Dual boot on vista system Installing and Upgrading Vista Discuss Dual boot on vista system in the Windows Vista forums; This is my scenario. My old XP PC "crashed" (it crashed against my feet while I was kikching it...) But it really was giving some problems with the ...

[Guamani]

This is my scenario. My old XP PC "crashed" (it crashed against my feet while I was kikching it...) But it really was giving some problems with the video card. After the "incident" I tried to repair it but was unsucessfull. So I bought a new one with vista. I needed to recover the data from my old drives so initially I tried to boot the Vista PC from the XP hard disk, by indicating which drive to boot from throug setup. It did not work. My idea was to remove the passwords to freely ascess all the data. So I did try again to start up my old XP pc and was able to get it to work (only on safe mode) and removed some passwords. Then installed the hard disk on the vista system and copied the data. But still could not get some data, like My Documents. While doing this I had to "take ownership" of some folders from my XP hard disk, while ascessing them in Vista.

Now, my questions are: First (and this one is not related to the post) Now I want to work again on the XP system, but after "taking ownership" on vista, these folders are no longer available in XP. I read that you can "reverse ownership" but that was on XP. Is there a way to do it on Vista?

And now, related to the post. How could I perform a Dual Boot with this XP OS that is allready installed in the old Hard Disk? I,ve seen that it can be done by partitioning the HD in Vista and reinstalling XP on that new partition. But how about having it allready installed on a hard disk, as most people might have?

[crabby]

The issue is that the kernel which has been installed with XP relates to an old system. If you do a repair install of XP you will lose no data and XP should work fine. However, you will have the issue that the install will over write the boot.ini file which will cause Vista problems.

The way I do it is, install XP whilst the Vista drive is disconnected. Once installed, reconnect the Vista hard drive and edit the boot.ini file to produce the dual boot menu.

The ownership issue can be resolved by sharing the folders.

If you need more detail just holler, but you should be able to edit the boot.ini quite easily (there are some nifty tutorials on the web).

crabby

[Guamani]

Crabby,

First of all, thanks for your reply as you have been the only one, and I've posting in quite some forums!

Second, you might have noticed I am not an expert! Maybe I have more than basic knowledge, but that's it! So I might need more detailed guidance so I dot end with a non working desktop.

I have made some attempts. As said, I tried booting the vista pc with the old IDE hard disk containing XP, by selecting it as the boot drive to no avail. It just kept in a loop showing first the HP blue setup page, then the black screen requesting which mode to start and going back. Then I tryed partitioning drive c and booting with my XP cd. It did the same as when booting from "old ide xp drive".

My WinXP is the original one, no SP. So then read in the web that I need the sata drivers.

Now your sugestion. I've never performed a repair install. Didn't know you could reinstall withouth loosing data nor installed programs. That would be great as this is one of the reasons I tryed to boot from the already installed XP system, because of the lot of programs allready installed.

So the option is to clean install XP? That wasn't the solution I expected, but in a real world, nothing is what you expect! Will it recognise the SATA Drive?Neither understand the part on editing the boot.ini. What would be edited? I just read that Vista renamed the boot.ini file.

Another thought: Is it possible to migratethe operating system from the old XP computer to the new Vista computer? Last weekend I used it and worked flawlessly. Or if there is some work to be done on XP it can be done there.

Well, can you provide me more detailed steps, or suggest a guide or something to help me better understand? I don't want to mess and be left with an useless PC!

[crabby]

From your post I believe you have this setup:

1. A new Vista PC.
2. A hard drive from your old XP PC with data on it that you want.

And I believe you want:

1. A PC with both XP and Vista on and all your data still available.

To do this you should:

1. Put the old hard drive in the computer with the new one.
2. Disconnect the new hard drive.
3. Do a repair install of XP per this tutorial (How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install)
4. Boot into your fresh XP.
5. Shutdown and reconnect your Vista hard drive.
6. Enter your BIOS and make sure that it boots to the Vista disk first.
7. Boot into Vista.
8. Use EasyBCD to edit Vista's boot menu to include your XP operating system. (Download: Download EasyBCD 1.7.2 - NeoSmart Technologies)
9. Reboot and see a lovely menu showing the two os systems. Select the one you want and it will boot to it.

You mentioned SATA drivers, these should only be required by the XP setup if you are installing to a SATA device but I believe you said your old hard drive was IDE so there will not be an issue.

Once you have the dual boot up, just update XP to SP3 and it'll then have the SATA drivers necessary to see your Vista hard drive.

Again, let me know if you get stuck

crabby