed vista. Now his computer keeps booting XP without the boot manager screen (witch appears on my screen every time I boot my computer up). I think this problem could be solved by editing the boot.ini file. Programs like partition magic have an app witch enables you to make the choice on witch partition you want to boot up. I’d like to know how to solve this problem.
A few hours later, he returned with the discovery of VistaBootPro - a free solution for those of you in a dual-booting boat. Vista or XP - why not have both?
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15 Comments
Michael Rivera (mrivera1)
February 25th, 2008
at 4:53pm
A Vista/XP dual boot situation is quite common nowadays, especially with all of the unknown responses Vista can have to the simplest of things. XP is still the safest bet to take when you need to do anything that you are in doubt about doing on Vista.
Error32
February 25th, 2008
at 4:56pm
why,even do that? when,you can run vista on Virtural box?!!
i just think that’s a wast of time, to do. just,use vmware to dual boot os. and,it will save you time.
error 32
scottfrye
February 25th, 2008
at 5:07pm
I would try EasyBCD instead.
Martin Eyles
February 25th, 2008
at 5:43pm
My particular flavour of dual booting is Vista (which won’t be used much - my dev tools don’t work, and people on here have agreed that there’s not much point struggling if it doesn’t benefit me) and Server 2003 (will be used as supports MSSQL and my various dev tools), on a laptop (for which there aren’t any win2k3 drivers, but luckily xp drivers work ok).
randy_nacol2022
February 25th, 2008
at 6:16pm
This is a subject I’m very interested in since I , myself, have thought about doing the same. Putting xp over Vista. Is Vista Boot Pro any good? Partion Magic is a tried and true program. If and when I do duo-boot I will research both programs and compare.
Drew
February 25th, 2008
at 6:55pm
If you install XP then can’t get back into Vista, you gotta boot into Vista’s recovery console and fixmbr I think. I dual booted with XP then Vista & Vice Versa before. Check out http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp
David AKA Arcane
February 25th, 2008
at 7:27pm
Vista boot pro is great, but it’s so much easier to install xp first, then install vista. Theres so many steps to revert back even with the software.
MikeD
February 25th, 2008
at 9:15pm
When I get tired of Vista on my main Windows laptop I will probably go this route. Vista is such a piece of garbage.
beyourownit
February 25th, 2008
at 9:17pm
With all this discussion on Vista I feel like I should install it sometime. I have been running XP forever and it fits all my needs, now that I actually pay for software, upgrading only occurs by necessity and not just because. I should upgrade and do a video on my site about how it goes.
WizzKid
February 26th, 2008
at 2:06am
Great advice Chris + the comments, will try it out later today :)
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at 10:51am
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Laaabaseball
February 26th, 2008
at 2:53pm
I dual boot Vista and Xp on my laptop, but I wonder why I need to use a program to do it? It works perfectly fine for me, and I didn’t need to install another program to add to my list of them. I do however recommend Vlite for vista, since it gets Vista off of the slow ground its on and boots up the speed on it.
ajustwar
March 1st, 2008
at 1:29am
I have a dual boot xp and vista. i put xp on first then vista and i had no problems. works great for me i also use vmware.
n3kr0t3k
April 16th, 2008
at 8:14am
I would like to Dual boot XP & Windows Server 2008. Should I put each OS on Seperate HD, or partition a HD, and which order would be best. Thank you for helping if anyone has any suggestions.
John Hesch
November 26th, 2008
at 11:31pm
I just purchase a new computer with window vista, and would like to format and get rid of vista and put xp on it. what drives will I need to keep the computer up to date with hard ware on my Hp M9150 F It has a wireless mouse and keyboard, nvidia Geforce 8500gt wireless card LAN 8002.11b/g etc etc.